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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

#211

Post by chiefalchemist »

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…

> "This surveillance is allowed not because people are afraid to protest, but because they don't care (or rather, they care more about other [meaningless] things)."

The People aren't getting honest and consistent news about such things. The Snowden revelations were met with what relatively amounted to crickets.

Should people be more aware? Yes. Absolutely. However, the mainstream media driven system is designed to make that close to impossible for most people. Editorial: I don't think that's an accident.

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

#212

Post by anderspitman »

fixermark wrote: post #178

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.

Or better yet, pick pocket someone else's phone at another location. Commit a small but likely-to-be-reported crime near that location. Then carry their phone (and not yours) while committing a much more serious crime. They'll be tagged at both locations.

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

#213

Post by candiodari »

jononor wrote: post #84
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"

It should be required to identify the size of the area affects. Primarily in the estimated number of people that will be scanned. But also in kilometer radius and duration of time.

It should simply not be allowed you mean.

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

#214

Post by GuB-42 »

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…

> ...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?

Yes, wrongful arrest and conviction happen all the times. And I definitely don't want it to happen to me because my phone was near a crime scene.

However, I don't believe that the risk of wrongful accusation is a good argument against surveillance.

That's because while surveillance can make you a suspect, it can just as easily clear you. Imagine that there are two suspects for a crime, you and someone else. Turns out they detected the other guy cell phone close to the crime scene, arrested him, and found him guilty. Surveillance saved you from a wrongful accusation, even if you aren't aware of it.

There is a bias here, a bit like with vaccines. A vaccine is much more likely to save you from a deadly infection than to kill you because of some nasty side effect. But you only see the side effects, you can't see the sickness that didn't happen.

Note that I am not saying mass surveillance is a good thing (vaccines certainly are). Just that the "wrongful accusation" argument is more in favor of mass surveillance than going against it.

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

#215

Post by fixermark »

anderspitman wrote: post #212
fixermark wrote: post #178

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.

Or better yet, pick pocket someone else's phone at another location. Commit a small but likely-to-be-reported crime near that location. Then carry their phone (and not yours) while committing a much more serious crime. They'll be tagged at both locations.

That breaks down fast when the pickpocketing victim reports their phone stolen. Police have retrieved stolen phones via the pickpocketing victim running "find my phone" on their property when they realize it is gone.

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

#216

Post by geggam »

tomschlick wrote: post #167
geggam wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have visted a few countries. In the US you have the potential to make more money but you damn sure arent more free. Even Mexico has more freedoms

> Even Mexico has more freedoms Citation needed.

personal experiences when driving 4 wheelers around drinking beer and other things.

weed is legal nationwide so is prostitution

is that enough ?

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

#217

Post by geggam »

bagacrap wrote: post #190
geggam wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you familiar with this ? The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. Pretty sure "grab that pile of anonymous bits" isnt a proper d…

How do you expect a group of politicians from the 18th century to weigh in on the acceptability of this type of warrant? Even politicians from this century don't understand technology.

How do you invalidate a legal concept like "define that which you want to seize" because old people founded the nation ?

The old coots dont have to know how to define it. The modern police do and I want the phone records for those several thousand people doesnt cut it

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

#218

Post by renholder »

heartbreak wrote: post #156
renholder wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm honestly shocked that people think that the police are overstepping the mark by requesting anonymised phone data from around the scene of a home invasion murder. 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…

> 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. This isn’t the detective obfuscating facts, this is you being unfamiliar with felony murder doctrine.

>...this is you being unfamiliar with felony murder doctrine.

Someone isn't aware of the merger doctrine, I see. To point: Where's the felony murder charge[0,1]?

[0] - https://www.newrichmond-news.com/news/crime-and-courts/45488...

[1] - https://kstp.com/news/lennie-dwayne-brooks-randy-lorenzo-bro...

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

#219

Post by salawat »

jcranberry wrote: post #187
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…

This comment is unproductive and ridiculous. 1. Histrionic comparison to a dystopian novel. 2. Calling people who disagree with you "naive fools". 3. Evoking this category of "nothing to hide" strawmen. This information can only be attained by a warrant, and doesn't change the fact that you are tried before a judge, by a jury of your peers. Furthermore, Police are funded by local governments with locally elected offi…

At this point, you're gaslighting.

The procedure creates a means that can be exploited for fishing expeditions. The details of exploitability have been well enumerated in previously given literary examples.

Every infrastructural/institutional mechanism we implement or allow to be implemented is an undeniable weapon.

Just as some people may be nervous when others do something perfectly legal (walking around with a firearm), others get understandably nervous when others clamor in support of instituting new mechanisms to allow our civil institutions to circumvent due process.

"Someone was here at a time" is not a justification in and of itself for the casual dismissal of what normatively should be a right: the right to be free of being surveilled.

Does the jurisprudence provide for such a protection? No.

Would it have an Earth shattering impact on the business world if such a legislation was passed?

Absolutely.

Should we pass it?

in my opinion, yes, absolutely.

We've spent decades experimenting and finding out what happens when no one takes a firm stance against these seemingly innocuous forms of data gathering. People build systems with little pieces of innocuous information which in isolation are harmless, but in aggregate allow a terrifying capability to predict and otherwise manipulate or outright harm an individual.

Data aggregation protection must happen. We cannot allow the weaponization of data, even sanctioned, against our descendants, or we are as culpable in the erosion of liberty for them as those who came before us.

No more. Enough is enough.

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