To find suspects, police quietly turn to Google
131–140 of 166 posts
Re: To find suspects, police quietly turn to Google
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Laws are ideas, and ideas spread. Hopefully it affects U.S. policy in the next decade or so. P.S. I'm curious how you found my city. LinkedIn?
I'm not the original commenter, but I could find it by getting your name from Github, then googling it. Your LinkedIn was the first result, and there was LA.
Ah ok, thanks, that makes sense.
Re: To find suspects, police quietly turn to Google
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Holy shit. So my paranoia about turning off Google location tracking was completely well-founded, and way more quickly than I would have hoped. GDPR can't come soon enough...
Why don't you want the police to be able to find your when there's a crime? What if you're the victim of a kidnapping? Or murder that goes unsolved because Google wouldn't tell them who did it?
My main concerns are how such tools may facilitate automated injustice, as well as providing the means for heavy-handed political/intellectual influence and control.
Re: To find suspects, police quietly turn to Google
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Laws are ideas, and ideas spread. Hopefully it affects U.S. policy in the next decade or so. P.S. I'm curious how you found my city. LinkedIn?
@Petilon works at google maybe? (Joking of course!)
Not really all that funny though...
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/16/silicon-v...
'“When you first get to Facebook you are shocked at the level of transparency. You are trusted with a lot of stuff you don’t need access to,” said Evans, adding that during his induction he was warned not to look at ex-partners’ Facebook accounts.'
Re: To find suspects, police quietly turn to Google
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Much less afraid of false accusation and more concerned with incidental data being used against me later, or being used to build a profile the police can use in some other way.
Is this actually a real problem for normal non-criminal people? Murders happen every day and this would help deter or prevent repeat offenses. But having information about you that's correct, and can't be used in court because it was obtained without the correct warrant, when is that ever a problem? I'm not talking about high profile journalists or terrorist suspects. Just normal people like you.
I live in a continent with a lot of fresh memories about uncomfortable answers to your questions. No need to go as far back as WW II: take a look at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi for a painfully contemporary read.
It’s astonishing how quickly we forget. It’s astonishing and painful, to the memories of those whose pain and sacrifice was, in the end, wasted on us :(
Re: To find suspects, police quietly turn to Google
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
Holy shit. So my paranoia about turning off Google location tracking was completely well-founded, and way more quickly than I would have hoped. GDPR can't come soon enough...
Law enforcement can triangulate location from a mobile phone signal via your celluar network provider with or without Google's help, and has been able to do so since the very beginning.
That's what the cops tell judges - and sometimes use that inaccurate assertion to lock up innocent people for a decade...
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-your-cell-phon...
"On May 28th, Lisa Marie Roberts, of Portland, Oregon, was released from prison after serving nine and a half years for a murder she didn’t commit. A key piece of overturned evidence was cell-phone records that allegedly put her at the scene."
If it's as accurate and straight forward as law enforcement tell us - how did _that_ happen?
Re: To find suspects, police quietly turn to Google
#137This is an important story, but a little difficult to summarize. Here's my attempt at an overview: 1. Google stores location history data for more of its mobile users than you might expect. The precision is greatest when GPS is on, but less precise data from cell towers and WiFi sources is used almost any time a Google app is being used on an Android or non-Android phone. There have been cases in the past where Googl…
The use of this information in the hands of the statistically incompetent will lead to miscarriages of justice and disaster. This basically institutionalizes the prosecutor's fallacy.
"statistically incompetent" and/or over ambitious and over zealous career climbing LEO...
Re: To find suspects, police quietly turn to Google
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Holy shit. So my paranoia about turning off Google location tracking was completely well-founded, and way more quickly than I would have hoped. GDPR can't come soon enough...
Why don't you want the police to be able to find your when there's a crime? What if you're the victim of a kidnapping? Or murder that goes unsolved because Google wouldn't tell them who did it?
The incident rate of kidnappings is so low that it's not anywhere close to ranking in the first volume of "List of Things I Worry About".
The government abusing data it collected on its citizens to silence dissenters, however, is something I've seen on a daily basis. And so, we set priorities.
Re: To find suspects, police quietly turn to Google
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Much less afraid of false accusation and more concerned with incidental data being used against me later, or being used to build a profile the police can use in some other way.
Is this actually a real problem for normal non-criminal people? Murders happen every day and this would help deter or prevent repeat offenses. But having information about you that's correct, and can't be used in court because it was obtained without the correct warrant, when is that ever a problem? I'm not talking about high profile journalists or terrorist suspects. Just normal people like you.
> Is this actually a real problem for normal non-criminal people?
Yes, it is. Quite a few people get misidentified based upon "bad paperwork" by the police.
If the police mistake the IP address and Google identifies it as me, I'm now at risk even though I did absolutely nothing.
Making the police engage in positive identification is simple safety.
Re: To find suspects, police quietly turn to Google
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Much less afraid of false accusation and more concerned with incidental data being used against me later, or being used to build a profile the police can use in some other way.
Is this actually a real problem for normal non-criminal people? Murders happen every day and this would help deter or prevent repeat offenses. But having information about you that's correct, and can't be used in court because it was obtained without the correct warrant, when is that ever a problem? I'm not talking about high profile journalists or terrorist suspects. Just normal people like you.
We have such an astonishing amount of laws and codes that everybody is guilty of something. And the more data is available on you, the more you enable the government to go on a fishing expedition, should they ever dislike you.
But that's only the selfish motivation.
The wider reason is that mass surveillance can easily be used to silence dissent. And if you think that's far-fetched for the US, I invite you to read up on e.g. COINTELPRO.