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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

#101

Post by neotek »

PavlovsCat wrote: post #89
lawlessone wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The country with the greatest personal liberty, currently probably the US What's their prison population again?

There's countries where the percentage is lower, yet it's basically illegal to criticize the government. More importantly, what does that change about the argument that arresting criminals is hardly the only thing to consider? Here's the same argument with enhanced contrast: If you threw Earth into the sun, all crimes would stop. If that's all we care about, everything else is just kicking the can down the road. But…

>There's countries where the percentage is lower, yet it's basically illegal to criticize the government.

Don’t you see how deeply ironic that statement is? There are countries where even trivial things like criticising the government are illegal, and yet somehow the United States manages to imprison more of its own population than anyone else.

Put another way, you are more likely to have your liberty completely revoked if you live in the United States than if you live anywhere else in the world, both by population and per capita.

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

#102

Post by nabla9 »

renholder wrote: post #52

> He noted that even if it did target the wrong person, "it doesn't mean they're going to get convicted or arrested, it just gives the detective a look at who could be involved." ...because no case has ever been so righteously pursued, with such a vigorous degree of righteous indignation, that an innocent person was ever thrown in prison[0], yeah? This blasé attitude about sweeping-up data of innocent people is preci…

All criminal investigations start with group of innocent people. That's the only way to investigate.

Police collects data from security cameras, road cameras, credit card purchases, witnesses, and now from mobile service providers.

I agree that privacy erosion is real, but you argument was not convincing.

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

#103

Post by PavlovsCat »

blackbrokkoli wrote: post #98
PavlovsCat wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's countries where the percentage is lower, yet it's basically illegal to criticize the government. More importantly, what does that change about the argument that arresting criminals is hardly the only thing to consider? Here's the same argument with enhanced contrast: If you threw Earth into the sun, all crimes would stop. If that's all we care about, everything else is just kicking the can down the road. But…

Excuse me, what? I think you should step out of whatever propaganda feed you are sucked in. Literally all of the EU have a massively lower rate and in none of the countries it is remotely illegal to criticize the government. In Germany for example, you have multiple programs on TV dedicated to make political satire of current politics. On basically tax funded TV . And you won't have your name published for criticizin…

> Literally all of the EU have a massively lower rate and in none of the countries it is remotely illegal to criticize the government.

Yes, and? I didn't say that's the case in every country with a lower rate, I said there's countries that have a lower rate, but can hardly be called free. To judge something as complex as this by a single metric doesn't even pass the smell test.

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

#104

Post by PavlovsCat »

antris wrote: post #97
PavlovsCat wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's countries where the percentage is lower, yet it's basically illegal to criticize the government. More importantly, what does that change about the argument that arresting criminals is hardly the only thing to consider? Here's the same argument with enhanced contrast: If you threw Earth into the sun, all crimes would stop. If that's all we care about, everything else is just kicking the can down the road. But…

Are you ignorant or choosing to ignore how much of the prison population is there due to criminalising the use of narcotics and much of the violent crimes committed is a result of this policy? Are you also ignorant or choosing to ignore that the policy has been used to target especially minorities who get sentenced much more often than whites despite drug use being at similar levels across races? Calling all these pe…

> Are you ignorant or choosing to ignore how much of the prison population is there due to criminalising the use of narcotics and much of the violent crimes committed is a result of this policy?

Neither, that's simply besides the point.

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

#105

Post by PavlovsCat »

neotek wrote: post #101
PavlovsCat wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's countries where the percentage is lower, yet it's basically illegal to criticize the government. More importantly, what does that change about the argument that arresting criminals is hardly the only thing to consider? Here's the same argument with enhanced contrast: If you threw Earth into the sun, all crimes would stop. If that's all we care about, everything else is just kicking the can down the road. But…

>There's countries where the percentage is lower, yet it's basically illegal to criticize the government. Don’t you see how deeply ironic that statement is? There are countries where even trivial things like criticising the government are illegal, and yet somehow the United States manages to imprison more of its own population than anyone else. Put another way, you are more likely to have your liberty completely revo…

I'm aware of all of that, and that changes none of the points I made, nor the questions I asked. 3 comments freaking out, not one addressing the meat.

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

#106

Post by antris »

PavlovsCat wrote: post #104
antris wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you ignorant or choosing to ignore how much of the prison population is there due to criminalising the use of narcotics and much of the violent crimes committed is a result of this policy? Are you also ignorant or choosing to ignore that the policy has been used to target especially minorities who get sentenced much more often than whites despite drug use being at similar levels across races? Calling all these pe…

> Are you ignorant or choosing to ignore how much of the prison population is there due to criminalising the use of narcotics and much of the violent crimes committed is a result of this policy? Neither, that's simply besides the point.

How's putting people in jail based on racism besides the point when it comes to liberty? What good is being able to criticise leaders if you're in jail and can never vote again?

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

#107

Post by pas »

zimpenfish wrote: post #95
chosenbreed37 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Funkzellenabfrage" - That's a great word. Is there a word describing the ability of the German language to condense English phrases into a single word? :)

I think this would come under "agglutination"[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agglutination

German is considered an inflective language, because it uses just one suffix for words, and that suffix has many-many variants to express the required grammatical meaning (singular/plural, modality, subject/object, dative/accusative, genitive, etc.)

Agglutinative languages just jam everything after the word in small morphemes. (And some, just to be sure, has a few variants of each of those, to match vowel kinds and such.)

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

#108

Post by baud147258 »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #68
oh_sigh wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

So, send phone on trip to "prove" I wasn't somewhere else; put it in my kids backpack, fix it under my neighbours car.

Or hide it in a bar or at your workplace for a day

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

#109

Post by gbrown »

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…

We have no reason to trust either the sensitivity oe specificity of such an identification, and every reason to assume police and juries will think it's foolproof.

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

#110

Post by baud147258 »

VectorLock wrote: post #80
Animats wrote: post #45

Why did the police ask Google, and not the cellular operators? They know who was where to the level of positioning detail this requires.

Cell providers have information on what cell sites a mobile user has connected to and rough triangulations of the devices position. Google has the exact GPS coordinates sent by the device itself, WiFi networks around it, and other location data.

But that's only if the GPS and wifi are activated on the phone. On my phone it's rarely the case.
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