No Right to Privacy in PA Browser Searches

You’ve got to be kidding? The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania just determined that there is no right to privacy in your browser searches? Wait, what?

Lawyers learn in law school that bad facts make bad laws. In Commonwealth v. Kurtz, decided on December 16, 2025, the facts are bad. Mr. Kurtz was convicted of kidnapping a woman from her home and raping her (vaginally and anally). Police obtained DNA from the victim but ran it through their databases with no matches. They were at a dead end.

Believing that the perpetrator likely researched the victim or her residence, they obtained a search warrant for google to turn over all searches of the victim’s name or address in the week prior to the attack. A year later google responded with a hit – someone had searched for her address twice just a couple hours before the attack. Police then used that information to obtain Mr. Kurtz’s IP address. They then surveilled him and recovered his discarded cigarette butt – which provided a DNA match to the crime. Further, they learned that he worked at the local prison where the victim’s husband also worked. Mr Kurtz then reportedly confessed not only to the rape of the victim, but also to assaulting four other women. He was ultimately sentenced to 59-280 years in prison. A sentence well-earned.

This is a terrible story. One that law professors would call “bad facts.” And bad facts make bad laws. Essentially, Mr. Kurtz became the advocate for the privacy of your google searches. Who would want Mr. Kurtz to be able to keep his google searches private? And who would want to have Mr. Kurtz as their advocate in Court? See where I’m going with this? The Pennsylvania Supreme Court did not miss a beat in finding that because Google has a warning in their terms of service, we are all on at least constructive notice that third parties can have access to our search queries. Therefore, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy, and thus police can access our search queries and use them against us.

None of this is a change in the law. The principle that you can only object to police searches that infringe on your private affairs has long been the law in Pennsylvania. But how many of you sit down to carefully read Google’s terms of service with a beer or glass of cabernet? The truth is, we all had a reasonable expectation that the searches we typed into our browsers were private – between us and google. Yes, we’ve all had our spidey senses up about that item we said we wanted that suddenly started showing up in google searches, but none of us ever thought that meant the government could start hacking into our search history at will.

The lesson learned from Mr. Kurtz’s case? If you want to keep your search history private find a browser that specifically states in its terms of service that third parties will never see your search queries. In fact, if anyone finds such a browser please leave a comment below!