Live data from Hacker News

The new warrant: how US police mine Google for your location and search history

theguardian.com

21–30 of 327 posts

Re: The new warrant: how US police mine Google for your location and search history

#21

it will end up as a cat and mouse game surely poeple who are up to no good, would just turn off their phone - possibly taking the battery out or placing it in a foiled bag. or give it to another person or even hide it somewhere else doesn't seem very hard to circumvent

The vast, vast majority of criminals are too dumb to do any of that.

Re: The new warrant: how US police mine Google for your location and search history

#22

Geofence warrants are analogous to getting a warrant for the check-in log at a hotel after a guest is murdered. So long as there is probable cause, this should not be a legal issue. See https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/probable_cause : > A judge may issue a search warrant if the affidavit in support of the warrant offers sufficient credible information to establish probable cause. When you use these types of technolog…

Not agreeing or disagreeing, but the essential nuance here is your last few words: you're now checking-in literally everywhere, at all times. This makes the analogy of a hotel logbook a bit less apt (well, a lot less).

If I check into a hotel, I'm not also checking in to every other store/attraction/place on that trip, as well as every few steps I take, as well as every place that I look up on a map to see if I want to visit (i.e. search history).

Re: The new warrant: how US police mine Google for your location and search history

#23
Its only a matter of time before the wrong people get their hands on all the data that big tech has been unscrupulously mining for years now. An authoritarian's wet dream.

Im typically a minimal regulation kind of guy but these orgs have consistently demonstrated that without some sort of effective privacy regulation, modern tech companies simply do not have enough incentive to self-regulate with respect to data collection. Laymen are too ignorant to demand better from the modern data cartel.

Re: The new warrant: how US police mine Google for your location and search history

#24
post #5

Is there a self hosted app to track your location? I use Google maps to keep granular history so I can use it later for whatever. But if I could self host that’d be better.

Look at Automatic Packet Reporting System (APRS) you will find lots of tools related to telemetry.

Re: The new warrant: how US police mine Google for your location and search history

#25
post #2

Reminder: Turn off location services/GPS systemwide to opt out of these databases. The subscriber location tracking performed by cell towers is much lower resolution.

I am skeptical of using only technical solutions to non-technical problems. It rarely scales, IMO. Disclaimer: Work at Google, but opinions are my own.

Agree. If we had better privacy laws, this wouldn't be an issue.

Re: The new warrant: how US police mine Google for your location and search history

#26

Its only a matter of time before the wrong people get their hands on all the data that big tech has been unscrupulously mining for years now. An authoritarian's wet dream. Im typically a minimal regulation kind of guy but these orgs have consistently demonstrated that without some sort of effective privacy regulation, modern tech companies simply do not have enough incentive to self-regulate with respect to data coll…

Data brokers have been building detailed personal profiles of everyone for fifty years. The Googles are just the new kids at the party. A major reason we don't have strong data privacy law is to protect this business model and maintain the surveillance apparatus it enables.

Re: The new warrant: how US police mine Google for your location and search history

#27
post #5

Is there a self hosted app to track your location? I use Google maps to keep granular history so I can use it later for whatever. But if I could self host that’d be better.

You can self-host nextcloud and try phonetrack app. https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/phonetrack

Re: The new warrant: how US police mine Google for your location and search history

#28
post #5

Is there a self hosted app to track your location? I use Google maps to keep granular history so I can use it later for whatever. But if I could self host that’d be better.

There's Trackbook for Android. It records locally to a GPX file and also has the option to use GPS only.

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.y20k.trackbook/

https://github.com/y20k/trackbook

Re: The new warrant: how US police mine Google for your location and search history

#29
post #13

I've always had the habit of keeping Location services turned off while not in use, to conserve my phone's battery. Guess it's a privacy requisite now. I also remember having a habit of keeping mobile data off during the 3G days. Guess it's not feasible anymore.

That does practically nothing for your privacy, because you're still connected to the base station tower which keeps logs of your phone roaming between base stations. And in more populated areas, the base stations are dense enough to be pretty accurate about where you were. Requests for cell tower log dumps are very common these days. The solution here is for governments to ban this kind of bulk data requests without…

Disclaimer: I'm a Googler, but thankfully not dealing with any of this.

Well, it won't stop the police. But the accuracy is lower, increasing the number of people that match the geofence. That changes the cost-benefit of asking for such a warrant.

Re: The new warrant: how US police mine Google for your location and search history

#30
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

google android tracks location even when gps off https://duckduckgo.com/?q=google+android+tracks+location+eve...

It tracks which towers you are connected to according to the article. No triangulation or precise location.

If it tracks signal strength as well, then it's just one extra step to triangulation.
Post reply on HN