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“Reverse location” search warrants identify all cellphones near a crime scene

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Re: “Reverse location” search warrants identify all cellphones near a crime scene

#31

Post by michaelt »

JoeSmithson wrote: post #26

So essentially they asked for anonymised lists of phones (i.e. not even the actual numbers) that had been in the locations where the suspects had been, then cross-referenced these to find potential suspects, presumably finding some phones that exactly matched the reported movements of the suspects which they then made a second application to de-anonymise. Do people honestly think this is disproportionate for investig…

  Do people honestly think this is disproportionate
  for investigating a home invasion?
I think the concern is not Google sharing this data once they have it. The concern is Google having it, in the first place (in personally identifiable form).

There's a lot of unclarity about which free and paid Google services and products are and aren't tracked. Who knows if their DNS resolver or their wifi-visibility-to-phone-location service or google-maps-used-without-logging-in would have come up in such a search warrant?

Re: “Reverse location” search warrants identify all cellphones near a crime scene

#32

Post by joking »

jacquesm wrote: post #25
tjpnz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised how you don't hear about this information being used in missing persons cases.

It isn't all that useful. A friend has a business that helps LE on missing persons cases and while cell phone tower data can give at least an idea on where a phone was on last it does not say anything about whether that phone was still in the possession of the person that it belonged to and whether or not that is simply where it ran out of juice. It may give a vector for general direction of travel. So while it may b…

In Spain there was a case of a missing woman, and the authorities tracked phones which moved in the same direction of the victims one to get a reduced list. The attacker disposed of the phone from a bridge after 5 or 10 minutes, but even with that the police have already an small list of suspects and have an start point to investigate. Anyway, they have to wait and they didn't get to trap the attacker until a year later when he tried to attack other victim.

Re: “Reverse location” search warrants identify all cellphones near a crime scene

#33

Post by oh_sigh »

jjbinx007 wrote: post #10

So would this work the other way around? Leave your phone at home to prove you didn't go somewhere?

No, because people leave their phone at home all the time, but phones rarely go on trips without the owner.

Re: “Reverse location” search warrants identify all cellphones near a crime scene

#35

Post by dazc »

knolan wrote: post #23

Several years ago while living in London we had a visit from the police because they were able to access my partner’s Oyster travel card registration details — she had provided her home address and I hadn’t. They were following up on an apparently minor assault and pulled tbe Oyster card details for everyone on a specific train. Considering this is a city with ubiquitous CCTV, smart phones are just another data sourc…

Is there still any advantage to having a registered oyster card?

Re: “Reverse location” search warrants identify all cellphones near a crime scene

#37

Post by dcw303 »

_bxg1 wrote: post #2

Every time I see one of these I'm validated in my decision to switch to Apple.

Reading the comments in this subthread made me paranoid enough to check my ios privacy settings. I've blocked access to any shifty apps like Google or Facebook, the only thing that marks any specific place is Significant Locations under System Services. And that has the following text:

"Significant Locations are encrypted and cannot be read by Apple."

Re: “Reverse location” search warrants identify all cellphones near a crime scene

#38

Post by onetimemanytime »

question: can an appeals judge later throw out the warrant, if the judge applied the law "incorrectly"?

This technique makes sense for cops. For a lot of killings there's a lit of potential suspects so this weeds out all but a few.

Re: “Reverse location” search warrants identify all cellphones near a crime scene

#39

Post by Brotkrumen »

warp_factor wrote: post #28
RestlessMind wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you think Apple (iOS, Maps) is not susceptible to warrants? Or is there some alternative which won't track you at all?

Apple doesn't track you by default (or when it does, it sends the data anonymously). The Apps on ios might track you, and that's why I will not use Google maps again. Your provider indeed tracks you, but at least for now, the accuracy is way below GPS. It is an issue and we should all be worried about slippery slope that it puts us all on.

>it sends the data anonymously

It shouldn't send anything at all if Apple was privacy minded. A warrant for all anonymous data from that location combined with a provider data from that cell and the user isn't anonymous anymore.

Re: “Reverse location” search warrants identify all cellphones near a crime scene

#40

Post by chillydawg »

bloak wrote: post #34

How often does someone carrying out a planned crime carry a phone with them that is switched on, these days? Use of mobile phone data by the police has been standard practice since 2001, at least, and widely publicised.

I'm sure plenty of criminals are idiots.
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