If you don’t understand just how much data big tech has on you — and what it can be used for — consider the case of Zachary McCoy.

According to NBC News, Google was taken to court by the Gainesville, Florida, police and was going to turn over all of McCoy’s data to them if he didn’t go to court. The 30-year-old restaurant worker received this news out of the blue through email. The email said he had seven days before the data was released and offered only one clue to go on: a case number that dealt with a burglary at a 97-year-old woman’s house nearly a year earlier.

The Gainesville Police Department had zeroed in on McCoy because they’d obtained what’s known as a “geofence warrant,” which NBC described as “a police surveillance tool that casts a virtual dragnet over crime scenes, sweeping up Google location data — drawn from users’ GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and cellular connections — from everyone nearby.”

Four days after the burglary, the Gainesville Police Department went to a judge and requested Google turn over records of devices using its services in the area during the window in which it was alleged the burglary happened.

There was McCoy’s problem. He used a cycling app which tracked his phone’s location and sent it to Google. On March 29, 2019, the day of the burglary, he’d done three loops in front of the burglary victim’s house. But then, he says, he always did numerous laps around the neighborhood.

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After reviewing the data they got from the warrant and sifting through it, the police became interested in McCoy and decided to go back to Google so that they could find out more about who was behind the account.

“I was hit with a really deep fear,” McCoy said regarding the email.

“I didn’t know what it was about, but I knew the police wanted to get something from me,” he added. “I was afraid I was going to get charged with something, I don’t know what.”

McCoy had always tried to maintain anonymity online, he told NBC.

“For most of his life, McCoy said, he had tried to live online anonymously, a habit that dated to the early days of the internet when there was less expectation that people would use their real names,” the network reported.

“He used pseudonyms on his social media accounts and the email account that Google used to notify him about the police investigation.”

And yet, as the user of an Android device with Google accounts, a wide swath of his online life was going to be turned over to police.

“I didn’t realize that by having location services on that Google was also keeping a log of where I was going,” McCoy said.

“I’m sure it’s in their terms of service but I never read through those walls of text, and I don’t think most people do either.”

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“It was a nightmare scenario,” he added. “I was using an app to see how many miles I rode my bike and now it was putting me at the scene of the crime. And I was the lead suspect.”

McCoy talked to his parents, who were able to pay for a lawyer, Caleb Kenyon. Kenyon was the one who originally discovered the information was obtained via a geofence warrant. His first move was to get on the phone and talk with police, telling them that “you’re looking at the wrong guy.”

Kenyon then filed a motion in court saying that the warrant was unconstitutional, arguing it basically took data from every individual in the area simply because they were in the area.

“This geofence warrant effectively blindly casts a net backwards in time hoping to ensnare a burglar,” Kenyon wrote. “This concept is akin to the plotline in many a science fiction film featuring a dystopian, fascist government.”

However, very few geofence warrants are ever challenged in court. The warrants are obtained in secret with a request to Google (which is the only company that shares, or has the ability to share, that kind of data, according to The New York Times); sometimes defense lawyers aren’t even aware of the fact they’ve been granted, NBC reported.

That should scare you, given the fact that requests for this type of warrant have grown dramatically over the past two years.

In McCoy’s case, the police department said additional details in his data led them to believe that he wasn’t the burglar and they withdrew the warrant. The legal challenge was similarly withdrawn — although, as Kenyon pointed out, “the larger privacy fight will go unanswered.” Kenyon would also meet with police and show them months of data which proved he rode by the house frequently. This more or less exonerated McCoy without his having to turn over his entire digital life.

How many of us, however, would be able to afford a lawyer or get to court within seven days? McCoy still says he regrets having to spend the cash, even though he understands the plight of the woman involved.

“I’m definitely sorry that happened to her, and I’m glad police were trying to solve it,” he told NBC. “But it just seems like a really broad net for them to cast. What’s the cost-benefit? How many innocent people do we have to harass?”

Probably a lot more, if the trend holds.

Governments love your data. Take a look at China, which attempts to keeps tabs on every aspect of its citizens’ digital lives. They’re hardly alone. While we certainly aren’t China and we certainly support police, we also support police restraint and our constitutional rights.

Just because something can solve a crime doesn’t mean it should be in the hands of law enforcement. In this case, it would have directly implicated an innocent man. If you think this wouldn’t necessarily lead to an arrest because the police would be careful enough, consider the case of Jorge Molina.

According to the Phoenix New Times, he was arrested and charged with murder based on a geofence warrant. Six days later, the case against him collapsed.

When we allow law enforcement access to data, we have to ask when the benefits outweigh the risks. This raises a wider question, though: Why is Google acquiescing to this? This very much terra nova at best and blatantly unconstitutional at worst. And yet, the tech giant is playing right along with this — and you’re playing right along, too, by handing over your data.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

First the pitch, then the plan.

That’s the order in which an American must go who wants to hear how Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden thinks the United States should be handling the coronavirus.

On Friday, Biden’s campaign began aggressively portraying Biden as the man with a plan to deal with the virus.

“In times of uncertainty, we need strong, steady, stable leadership. Read more about Joe Biden’s plan to combat the coronavirus outbreak and how to prepare for future global health threats,” his campaign tweeted.

In times of uncertainty, we need strong, steady, stable leadership.

Read more about Joe Biden’s plan to combat the coronavirus outbreak and how to prepare for future global health threats. ⬇️ https://t.co/dSyzAPZ7kd

— Team Joe (Text JOE to 30330) (@TeamJoe) March 20, 2020

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But when Twitter users got there, they found that instead of learning how Biden was going to help them, they were the ones asked to help Biden in terms of a donation to the campaign.

Savvy users could spot the message in the upper right corner of the screen and click past the sales pitch to find out what Biden would do if elected in November. However, those who want to read the plan will be reminded that the campaign needs money, courtesy of a banner across the top of the screen.

“Biden believes we must spend whatever it takes, without delay, to meet public health needs and deal with the mounting economic consequences. The federal government must act swiftly and aggressively to help protect and support our families, small businesses, first responders and caregivers essential to help us face this challenge, those who are most vulnerable to health and economic impacts, and our broader communities – not to blame others or bail out corporations,” the plan states.

The plan supposes that the federal response to the 2014 Ebola panic and the 2009 H1N1 pandemic was enough to support being tried again. President Donald Trump has already poked a hole in that argument.

Sleepy Joe Biden was in charge of the H1N1 Swine Flu epidemic which killed thousands of people. The response was one of the worst on record. Our response is one of the best, with fast action of border closings & a 78% Approval Rating, the highest on record. His was lowest!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 13, 2020

Biden also insists he can do a better job of communicating than Trump, following the liberal line of attacking Trump’s work to communicate with the American people.

“Biden believes we must immediately put scientists and public health leaders front and center in communication with the American people in order to provide regular guidance and deliver timely public health updates, including by immediately establishing daily, expert-led press briefings,” the plan said.

Sooo… Before Coronavirus, Maddow complained that Trump was avoiding the press and White House press briefings…

But NOW that he does them daily, she and the left complain and say they don’t want him on TV… 🙄

— Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) March 21, 2020

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Biden also casts doubt upon the ability of the Centers for Disease Control to decide who gets tested, arguing that “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) must draw on advice from outside scientists to clarify the criteria for testing.”

Biden also calls for a long-term plan that reverses what he allowed to happen under the Obama adminisration.

“The U.S. government should immediately work with the private sector to map critical health care supplies; identify their points of origin; examine the supply chain process; and create a strategic plan to build redundancies and domestic capacity. The goal is to develop the next generation of biomedical research and manufacturing excellence, bring back U.S. manufacturing of medical products we depend on, and ensure we are not vulnerable to supply chain disruptions, whether from another pandemic, or because of political or trade disputes,” Biden’s plan states.

However, while he was vice president under former President Barack Obama, Biden watched as China established dominance over the pharmaceutical sector Americans rely upon.

But how is it under your leader ship in Obama’s leader ship 95% of drug and prescription drug manufacturer was moved to China? How stupid was that! And do you folks got rich off your phone investments and your new world order conglomerate of the inner circle of the elite. Wrong

— 🔥American Patriot🔥 (@WiemkenPatriot) March 21, 2020

China’s hammerlock on the U.S. pharmaceutical trade was decried last year by Rosemary Gibson, author and senior adviser to the Hastings Center , a bioethics research instituted in Garrison, New York, during testimony to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

“National health security and national security are threatened by U.S. dependence on China for thousands of ingredients and raw materials to make our medicines,” said Gibson, author of “China Rx: Exposing the Risks of America’s Dependence on China for Medicine.”

“China’s aim is to become the pharmacy to the world, and it is on track to achieve it. China’s dominance is global.”

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

An unexpected philanthropist is making a difference in the lives of the elderly and others who are vulnerable to the coronavirus in his Gaithersburg, Maryland, community.

Seven-year-old Cavanaugh Bell used $600 of his own money, which he had saved up over the course of three Christmases and two birthdays, to create 65 “COVID-19 Carepacks” for those in need.

Along with the care packages, Bell purchased 31 meals from Italian restaurant Buca Di Beppo for senior citizens at Hillside Senior Homes and to help eateries affected by the restaurant shutdown put in place by Gov. Larry Hogan.

Bell published a video Tuesday on Twitter so his supporters could see what he’d been up to.

“Don’t forget about our senior citizens, because they need to eat too,” Bell said in the video.

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Yesterday we bought, packaged and delivered hot meals to the senior citizens at Hillside Senior Homes!

We are all on this earth together and we need to take care of each other.

$5… $10… $20… whatever you can spare will help me help our community.https://t.co/K4NNlil5hN pic.twitter.com/ZO4Gf4oFCQ

— Cool & Dope (@cooldopeliving) March 17, 2020

Just did a carepack drop in @GburgMD for the elderly to make sure they’re taken care of during this #COVIDー19 #coronapocalypse ❤️ pic.twitter.com/zszaT0Pp7A

— Cool & Dope (@cooldopeliving) March 14, 2020

Bell added another video to show how much success he’s had with all the support and donation’s he’d received.

“What’s up guys! I’m at Target, thank you for your donations, and look at all this stuff we got!”

Yesterday we bought, packaged and delivered hot meals to the senior citizens at Hillside Senior Homes!

We are all on this earth together and we need to take care of each other.

$5… $10… $20… whatever you can spare will help me help our community.https://t.co/K4NNlil5hN pic.twitter.com/ZO4Gf4oFCQ

— Cool & Dope (@cooldopeliving) March 17, 2020

Fox News reported that Bell also helped feed 90 hungry students on Thursday.

The young and eager philanthropist began his mission when he was only five years old, after he had been bullied and found himself in a dark place.

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Bell and his mother decided to create a nonprofit organization with a goal to eradicate bulling by his 18th birthday on Nov. 20, 2030.

His organization, Cool & Dope, is recognized as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.

The group’s goals include shedding light on bullying and youth suicide awareness.

“Making positivity and kindness a thing. We stay busy sparking change and spreading love everywhere we go. As a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, Cavanaugh and his tribe of Positivity Creators advocate for bullying victims by lobbying lawmakers, educators, policymakers, parents, and students to lift their voices to raise awareness, speak truth to power to make change happen, and by giving kids of all ages ways to give back to their communities,” the website states.

Too many kids face bullying every day. My mission is to end ALL bullying by my 18th bday in 2030. And it starts with spreading positivity with acts of kindness. Last yr, we were teamed up with kids throughout the country and made over 290 cards to give to kids who were sick. pic.twitter.com/fLUcfwIGCa

— Cool & Dope (@cooldopeliving) March 2, 2020

“Cool and Dope is a movement to inspire kids to give back, no matter their age!” Bell said in the Twitter video.

Coronavirus may have turned the world upside down, but if there’s the slimmest of silver linings, it’s that it appears to be bringing the best out of some Americans, regardless of age.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.

Has the mainstream media been unfair to the Trump administration in its coverage of the coronavirus story?

America’s increasingly unstable and dangerous establishment media are calling for a full blackout of President Trump’s daily coronavirus press conferences.

Think about that for a moment…

For the first time since World War II, for the first time in nearly 80 years, Americans have no idea what their country will look like a year from now, and the corporate media want to impose a full blackout on the daily briefings the American president is making to the American people.

There’s a lot of jokes out there about the hypocrisy of how this demand is coming from the same media that had a tantrum over the White House canceling the daily press briefings. But this time we’re talking about something so much more than hypocrisy.

We are currently in the middle of global pandemic, a state of siege that, in just two weeks, has shut down our economy and locked many of us up in our homes, either by government decree of just plain old fear, and…

In a time of national crisis, the left-wing fascists in the media want to use their corporate monopoly to put a stop to the president of the United States communicating directly with the American people who elected him.

Please go back and read that sentence again. Even if you do, here it is again…

In a time of national crisis, the left-wing fascists in the media want to use their corporate monopoly to put a stop to the president of the United States communicating directly with the American people who elected him.

Maybe we’re so used to media tantrums, to their childish and hyper-partisan behavior, that this anti-American power grab just sounds like just another tantrum, but it’s not…

Not even close.

There are people out there, people taken seriously by the establishment as Thought Leaders, who, during an unprecedented crisis, want — this is not an exaggeration — to stop the president of the United States from communicating with the United States.

One of the chief cheerleaders cheerleading for his unprecedented corporate power grab works for a news outlet that just adopted the slogan, “Democracy dies in darkness.”

Margaret Sullivan is a media columnist for the far-left Washington Post:

The media must stop live-broadcasting Trump’s dangerous, destructive coronavirus briefings. My column https://t.co/nIs5L051zq

— Margaret Sullivan (@Sulliview) March 21, 2020

And what she’s calling for is worse than a total blackout on Trump’s ability to communicate with us.  She then wants a handful of these multinational media corporations to — again, this is not an exaggeration — pick and choose the information from the president that Americans will be allowed to hear.

“Radical change is necessary. The cable networks and other news organizations that are taking the president’s briefings as live feeds should stop doing so,” she writes, before getting to the rub…

“Should they cover the news that’s produced in them? Of course. Thoroughly and relentlessly — with context and fact-checking built in to every step and every stage.”

In other words, CORPORATIONS WILL DECIDE WHAT THE PUBLIC NEEDS TO KNOW, NOT THE PUBLIC’S ELECTED PRESIDENT!

It is no exaggeration to say that this is exactly like something right out of a dystopian movie where large corporations have taken over … everything.

The Washington Post is owned by no less than Jeff Bezos, the man who owns Amazon.com, which is one of the most powerful and disruptive multinational corporations the world has ever seen.

What’s more — and this is important — Amazon is a corporation that stands to exponentially expand its already vast wealth, power, and influence the more the American people are afraid to go outside, to go to the store.

Good God!

Naturally, the Washington Post is not alone. The calls to blackout Trump’s ability to communicate directly with the country are coming from the Atlantic, NBC News, the Boston Globe, the Nation, former Obama officials, and naturally CNN’s Brian Stelter retweeted Sullivan’s piece out to the world.

If that’s not frightening enough, the whole idea apparently began with Jay Rosen, a so-called NYU journalism professor.

And it’s not just corporate greed powering this frightening call to blacklist the American president.

Let me tell you this…

It is no accident this insidious and un-American idea arrived the day after a number of polls showed a clear majority of the public approving of Trump’s handling of the Wuhan virus.

White House / YouTube

As those polls were released, can you imagine the rage and impotent frustration throughout every corporate newsroom in New York and D.C. as reality once again proved the bubbled media have lost their ability to move the needle of public opinion?

For the past three weeks, the corporate media have been united in launching a legion of coronavirus lies at Trump, all in the hopes of turning the Chinese virus into “Trump’s Katrina,” only to watch all that effort, hope, and malevolence meet a Trump approval rating of 55 percent.

So of course these utterly deranged, embittered, and fascist monsters want to stop the president from communicating with the public.

Never forget that the media are a cult. They all think, talk, and believe exactly alike, and when their sacramental belief in themselves is threatened, they become nothing less than unstable and dangerous.

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.