Google offices in Santa Clara. Jason Doiy / The Recorder.

The bastion in big tech is being accused of big-brother like behavior, and the accusers are using the law to get the message across loud and clear.

A class action complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on Aug. 17 alleges that Google's collection of location data “against the express wishes and expectations of its users” violates state privacy laws. Users expressed their wish in the form of privacy settings on their Android and Apple devices, specifically by turning their location data off.

The lawsuit, filed by attorneys from Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein and Carney Bates & Pulliam, comes on the heels of a controversial report from The Associated Press that brought allegations of Google's actions to light. Here are three things from the lawsuit to know for the litigation ahead:

1. The Lawsuit Takes California Privacy Laws to Task

Consumer privacy is no laughing matter in California, widely regarded as leading the way in state privacy law. The complaint alleges that Google is “acquiring and using the geolocation of mobile users, without their consent” and “in direct contravention of instructions clearly expressed through the turning off the location history function” is in direct violation of California's Invasion of Privacy Act” (CIPA).

Now, the law guarantees privacy protections to any state resident using “any telephonic communication system,” and was issued by the Legislature to curb eavesdropping enabled by the creation of “new devices and techniques.” That said, plaintiffs attorneys argue the “multiple devices” employed by Google for user tracking fall under the law's definition of “electronic tracking devices”.

The alleged infraction of privacy laws doesn't stop there. The complaint also counts California's Constitutional Right to Privacy among grounds for infraction. Specifically, it notes that Google's geolocation of customers despite their wishes violates reasonable expectations of privacy, “further supported by the surreptitious and nonintuitive nature of defendant's tracking.”

2. SCOTUS' 'Carpenter' Gets Put to Use

The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Carpenter v. United States in June requiring a search warrant to obtain an individual's historical cellphone location data, marked a victory for privacy advocates,

The SCOTUS decision pertains to law enforcement. However, Nathan Wessler, the American Civil Liberties Union attorney who argued Carpenter before the Supreme Court, told Legaltech News, “The court has created space for future cases to address what protections are necessary for all the other kinds of highly sensitive digital age data that's held by third-party companies,” specifying “information generated by GPS on our phones” as among it. The SCOTUS' decision, he added, “creates real momentum toward protecting a wider array of highly sensitive digital age data going forward.”

In the context of the complaint against Google, plaintiffs attorneys argued Google's “intrusions” constitute “an egregious breach of social norms” as described in Carpenter, and thus violate Californian's Constitutional Right to Privacy.

3. Plaintiffs' Firms Have Dipped Their Feet In Tech Suits Before

Of the two firms filing suit, it's neither's first time taking big tech to court. Lieff Cabraser represented plaintiffs in a lawsuit against Fitbit Inc., which was represented by Morrison & Foerster. That lawsuit involved claims Fitbit's heartbeat monitors were inaccurate. The firm's attorney that filed the complaint, Michael Sobol, is chair in both its cybersecurity and data privacy and consumer protection groups, and has worked in lawsuits against Chase Bank, Wells Fargo and Anthem, as well as tech companies like Samsung, Facebook and Microsoft.

Carney Bates is no stranger to tech-related litigation either. The firm actually teamed up with Lieff Cabraser in 2017 against the Walt Disney Co. in a lawsuit that alleged the company violated online privacy protection laws with an app geared toward children that tracks them and delivers ads.

Nor is it the first time either firm has taken Google to task. Partner Hank Bates, who also filed this most recent complaint against Google, took on the big tech company in a 2015 class action filed alongside Lieff Cabraser's Sobol. Via a settlement, Google was required to stop using content from emails to profile its users.

Read the class action complaint here: