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

theguardian.com

51–60 of 327 posts

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

#51

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

Or just leave it at home.

But then there's the flip side of that, which is that if you always have your phone... except when you're up to no good, the courts could potentially use that to indicate that you planned on going out for no good.

It's a far better habit to regularly leave your phone at home somewhat randomly. I no longer take mine into town every time, half the time deliberately, half because I just legitimately forgot. I've de-fanged my phone, leave it on the counter instead of in my pocket, and have moved back to a flip phone (week long battery life!), so it's not that much of a loss - but I've had to work to get there. 6-7 years ago, realizing I'd left my phone behind was very much a panic moment. Even though I grew up before them.

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

#52
post #8
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.

Tricky to use e.g. Google's Waze then.

So don't.

Check traffic before you depart, pick a route, and leave some extra time in case you hit unexpected traffic.

I know I've been going on about it lately, but for almost every "How can we possibly do this without an app tracking every bit of data it possibly can?" sort of task, people were doing that, or something functionally equivalent, before cell phones, or on cell phones that aren't actively user-hostile.

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

#54

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.

But we don't need new tools to catch criminals who were always easy to catch.

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

#55
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 have played with storing location history using Home Assistant. Works, data never lands anywhere other than my home server.

EDIT: I use it to do home automation actions depending on where I am. I.e. when I leave, it automatically arms the alarm and turns off the lights.

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

#56
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Anything on Android is totally moot. You can "turn off locations" but you don't know if it has. It also has a dozen other ways to track you when correlated with others, such as inertial, wifi, cell cgi, audio, magnetic, bluetooth, optical, pressure, etc; some of which are in the baseband and inaccessible to the OS. You can keep it in a faraday bag but it can still record and upload later. Same thing could be said abo…

> If you care about privacy just don't carry a phone.

I feel like this position is unrealistic. Privacy is possible with a modern smartphone. Using an alternative OS on Android devices can help facilitate this. I've been using GrapheneOS as a daily driver for nearly six months now. Any issues I've run into have largely been due to my own configuration of the device.

You can also get a lot of useful information from Michael Bazzell's books or podcasts. It may involve jumping through hoops but it is possible to go "off grid" in many regards.

If your threat model includes your cell provider, then yes, a faraday bag may be worth looking into. There are also open alternatives like the Librem 5 or PinePhone that offer hardware kill switches. These types of cases are rare, but one doesn't need to become a complete technophobe.

As it stands, true privacy is relegated to the technologically elite, the truly paranoid, or those that can pay to play. I would love for that to change, but unfortunately that's the current state of affairs.

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

#57
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 https://owntracks.org/, which has iOS and Android apps and instructions on setting up your own server. If you run NextCloud self-hosted already, there's PhoneTrack (https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/phonetrack), which has a list of supported/suggested apps that send data back to it in a compatible format.

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

#58

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?

I can't find it now, but I read an article about the Capitol riot that said the FBI was actively looking for individuals whose phones followed the pattern you describe. Traveling towards the Capitol on Jan 6, going dark, later coming back online is perhaps an indicator the person didn't want to be observed at the Capitol. Likewise, traveling to D.C., and leaving the phone at the hotel all day, then moving in the even…

[deleted]

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

#59
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 https://owntracks.org/ , which has iOS and Android apps and instructions on setting up your own server. If you run NextCloud self-hosted already, there's PhoneTrack ( https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/phonetrack ), which has a list of supported/suggested apps that send data back to it in a compatible format.

This also has integrations for home assistant to use owntracks for logging and automations for smart home stuff too.

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

#60
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 use OwnTracks, it's opensource and available for both iOS and Android.

You can configure a custom https endpoint and then your devices will ping the endpoint when there's significant movement.

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