Canadian Police Are Texting Potential Murder Witnesses (vice.com)

On Thursday, the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) will send text messages to anybody who was in the vicinity of a murder in the hopes that one of them will have information that can help catch the culprit. One of the recipients may even be the killer. Others may wonder how the police obtained their phone number in the first place, or knew where they were on the day in question. From a Motherboard report: The OPP is ramping up its efforts to find the murderer of 65-year-old hitchhiker John Hatch, who was found dead near Erin, Ontario, on December 17, 2015. He was last seen alive the day before, outside Ottawa. Now, the OPP has announced what it's describing as a "new investigative technique" for the force: obtaining the phone numbers of everyone who was in the area where and when Hatch was last seen alive, via a court order, and sending each person a text message directing them to a police website. If they follow those instructions, they'll be asked a series of online questions. According to digital privacy lawyer David Fraser, this technique is known as a "tower dump" -- essentially asking telecom companies for information about everyone who connected to a certain cellphone tower, at a given time. If the police plan on using this technique again, its future uses could have unintended effects, Frasier said.

Comments

Investigators might phone you if you don't respond

[innocent_white_lamb]

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

"The force will keep the numbers on file until the murder is solved, officers said at a news conference on Wednesday.

Investigators will also consider calling the numbers of people who don't respond voluntarily, but they would be required to obtain another court order to do so."

Re:You have the right to remain silent

[taustin]

People how loudly cry that no one should ever talk to the police cry the loudest when they're the victim of a crime, and they know their neighbors know who did it, and won't talk to the police.

You live in the world you create.

How could one not assume this to be SPAM?

[ffkom]

I mean - seriously - if I would receive any kind of text message from a stranger asking me to visit some web site, it wouldn't take my well-trained neural network more than a split second to classify this as either SPAM or SCAM, discarding the message.

Speaking as a Canadian and privacy advocate...

[morethanapapercert]

I've read a number of posts thus far and it seems the anti-police contingent is out in force tonight. Many of the paranoid or anti-police comments thus far have been posted by AC, so I don't know what prompts their attitudes.

In my opinion; Canadian police forces are far less deserving of anti-cop, paranoid rhetoric than US or Latin American forces. In this case, the police obtained a court ordered warrant before asking the telecoms for the tower dump info. This is exactly how the law is supposed to work The police are seeking information that they cannot obtain through the usual personal observation or talking to people one on one and one at a time. Traditional foot work just isn't going to produce the leads they need. They came up with a way to essentially canvas a virtual neighbourhood. Obtaining phone numbers and sending an sms message to everyone who was within a certain area and during a certain time seems to me to be the digital equivalent of knocking doors, asking residents if they've seen anything suspicious.

The only aspect that I can see where someone might make a legitimate objection is if the police then also use the list of numbers and names as a way to populate their list of suspects. Being a suspect, even if only a routine "talk to you so they can strike your name off the list" would trouble many people. Thing is, that is entirely within the bounds of normal police work. Using data that was legitimately obtained for further uses within the same case is an accepted and necessary part of police work.

As for myself, I have only two points of concern in this case:

1) I would want to be assured that the police didn't share this list with anyone else. Other investigations must go and obtain their own warrants. That way if a case might be helped by this data, but itself doesn't merit having a judge issue a warrant, it doesn't get that data. It also makes sure that the police or other authorities don't get handed an easy way to build a database of citizens and the numbers associated with them.

2) That the police do not retain this data. That way, if a user found in the current data changes his or her phone number down the road, they don't have the police looking at them for a crime committed by someone else who later got that number.

Re:Speaking as a Canadian and privacy advocate...

[BitterOak]

In my opinion; Canadian police forces are far less deserving of anti-cop, paranoid rhetoric than US or Latin American forces. In this case, the police obtained a court ordered warrant before asking the telecoms for the tower dump info. This is exactly how the law is supposed to work

Generally warrants are obtained against suspects not potential witnesses. It's the scope of the warrant that's disturbing. They even say that one of these people could be the killer, so they're basically treating everyone as a potential suspect merely for having their phone turned on in the vicinity of the crime.

Re:Speaking as a Canadian and privacy advocate...

[K. S. Kyosuke]

But why does the police even *need* the data? They can just ask the network operator to send the message on their behalf. After all, the message still goes through the network operator, so the goal is accomplished with no unnecessary information revealed.