Slashdot Mirror
Police Are Filing Warrants For Android's Vast Store Of Location Data (theverge.com)
The Verge is reporting about a man who robbed a Bank of America office in Romana, California. A person, named Timothy Graham, matching his profile robbed another bank in November. The investigators, however, didn't have enough evidence to prove that Graham was indeed the same person who robbed the other bank as well. The cops contacted Google and utilised a feature of Maps that builds a comprehensive history of where a user has been -- information that is proved valuable to police and advertisers alike. The publication claims that in the past few months, police have used this Maps' feature in several other instances as well. From the report: Investigators had already gone to Graham's wireless carrier, AT&T, but Google's data was more precise, potentially placing Graham inside the bank at the time the robbery was taking place. "Based on my training and experience and in consultation with other agents," an investigator wrote, "I believe it is likely that Google can provide me with GPS data, cell site information and Wi-fi access points for Graham's phone." [...] It's not clear whether either of the public warrants were filled. No Google-based evidence was presented in Graham's trial, and the other suspect plead guilty before a full case could be presented. Still, there's no evidence of a legal challenge to either warrant. There's also reason to think the investigators' legal tactic would have been successful, since Google's policy is to comply with lawful warrants for location data. While the warrants are still rare, police appear to be catching on to the powerful new tactic, which allows them to collect a wealth of information on the movements and activities of Android users, available as soon as there's probable cause to search.
Richard Stallman has always maintained that our mobile phones are tracking devices. He famously refuses to carry one.
So in a way, this is old news. However, the police and government tracking has gotten a lot better over the years.
On the other hand, if you're more likely to be falsely accused than actually commit a crime.... You might come out ahead by outsourcing your alibi.
Leave your own cell phone at home, and use a disposable cell phone while you are out engaging in wrong-doing. Then even if you are correctly accused of a crime, you have an alibi...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You don't have to be using maps. Location data is used for all sorts of behind the scenes functionality (updating Google Now, Showing Android Pay cards for store locations you're in, etc.).
Everywhere you've been if you have Location History turned on:
https://www.google.com/maps/ti...
Why is this a surprise to anyone? Why would a company that is at its heart a targeted advertising company that collects vast amounts of information on you, records web searches, records web sites visited, scans your emails, collects location data, photographs your home and business front and back that faces a road, etc ... not be expected to be an incredible resource to law enforcement just as they are an incredible resource to advertisers. Sure the advertisers don't get your name or IP but advertisers don't have judges available to tell the company to provide such personally identifiable info.
Google practices a two sided market strategy. On one side they offer free services (search, email, maps, etc) to users in return for collecting info. On the other side they monetize that info through targeted advertising, delivering ads. They do not provide personally identifiable information to advertisers because that would destroy their business model, they need to be the gatekeeper between advertisers and users so they can collect their fee.
If ever the phrase "users are the product not the customer" ever applied it applies to Google. But hey, they have a friendly motto "do no evil", and they are not a three letter government agency so its all OK right?
Yes, this will work for sure!
I'm sure that Google doesn't keep a separate copy as they might have legal requirement to produce it. NSL and all.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
If I ever get a life of crime leave phone at alibi locations
Have gnu, will travel.
LOL at outside your house.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
It's way better than "phone drove to the scene of the crime" alibi.
But if you really think it's so weak, tape your phone to the underside of your neighbors car before he or she leaves for the day.
The main problem you'd have there is that the traffic camera data would not show your car, but you could claim you were in the trunk...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
google is, first and foremost, and advertising company. EVERY PROJECT UNDER GOOGLE IS TO FURTHER THAT END. never forget it.
So let's follow the rabbit a little bit further down this hole: If the police manage to set a precedent that cell phone location data can be used to establish the location of a given suspect to a particular crime, then what happens when the criminals start leaving their cell phones at home? Does that now qualify as an alibi?
Is our legal system really ready to go that far down the hole?
Thing is, if Google's Location History is off... that page shows nothing on the map and reports "your location history is off - only you can see it".
But doesn't say "there is no location history". And, based on other Google experiences, I suspect the information is still there on Google's servers since they don't seem to actually delete anything - they just have a "deleted" flag which makes the information unavailable to you... except when they screw up (which I've seen).
So it's quite possible law enforcement can still get that data from Google, even if you have location history turned off.
#DeleteChrome
"If you are committing major felonies leave the phone at home."
There is the concept of the calculating, premeditated criminal with a master plan. I guess this type of crime is out there, and this type of criminal has that option. But so many crimes are stupid and thoughtless. Crimes of passion where reason isn't involved, or a situation where crime is a response to accidental or random circumstances. Then there are crazy people. Lots of crime isn't part of an organized plan. IJS.
-- "Oh. This guy again."
Google is first and foremost a data warehouse who sells data directly or indirectly of every type to anyone willing to pay or it.
Every single project from Google exists for gathering data. This means that things like self-driving car data, traffic information gathering, etc... they are all gathered by Google at all times. You are willing to buy Android and use Google maps because it makes your life better... you're willing to pay for the features supplied by collecting location data from other peoples phones and soon cars. In exchange you give all your data to Google.
To be more accurate... Google is first and foremost a corporation responsible to the needs and desires of their shareholders and are responsible above all else (including any form of ethic related bonds) to produce a return on investment to all shareholders. As long as no written law is being broken or if the law is being broken, Google can beat it in court, or so long as any possible fines related to losing in court will be less than the profit gained by breaking the law, Google has a responsibility to its shareholders to rape, pillage and plunder every possible customer to make that return on investment.
This is free market capitalism. It's the core responsibility of free market capitalism. Return on investment is more important than anything else. There are gamblers managing your retirement fund somewhere who dump their money into your company and whether you're ethical or not, whether you have to have people murdered in back alleys or not... that's irrelevant... free market capitalism says "You must show a profit or we'll find someone to replace you who is willing to do what it takes"
Cite?
Sure.
For several years before our university decided to go with Google Apps, our department had its own Google Apps domain. After the university finally deployed its own version, one of our (non-computing) staff decided she wanted her department calendar moved over to the university system - so we did the export-then-import thing, only using Google's own tools. Unfortunately, she worked closely with several other staff who did not want to move their calendars, and for whatever reason they had trouble with the concept that she was on a different domain... so after a month or so, she gave up and moved back to the department calendar. We went in and deleted all her calendar info on the university Google Apps system, following Google's instructions (it's been several years, but I think it even involved deleting the calendar) - afterwards I verified that her university calendar was empty of all entries (this was important because I wanted to be sure there was no confusion regarding which of her calendars was the correct one for everyone to use).
Fast forward several months. Our department decides to ditch our own Apps domain, and go with the University system. So for each staffer we go through the export-then-import dance... which worked perfectly fine, except for that single staffer who'd made the aborted move before. There was nothing showing on her university Google calendar, but none of the longer-standing repeating events would move over for her - Google would start to import then complain about "existing duplicates" (which were not visible on the target calendar!). Eventually I solved the problem by loading the iCal file and incrementing a particular counter value corresponding to each event, which made it look like we were importing a newer version of the events - then the import happily worked.
I am open to alternative explanations as to why the importer was finding duplicates where none should have existed - but it sure seems like they never actually deleted anything, but just hid it all from the user.
#DeleteChrome