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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

#171

Post by dsfyu404ed »

Jerry2 wrote: post #169
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…

> Considering this is a city with ubiquitous CCTV, smart phones are just another data source. London is quickly becoming one of the most dystopian cities in the world. I recently read a story [0] how London police are now face-scanning pedestrians and you are not allowed to cover up you face. If you protest this scanning, you're issued a £90 fine. You're basically treated like cattle. [0] https://www.independent.co.u…

It's like the middle ages all over again. Citizens are a resource of the land and have no say in things except in the most extreme cases. The people in charge only care about the masses insofar as it relates to GDP growth (or whatever their metric of the day is) and is perfectly happy to subjugate them for that goal. God forbid we endure some economic instability while we deal with social issues. /s

I'm exaggerating but that sort of paternalistic authoritarianism seems to be more and more common among the politicians who's job it is to do things such as check the power of law enforcement.

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

#172

Post by fixermark »

jancsika wrote: post #162
nabla9 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> All criminal investigations start with group of innocent people. That's the only way to investigate. Agreed. Also, all methods of gathering evidence from a group of innocent people are not legal. So let's take your examples one at a time: > Police collects data from security cameras, If a proprietor wishes to give the police footage. If not, they need a warrant in the U.S. to search them. If the police asked for a…

If your train of logic basically reaches the conclusion "police cannot legally investigate crimes," I'm afraid I have some bad news about the facts underpinning your train of logic, because society will not conclude crimes can no longer be investigated.

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

#173

Post by freeflight »

VectorLock wrote: post #77
jamiethompson wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the difference though. This isn't a warrant against a person. It's a warrant against "anyone who google recorded as being in an area"

Police search areas around crimes, people known to be in those locations (log books, identifications on surveillance), and warrants against locations searching for evidence. Warrants don't need to be against a person.

> Police search areas around crimes

That is true, but these areas usually do not involve the private homes of people. Police can ask to look around, but if the owner of the home declines, then police have to come back with a search warrant and afaik that warrant needs to be specific to that property.

This is the digital equivalent of that but applied on a whole geographical area, basically a "digital bulk search warrant".

Because I doubt these warrants will surface to the judge how many people will be affected, in a very invasive way.

When you factor in much of our modern lives are saved on servers of Google or Apple, then this is actually a much worse invasion of privacy than just having a couple of unis take a quick look through your home physically.

This is the equivalent of them sitting down in front of your phone/computer and being able to spend hours upon hours on browsing through your private data.

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

#174

Post by mipmap04 »

latch wrote: post #130
iceninenines wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's 1984 kafkaesque. The slowly-boiled frog deserves neither liberty nor safety. What the naïve fools don't grasp is anything they do or any information about them can be used to target them for arbitrary or deliberate police or political purposes. Oh and then there's the peer-pressure gaslighting of anyone pushing back on the "nothing to hide" mantra or pantopticon surveillance state. Ask them to live in glass hous…

I always find comparisons to Nineteen Eighty-Four to be a [small] part of the problem. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, mass surveillance is allowed to exist because of the application of force (torture and murder). It's a dystopia founded in violence and oppression. We like to think things are like the book, because it paints us as victims. However, the truth is that, at best, we're complicit. This reality is explored in th…

Or, in many cases, people have done the mental calculus between free, powerful, entertaining services and their privacy rights and have chosen the former.

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

#175

Post by fixermark »

coldtea wrote: post #67
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…

>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." "Hmm, this black person was near..."

Ironic choice of examples, because lacking these tools, you've just identified the tool the police tend to fall back on.

We can build algorithms to avoid racial bias, with awareness and effort. How confident are you we can train cops to do the same?

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

#176

Post by jcranberry »

jamiethompson wrote: post #91
astura wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...so? It would be like if the warrant was for the log book of who checked into a hotel during a certian timeframe.

Not really no. That would be clear. This would be like if the warrant was for everyone who checked into "the hotel or hotels within a polygon defined by these coordinates"

That sounds extremely clear.

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

#177

Post by freeflight »

titzer wrote: post #166

Carrying a phone can make you a suspect. Not carrying a phone can make you a suspect. Conclusion: You are a suspect. I can't stand our culture's constant fear of people.

Sadly it ain't even exclusive to the US [0]

[0] https://youtu.be/pdIA0jeW-24

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

#178

Post by fixermark »

This feels like a method of catching criminals that criminals will rapidly adapt to avoiding. "Don't carry the thing that broadcasts your location at all times while you're committing a home invasion" seems like a pretty obvious thing to avoid once a threat model is understood.

Regardless of the privacy issues, I don't anticipate this approach will stay useful in the long run.

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

#179

Post by Dylan16807 »

fixermark wrote: post #172
jancsika wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All criminal investigations start with group of innocent people. That's the only way to investigate. Agreed. Also, all methods of gathering evidence from a group of innocent people are not legal. So let's take your examples one at a time: > Police collects data from security cameras, If a proprietor wishes to give the police footage. If not, they need a warrant in the U.S. to search them. If the police asked for a…

If your train of logic basically reaches the conclusion "police cannot legally investigate crimes," I'm afraid I have some bad news about the facts underpinning your train of logic, because society will not conclude crimes can no longer be investigated.

Good news! The train of logic doesn't do that!

Traditional methods are just fine. Some technological methods are fine, others are not.

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

#180

Post by fixermark »

mipmap04 wrote: post #174
latch wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always find comparisons to Nineteen Eighty-Four to be a [small] part of the problem. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, mass surveillance is allowed to exist because of the application of force (torture and murder). It's a dystopia founded in violence and oppression. We like to think things are like the book, because it paints us as victims. However, the truth is that, at best, we're complicit. This reality is explored in th…

Or, in many cases, people have done the mental calculus between free, powerful, entertaining services and their privacy rights and have chosen the former.

Correct. It's best modeled by neither 1984 or Brave New World---It's "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas."

People get the basics that there are breakdowns in the system of safeguards and a non-zero chance that they'll be the victim of a crime or injustice facilitated by ubiquitous observation. But relative to the benefits, the odds they'll be the one locked in the dungeon suffering are so low that they'll readily shoulder that risk for the observed, immediate, and obvious benefits.

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