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NYC Police Gathering Cellphone Logs
Dupple writes "When a cellphone is reported stolen in New York, the Police Department routinely subpoenas the phone's call records, from the day of the theft onward. The logic is simple: If a thief uses the phone, a list of incoming and outgoing calls could lead to the suspect. But in the process, the Police Department has quietly amassed a trove of telephone logs, all obtained without a court order, that could conceivably be used for any investigative purpose. The call records from the stolen cellphones are integrated into a database known as the Enterprise Case Management System, according to Police Department documents from the detective bureau. Each phone number is hyperlinked, enabling detectives to cross-reference it against phone numbers in other files."
"Each phone number is hyperlinked, enabling detectives to cross-reference it against phone numbers in other files."
In other words, guilt by association.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Isn't a subpoena a court order?
if my phone is ever stolen i give the NYPD permission to monitor the calls the scumbags make off MY PROPERTY
and one of these days i need to go down to the police station and have the NYPD engrave my phone like they do with cars
the cops aren't really that smart
good police work has always been about going through mountains of data and finding one or two clues to catch the scumbags. most criminals are morons as well and leave lots of clues that have to be found and identified.
a few years back a doctor was killed near the elementary school i went to. the cops caught the guy in georgia. the scumbag tried to jump a subway turnstile years ago and was caught. the cops got a partial print from the bullet and went through the old arrest records paper finger prints manually to catch the guy. turns out he was related to the doctor's soon to be ex-wife and there were lots of cell phone records and now she's in jail as well
in the 21st century we have computers and the police don't have to do a lot of repetative work anymore
So this all seems well and good, until you think that these folks probably then walk down to their store and ask for a new phone. The number gets transferred to the new phone, and the NYC police are now monitoring all of your calls because you reported your phone stolen.
In the past, people have been kidnapped and it's take days to get phone records. Since a criminal will rarely stop at stealing just one cellphone, tracking stolen phones seem like a good idea.
I've heard news reports of people's phones and credit cards being stolen, and the police having them immediately canceled. Bad Idea(tm). If an easily traceable item is stolen, it should be flagged in the system. You don't have to automatically authorize large purchases or long calls, but allowing some activity on the stolen item could lead to it's recovery. A deactivated device will be quickly discarded. With a cell phone, you could easily send it a signal to pretend to drop calls and have lousy service while you are tracing it.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
My guess is insurance fraud reasons. So you want a new phone, report the old one stolen, get the official theft report from the cops, but are dumb enough to keep using the old phone to call the same people until you visit the local dealer (phone dealer, just another branch of organized crime) to get a replacement under your theft insurance contract.
In the old days this happened when you'd get a $1000 bill for calling guatemala for 8 hours... Um uh that wasn't me, uh, um stolen yeah thats it ... "so why, after the thief ran up the international bill, did the thief call your mom and talk to her for 15 minutes?" "...."
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Hello, this is MichaelDelving. I think someone called you from my iphone last night at 8:37... Do you remember? Well, I'm going to call these 5 other numbers, and see if any of these other people know... I just want to get my phone back, not get anyone in any trouble...
Start nice, and then go through the list more angry (or resigned to just giving over phone call and text info to police). Eventually, either someone fesses up, or scares the perp into contacting you.
Arrange to meet somewhere nonscary, like the customer service desk of Walmart.
When a cellphone is reported stolen in New York, the Police Department routinely subpoenas the phone's call records, from the day of the theft onward.
And I presume they then go and immediately arrest these cellphone thieves, no? I mean, that's ostensibly what this is ability is FOR, right?
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
FTA: "Mr. Sussmann suggested that the Police Department could limit its subpoenas to phone calls beginning on the hour, not the day, of the theft, and ending as soon as the victim has transferred the number to a new phone."
Somehow I don't think that will happen. Information is now the world's most valuable currency - with the devolution from a 'real economy' to a financial economy, data has taken the place of gold as a prime currency, and everyone who can is hoarding it. Corporations, governments, and, yes, law enforcement agencies are gathering all they can, saving it for a rainy day, trading it, and buying livelihoods with it.
Whether or not the players conciously realize it, it's now an information economy, and those with reserves of data and the means to gather more of it will defend them just as they would defend their jobs or the cash in their mattresses.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Bullshit on your entire post. You are posting to slashdot and claim to have the balls to confront someone that should pop a cap in yer ass.
Am I the only one who came to see logs from a police gathering?
I take it that the police's interest in the call logs should stop the moment the SIM is blocked (on networks with SIMs), and a replacement SIM issued to the correct user of that phone number.
What happens when the phone is recovered? Do they stop monitoring or continue? What happens to the old data? Is the phone number itself included as part of the cross-referenced net, ergo in the future your phone number could be linked to a murder/drug deal gone sour and you're the only primary suspect because of your phone number?
To clarify, your phone number is in "the net". The phone is used to call a drug store (Walgreens, CVS, etc) while stolen. The phone is recovered. Crime happens somewhere between phone recovery and you calling the same drug store. You are now a primary target with the cops not thinking about this kind of slim situation...
Great story about this from years back http://www.evanwashere.com/StolenSidekick/
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
Bullshit on your entire post. You are posting to slashdot and claim to have the balls to confront someone that should pop a cap in yer ass.
I would understand if you said "could pop a cap", but why "should"? Are you defending cell phone thieves, or just asshats in general? Just curious.
I did something similar. Police came to my house and we called the last numbers the phone had called (Sprint gave it to me). It was some kids father who lived in a different state. He gave us his sons moms number who lived in our area. The police called her. She said her kid alonbg with a buch of other kids found the phone laying on the ground outside the mall, they made a few calls with it and then threw it down a sewer drain.
Case closed and we never got the phone back. Your plan to meet somewhere and get your phone back is never going to happen unless you lost or it is eventually found by an honest bored person with nothing better to do wants to spend his/her time helping you get it back.
I am a very honest and caring person but to deal with the hassles of tracking someone down and negotiating a meeting to swap the phone back is just not worth it. I'll always do what I've done before when I find a wallet, phone etc. Take it into the nearest store and hand it to the customer service person or cashier and go about my business.
A hyperlink merely means that you can use the phone number in a browser to take you to another page. Every link on a web page means that you essentially will be taken to wherever that link points. It is in no way a guarantee that the thing that is linked is in fact in any database, indexed or otherwise searchable.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Exactly. They couldn't care less about actually tracking down your cell phone and busting the person who stole it. All they want is the data.
giggity
at least thats what I think it is. so the victims friends would be calling a simcard that was blocked by the operator minutes after the owner had reported it stolen - so they wouldn't be calling him.
they'll potentially have logs of people not having anything to do with it, since they can record the calls from the operator based on the phones identity - so if you unknowingly buy a crappy stolen phone from a phone shop then they can listen to your calls. then they can cross link that data with other sims that have been used in it.
Now if you do the same thing in Finland the operators can be asked to put the phone on a blacklist - making it unusable as a mobile phone(at least locally and with co-operating countries) - the NYPD seem to treat it as an intel source rather than as something they should make unusable for the thief (the phone could just as easily be blocked from the networks as it could be tapped - and that would deter thieving at least for local sales purposes).
point being, don't mix your stolen phones used for something shady with your legit sims - ever. ..but still, I think the thing that bothers most people here about this is that they will not lift their finger to retrieve that stolen phone even if they knew exactly in where it's used and by who.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
When a cellphone is reported stolen in New York, the Police Department routinely subpoenas the phone's call records, from the day of the theft onward.
And I presume they then go and immediately arrest these cellphone thieves, no? I mean, that's ostensibly what this is ability is FOR, right?
Of course that's not what this is for. If you RTFA you'd know that NYPD has already shelved as dead nearly every one of these cases before the subpoena results come back.
OK, hypothetical here:
- Phone gets stolen
- Owner reports phone stolen
Here's where the disconnect is - according to everything I've read, all US cellular providers have agreed to blacklist the IMEI of any phone reported stolen, thus rendering it virtually useless (at least, to a thief or fence)...
So, then, how are the cops building a database of call logs from after the reported theft of the phone, when the phone should, for all intents and purposes, be a brick?
I can think of a few possibilities...
1) the cops are not reporting the status of the stolen phones to the telco, so they can use the stolen phones as a sort of warrantless bugging device
2) The telco's aren't really blacklisting IMEI's, they just claim they do to keep Uncle Sam off their backs
3) "We only log calls from stolen phones" is a convenient cop-out for when the media gets wind of the likely fact that the NYPD is actually going through the logs of every phone they touch, stolen or otherwise (stop n' frisk) obtained.
1 I would find acceptable (don't steal phones if you don't want to be bugged), 2 would piss me off (at the telcos), and 3... 3 seems the most likely circumstance, considering this is the same region that banned "too-big" sodas, allows it's LEOs to randomly violate the civil liberties of anyone within city limits, and wants to turn the 1st Amendment from a right into a privilege.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
they don't walk round in stripey jerseys and a mask with a bag with a $ sign on it to illustrate they are shady characters, you know.
So what happens when someone steals your car, uses it to hold up a liquor store and then abandons it. When its recovered, do the cops hold you responsible for a crime if you visit the neighborhood liquor store?
Have gnu, will travel.
Major American carriers will start disabling and blacklisting stolen phones soon.
This means there will only be a few days' worth of logs for such phones in most cases.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Which means the police will also have the necessary location data.
With simple numbers they would probably only see a lot of stolen phones calling other stolen phones. With location data they can profile geographic locations where both stolen phones are being used. Then a focused effort in that area can be made to determine who is using the stolen phones.
To police the bigger fish here are the people using the stolen phones to facilitate "more important" criminal activity.
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Police? Spending their valuable time to track down thieves and recover property for citizens? Are you new to this country...?
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
1. Steal a phone
2. Call a few dope dealers
3. Call a few cop's.
4. Put the phone in any principals office.
5. Make an anonymous tip to the media
6. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Lots of people will steal cell phones and swap them with innocent people's cell phones - then have your drug dealer/criminal friends call it. Excellent way to spin the wheels of justice for a much better outcome of inaccurate prosecution and wasting enforcement's time. duh.
Get busted on your other crimes I have ever seen good on the cops.