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

theguardian.com

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

#151

Post by 29083011397778 »

genewitch wrote: post #143
crocodiletears wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your non-proffesional bulk purchases of wood and/or logging equipment, as well as subsequent reduction of general consumer goods consumption has registered you as a 'potential kaczynski shack owner'.

If you pay cash and get it from out of town I don't see how they'd track you, unless the lumber store is doing facial recognition and uploading that data somewhere. Maybe we need straw buyers for lumber?

You think LEO only asks Google for location data, and not, for example, On-Star or auto OEMs?

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

#152

Post by ir77 »

Is this only unique to Google?

Serious question - I switched from google to iPhone exactly for the tracking reasons, but I would think that apple does have similar data - if you have weather widget it must ping something, same thing with Maps and that’s not even accounting if you allow gps to set your time zone or collect traffic data.

Are the cops not searching apple data? Is it just not public enough? Or is the data pretty poor even if they wanted to search but can’t.

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

#153

Post by graeme »

ir77 wrote: post #152

Is this only unique to Google? Serious question - I switched from google to iPhone exactly for the tracking reasons, but I would think that apple does have similar data - if you have weather widget it must ping something, same thing with Maps and that’s not even accounting if you allow gps to set your time zone or collect traffic data. Are the cops not searching apple data? Is it just not public enough? Or is the dat…

According to this from 2018, no, Apple isn't storing that data. At least if this release is comprehensive, and it seems to be.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-data-collection-stored-r...

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

#154

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

titzer wrote: post #129

1. Turn off Google location history. 2. Disable all Google apps' access to your location. 3. Disable Android's "high accuracy location" if possible in your Android version. This little snitch collects terrifyingly precise "anonymized" location information fused with device sensors. Do not accept surveillance in the name of convenience. And don't let Google normalize even more intrusion into our lives. Don't use their…

And, I might add, consider GrapheneOS and CalyxOS as alternative operating systems for your Pixel phone.

https://grapheneos.org/ https://calyxos.org/

GrapheneOS is more security-focused, CalyxOS is more privacy-focused, and they're both a step in the right direction.

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

#155

Post by dudus »

ir77 wrote: post #152

Is this only unique to Google? Serious question - I switched from google to iPhone exactly for the tracking reasons, but I would think that apple does have similar data - if you have weather widget it must ping something, same thing with Maps and that’s not even accounting if you allow gps to set your time zone or collect traffic data. Are the cops not searching apple data? Is it just not public enough? Or is the dat…

In theory this data is also available from carriers. But Google can keep record of your gps if you enable that. I think switching to apple is a bit of overreaction over this. You are able to disable location tracking on Google.

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

#156

Post by NoImmatureAdHom »

midnightGhost wrote: post #95

I remember that story about Zachary McCoy. This whole thing continues to get worse quick and will continue to get worse. I know people say we need legislation and regulation on data privacy and tech companies which we do. But before that gets taken seriously (at least in the US) it's going to take something real scandalous done by tech companies and actually affect the common folk where they actually start to care. R…

What about raising money to buy a bunch of data from, say, the Washington, D.C. area and then de-anonymizing it. I wonder what we'd learn...

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

#157

Post by tessierashpool »

ir77 wrote: post #152

Is this only unique to Google? Serious question - I switched from google to iPhone exactly for the tracking reasons, but I would think that apple does have similar data - if you have weather widget it must ping something, same thing with Maps and that’s not even accounting if you allow gps to set your time zone or collect traffic data. Are the cops not searching apple data? Is it just not public enough? Or is the dat…

as far as GPS, you can just turn off location tracking on iPhone when you don't need it. they make it more work than it should be, but it's not hard, and it is amazing for battery life.

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

#158

Post by Razengan »

titzer wrote: post #129

1. Turn off Google location history. 2. Disable all Google apps' access to your location. 3. Disable Android's "high accuracy location" if possible in your Android version. This little snitch collects terrifyingly precise "anonymized" location information fused with device sensors. Do not accept surveillance in the name of convenience. And don't let Google normalize even more intrusion into our lives. Don't use their…

And whenever you sign into any Google app or service, delete all Google cookies afterwards, to prevent the automatic shared sign-in into Google Search.

Fuck that scummy pattern really.

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

#159

Post by jimbob45 »

UweSchmidt wrote: post #114
jimbob45 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only foolproof method is to stick your phone in a Faraday cage both going to and leaving the location you want private, right? Or cage it and leave it at home?

Things are probably not quite there yet, but... How about a real-time analysis of all security camera footage and everyone's photos and videos, using face recognition and other techniques (movement, clothes associated with a person etc.). Cars are tracked via license plate, if they are not online now anyway. You pay cash but "they" know the serial number of the bill the ATM gave to you and which shop owner gave it ba…

>There are probably many patterns that are only known to people who do this kind of thing full time

I agree with you. I think, at some point, the only way to go about doing this without inducing insanity is to get someone on the federal side to tell you what tools they have at their disposal so that you know exactly what you're fighting against. Otherwise, you'd drive yourself crazy with tinted windows, license plate switchers, randomized purchases, Faraday cages, and more.

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

#160

Post by dudus »

dawnerd wrote: 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.

I just had to provide records of my past travel history for immigration purposes and I couldn't find any of my i-94 records. I could sort through emails to find past flight tickets but the data from my Google location tracking history proved to be much more reliable and easy to parse. I was able to get all my flight dates from past 5 years easily with it.

I also like to look for places I've been in the past and Google maps can tell me the dates I've been to a specific place in the past.

So it does provide quite a lot of value at least for me. I completely understand the sentiment that seems to be a majority on hacker news how that's quite a bad idea, how I'm giving away my privacy for convenience and yada yada. But I made the personal decision that Yes it's worth exposing this data to Google and possibly law enforcement that require Google to disclose this information for the convenience I get in return.

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