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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

#201

Post by ummonk »

JoeSmithson wrote: post #118
renholder wrote: post #60

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…

>to criticising a detective getting a warrant from a judge, that is specifically written to request anonymised data! While investigating a murder in his community

Exactly. I'm extremely pro-privacy (and don't hold a particularly high opinion of police either), but I see nothing wrong here. They made sure to get warrants, made sure the data obtained via the first warrant was anonymized, and then obtained a much more narrowly scoped warrant once they identified a single phone in the dataset that closely corresponded to the facts of the murder. This should be a textbook example of properly protecting privacy while investigating and closing a crime case.

This reminds me of some of the handwringing over police submitting cold case DNA samples to ancestry companies and catching their perpetrator via a match with one of their relatives. That should be something to celebrate, not be concerned about.

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

#202

Post by fixermark »

jancsika wrote: post #199
fixermark wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That sentence was poorly worded. But then if this least generous interpretation you chose represented my train of thought, one would have expected me to clearly argue that both "road cameras" and "mobile service providers" are illegal. Instead I replied with, "Agreed." Did you read down to those parts? If so I'm curious what you thought that could mean in a worldview where police cannot legally investigate crimes.

No, the error was mine. I zoned out on details because I misinterpreted your earlier sentence and assumed the remainder of the post was poor justification of my misunderstanding of your thesis.

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

#203

Post by the_pwner224 »

908087 wrote: post #155
zyxzevn wrote: post #127

Next steps: Identify all cars near a crime scene.

Thanks to ALPR-laden vehicles constantly cruising around collecting this data for sleazy companies like Vigilant, this is probably already happening. This will be made even easier as more car manufacturers start installing GPS, wifi and 4G as standard features so they can double dip by collecting data on the people who pay them tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for a car.

This is already happening

We have a 2018 Nissan Rogue and Toyota RAV4 (as well as previously a 2015 RAV4). Every time you start the Rogue, it flashes a message saying that "Vehicle Data Transmission is ON" (or "OFF"), and that certain features (live traffic updates, etc.) may not work if data transmission is off. It is clearly stated that data is transmitted to "Nissan and its business partners."

And these days the trend is for devices to have non-owner-controllable software updates, so there's no guarantee that purchasing a car without this antifeature will keep you safe.

With the Rogue you at least can (apparently) make a choice on keeping your privacy or selling out in exchange for a better navigation system (still kind of sad that this needs to be done after spending >$30k on it...), but with the Toyotas there's no choice... they have some "HD Radio" technology (not related to audio quality) which is used for traffic and weather data, and there's no way to find out or control what it sends.

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

#204

Post by jancsika »

fixermark wrote: post #188
Dylan16807 wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good news! The train of logic doesn't do that! Traditional methods are just fine. Some technological methods are fine, others are not.

Ah, my mistake---you wrote "all methods of gathering evidence from a group of innocent people are not legal" and I think you meant it as "not all methods of gathering evidence from a group of innocent people are legal". English needs parenthetical binding. ;)

That's what I meant.

> English needs parenthetical binding.

No I think it is. (Enough to take) care when communicating and rely on our falcuties to rveceor qikucly form flaiures wehn tehy hppean().

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

#205

Post by Kenji »

Is anyone surprised that your cellphone location is used in a criminal investigation? Silly people. Just a few years ago they caught a killer like this around here. They asked the cell phone providers for location data, pruned the group with what they knew about the killer and took a DNA test of the remainder of the suspects. Easy.

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

#206

Post by jancsika »

fixermark wrote: post #202
jancsika wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sentence was poorly worded. But then if this least generous interpretation you chose represented my train of thought, one would have expected me to clearly argue that both "road cameras" and "mobile service providers" are illegal. Instead I replied with, "Agreed." Did you read down to those parts? If so I'm curious what you thought that could mean in a worldview where police cannot legally investigate crimes.

No, the error was mine. I zoned out on details because I misinterpreted your earlier sentence and assumed the remainder of the post was poor justification of my misunderstanding of your thesis.

Ah, I see.

That makes a lot of sense now that I think about it. If the initial thesis sounds fatuous, inconsistencies that come later wouldn't necessarily stand out.

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

#207

Post by 52-6F-62 »

_bxg1 wrote: post #181
fucking_tragedy wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your mobile provider will be just as helpful with law enforcement. They've been selling your location data for a long time.

True, though they only get which cell towers you're connected to, not your actual GPS location.

In a densely-populated region this could peg you at within a city-block's radius.

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

#208

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#209

Post by markvdb »

fhbdukfrh wrote: post #183
mipmap04 wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I know few people who can do mental calculus, fewer who can perform the cost benefit analysis you describe and none who have the right to make that decision for everyone else, but that's exactly what happens

...which is why you have some privacy minded people using gmail anyway, or getting biometric passports.

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

#210

Post by weej »

>But by that point, police had already developed suspects without Google's help, based on vehicle descriptions and a confidential informant, they said in court filings.

Even with a lack of probable cause and massive data surveillance, good old fashion police work is what mattered.

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