Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Do people honestly think this is disproportionate for investigating a home invasion? The scale of the search[0] is grossly disproportionate, to be sure. The population of the city in question was 60,797+[1] almost ten years ago. So, we have a wide-net around the house, a period of about six hours requested, and if that main road is a major artery for driving, then we can safely assume (if it's day-time time-frame)…
The additional search areas limit the potential for collateral intrusion though, because they are essentially going to be ANDed with the list from the main crime scene not ORed. Even if the whole town visited those markets, it could never be more intrusive. Also, the reasonably wide rectangle is precisely because the location data is not particularly accurate, I am not sure why you think this supports the idea that i…
I think you're trying to tout that the ends justify the means by obfuscating the facts. There was no murder. The man died of a heart attack. While the home invasion was undoubtly the cause, to arrive at the conclusion that it was murder is disingenuous. Manslaughter, possibly, if you could prove that the heart attack wouldn't have occurred without the home invasion but that's extremely difficult.
>Over the last few years I've watched the privacy debate on HN evolve from completely legitimate criticism of mass surveillance programs with insufficient transparency and oversight, to criticising a detective getting a warrant from a judge, that is specifically written to request anonymised data!
Because the latter can directly lead to former. What happens to this data, when it's "no longer needed" because the police believe that they have a suspect? Do you honestly believe that it's deleted? This is in the United States, after all.
>While investigating a murder in his community!
Just because you repeat a lie, it doesn't mean it is the truth.
>...what's more police have a responsibility to find all assailants as well as test the veracity of witness reports and follow all reasonable lines of enquiry.
and
>Ultimately the detective has a responsibility to the wife who's husband is dead - and to society in general - to make sure people face justice when they offend, and they can't half arse it.
Negating the continual lie you're propogating, this line of justice-boner thinking is exactly how the "Investigation Center" (for lack of a better moniker at the moment) in Chicago[0] came to be. Whatever it takes to make sure that justice is served, yeah? After all, from the inference that I get from your statement, the police owe it to the community that justice is served and it's their responsibility to make sure that it happens, no matter what, yeah?
Furthermore, I don't think that you quite understand that anonymised data doesn't implicitly mean that an end-user is anonymous. The two principles are quite distinct and far-removed.
(Disclaimer: I lean heavily towards anti-authoritarianism.)
[0] - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-poli...