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To find suspects, police quietly turn to Google

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Re: To find suspects, police quietly turn to Google

#11

Post by [deleted] »

roywiggins wrote: post #8
Normal_gaussian wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unsurprisingly being in close proximity to a crime makes you a reasonable initial suspect. Identifying those close to a crime is and always has been standard and reasonable police procedure. The reasonableness of a subsequent search based on this location information is context dependent.

It seems morally similar to scooping up all CCTV from nearby businesses. If this is going through a warrant process, and it's geofenced around a specific crime they're investigating, it's hard to feel too worried about it. The worst case scenario I can see is that it makes it easy to generate false hypotheses and put innocent people under suspicion, but then so can canvassing the neighborhood and trawling all the nea…

[deleted]

Re: To find suspects, police quietly turn to Google

#12

Post by Klathmon »

Overtonwindow wrote: post #3

Wow that's deeply disturbing but also feels like a similar tactic to the stingrays. Does simply owning a cell phone and being in a geographical area make you open to 4th amendment search and identification?

Hasn't it been shown that the 4th doesn't apply to information you give to someone else?

They are requesting this from Google, not you, so your 4th amendment rights don't matter.

I don't necessarily agree with that ruling, but as far as I know that's the current state of things.

Re: To find suspects, police quietly turn to Google

#13

Post by izuchukwu »

stefan_ wrote: post #10
karmakaze wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only way is to not use any Google services. If you connect from mobile IP ranges as other users who are in the area, you could also easily be included. Same goes for cell towers but at least it's not a single entity.

Google collects location data from WLAN networks in reach, triangulates from cell tower signal strength, GPS, GLONASS, geoip and if all that fails, sheer historical prediction. And no one quite knows why, other than "because we can". There is Google Maps, but when I'm not using it, when exactly is this orwellian infrastructure to my benefit and not exclusively Googles?

“personalized search”

While a true statement, it’s unfortunate how broad of a license it ultimately provides.

Re: To find suspects, police quietly turn to Google

#15

Post by curun1r »

roywiggins wrote: post #8
Normal_gaussian wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unsurprisingly being in close proximity to a crime makes you a reasonable initial suspect. Identifying those close to a crime is and always has been standard and reasonable police procedure. The reasonableness of a subsequent search based on this location information is context dependent.

It seems morally similar to scooping up all CCTV from nearby businesses. If this is going through a warrant process, and it's geofenced around a specific crime they're investigating, it's hard to feel too worried about it. The worst case scenario I can see is that it makes it easy to generate false hypotheses and put innocent people under suspicion, but then so can canvassing the neighborhood and trawling all the nea…

CCTV is more analogous to a witness that provides a fixed point of view. Location data feels much closer to providing the point of view of the suspect and comes much closer, to my mind, to being protected by our 5th amendment rights to avoid self incrimination.

Also, given that Google don't make it obvious when they're storing information in the phone or on their servers, information that intuitively feels like it's inside the phone should be protected by the 4th amendment's prohibitions on illegal searches. That's if the phone is owned by the suspect. If the phone is owned by the victim or anyone willing to give consent to search, I have no problem with police using it.

Re: To find suspects, police quietly turn to Google

#16

Post by matthewmacleod »

dumbsite5692 wrote: post #14
larkeith wrote: post #4

Yet another reason to disable GPS and location history (and any other functionality you use infrequently) when not actively necessary.

That does absolutely nothing. If you don't want to be tracked, don't carry a phone. It's the only way.

I mean, it literally does things.

Re: To find suspects, police quietly turn to Google

#17

Post by kakarot »

roywiggins wrote: post #8
Normal_gaussian wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unsurprisingly being in close proximity to a crime makes you a reasonable initial suspect. Identifying those close to a crime is and always has been standard and reasonable police procedure. The reasonableness of a subsequent search based on this location information is context dependent.

It seems morally similar to scooping up all CCTV from nearby businesses. If this is going through a warrant process, and it's geofenced around a specific crime they're investigating, it's hard to feel too worried about it. The worst case scenario I can see is that it makes it easy to generate false hypotheses and put innocent people under suspicion, but then so can canvassing the neighborhood and trawling all the nea…

CCTVs don't invade my privacy by opening up my entire digital life to the police, including conversations and pictures that have nothing to do with the crime scene. It's completely different.

Re: To find suspects, police quietly turn to Google

#18

Post by giancarlostoro »

dumbsite5692 wrote: post #14
larkeith wrote: post #4

Yet another reason to disable GPS and location history (and any other functionality you use infrequently) when not actively necessary.

That does absolutely nothing. If you don't want to be tracked, don't carry a phone. It's the only way.

Airplane mode?

Re: To find suspects, police quietly turn to Google

#19

Post by cornholio »

In principle and with some caveats, I support this use of tracking information: it's usually quite specific, it has a very positive efect for law enforcement, it's not a breach of fundamental rights of the suspect as confirmation of the physical location at a certain time is not secret and can be obtained by the police from CCTV cameras, eyewitnesses etc.

The privacy of the bystanders is not significantly reduced if and only if the police will use the specific datadump for the purpose of solving the crime for which the warant has been issued - as opposed to building a massive cross-referenced database from multiple such incidents. I am concerned that a few warrants like 'all information on everybody who was at the Superbowl' would quickly download massive amounts of data from Google to the police.

I think regulation should be enacted that balances the social interest with the private interest, for example, Google could be issued a specific warrant of the type "data on all individuals that were in location X1,T1 and also in X2,T2", and Google should answer only when the query is sufficiently specific to return only a handful of results.

Re: To find suspects, police quietly turn to Google

#20

Post by joering2 »

This is probably one of the cons of using VPN. If criminal used VPN service that you happen to use and connect to the same node, expect police to read your emails, courtesy of Google.

I'm still in the process of getting off google mail and switching to Proton. It takes time to go thru all my google emails and clean them up. Yes I know deleting them won't change a thing BUT at least I consent to deleting them on my end, versus merely abandoning my mailbox altogether.

I know Google has capacity to keep all emails forever, but whether they do so or delete them after X amount of years, I don't know.

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