Slashdot Mirror
North Carolina Police Obtained Warrants Demanding All Google Users Near Four Crime Scenes (wral.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the public records reporter from North Carolina TV station WRAL:
In at least four investigations last year -- cases of murder, sexual battery and even possible arson at the massive downtown fire in March 2017 -- Raleigh police used search warrants to demand Google accounts not of specific suspects, but from any mobile devices that veered too close to the scene of a crime, according to a WRAL News review of court records... The demands Raleigh police issued for Google data [in two homicide cases] described a 17-acre area that included both homes and businesses... The account IDs aren't limited to electronics running Android. The warrant includes any device running location-enabled Google apps, according to Raleigh Police Department spokeswoman Laura Hourigan...
On March 16, 2017, a five-alarm fire ripped through the unfinished Metropolitan apartment building on West Jones Street... About two months later, Raleigh police obtained a search warrant for Google account IDs that showed up near the block of the Metropolitan between 7:30 and 10 p.m. the night of the fire... In addition to anonymized numerical identifiers, the warrant calls on Google to release time stamped location coordinates for every device that passed through the area. Detectives wrote that they'd narrow down that list and send it back to the company, demanding "contextual data points with points of travel outside of the geographical area" during an expanded timeframe. Another review would further cull the list, which police would use to request user names, birth dates and other identifying information of the phones' owners.
"Do people understand that in sharing that information with Google, they're also potentially sharing it with law enforcement?" asks a former Durham prosecutor who directs the North Carolina Open Government Coalition at Elon University. And Stephanie Lacambra, criminal defense staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, also criticized the procedure. "To just say, 'Criminals commit crimes, and we know that most people have cell phones,' that should not be enough to get the geo-location on anyone that happened to be in the vicinity of a particular incident during a particular time." She believes that without probable cause the police department is "trying to use technology as a hack for their job... It does not have to be that we have to give up our privacy rights in order to participate in the digital revolution."
Nathan Freed Wessler, staff attorney with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, put it succinctly. "At the end of the day, this tactic unavoidably risks getting information about totally innocent people."
On March 16, 2017, a five-alarm fire ripped through the unfinished Metropolitan apartment building on West Jones Street... About two months later, Raleigh police obtained a search warrant for Google account IDs that showed up near the block of the Metropolitan between 7:30 and 10 p.m. the night of the fire... In addition to anonymized numerical identifiers, the warrant calls on Google to release time stamped location coordinates for every device that passed through the area. Detectives wrote that they'd narrow down that list and send it back to the company, demanding "contextual data points with points of travel outside of the geographical area" during an expanded timeframe. Another review would further cull the list, which police would use to request user names, birth dates and other identifying information of the phones' owners.
"Do people understand that in sharing that information with Google, they're also potentially sharing it with law enforcement?" asks a former Durham prosecutor who directs the North Carolina Open Government Coalition at Elon University. And Stephanie Lacambra, criminal defense staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, also criticized the procedure. "To just say, 'Criminals commit crimes, and we know that most people have cell phones,' that should not be enough to get the geo-location on anyone that happened to be in the vicinity of a particular incident during a particular time." She believes that without probable cause the police department is "trying to use technology as a hack for their job... It does not have to be that we have to give up our privacy rights in order to participate in the digital revolution."
Nathan Freed Wessler, staff attorney with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, put it succinctly. "At the end of the day, this tactic unavoidably risks getting information about totally innocent people."
"...no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, ..."
What judge signed the warrant? They're a clear and present danger to the Constitution.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Trust the PRISM brands with their hardware to say off is off?
No need to trust. A cheap RF signal meter can tell you for sure. And what are the odds that no one would have noticed and blown the whistle if airplane mode didn't actually work?
Sigh. This site used to be populated by people with a clue. This is like all of those people who believe that smart speakers must be sending 24/7 audio to the cloud, but don't bother to simply measure the data the devices send/receive at their routers and do the math.
Paranoia is well and good, but being paranoid about a possibility that you can easily check yourself is stupid. Computers aren't magic.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
This isn't any different from pulling over all the people driving red cars because a red car was used to rob a convenience store. Unless there's more than just a car color, there's no legal cause for pulling them over.
A coupe years back, a guy robbed a bank. He took off just before the cops got there, but stopped at a red light. The police realized he was in one of the cars waiting for the red light, but with 25 cars, they had no idea which one. Should they just let all of them go because there's no legal cause to stop the innocent people in the other two dozen cars?
No, the cops did not let them go. They blocked the traffic, got dozens of officers on site, and then proceeded to search each car one at a time. Each driver was taken out and handcuffed, the car was searched for weapons and cash, and as it was cleared the cops moved to the next one. Eventually they got to the car with the bank robber, who was arrested. No shots were fired, no one was hurt.
That is what is legal in finding and arresting someone when you don't know who is the guilty one.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com...
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Even that was far more tightly constrained. The people they looked at were within a 1 minute window, not 2 hours. They were at the exact spot the criminals were known to be in, not within a several block area.
Still, they should not have been cuffed, and they should not have even been asked for their names unless or until the money or weapons were found in their car. Everyone else should have received a heartfelt apology. Anything seen that was not related to the specific crime should have been ignored.
The one big difference is that they have reasonable evidence to believe it's one of those 25 people. Arguably, all of those people are suspects.
In this case, they're using Google to find suspects. "We have no suspects, so let's demand that Google tell us all of the people who were in the area around that time and we'll make them suspects."
It's one thing to investigate suspects. It's another thing to investigate whether someone is a suspect.
The problem is people using any of Google's services don't read the terms of use and terms of service agreements attached to the various Google products. The problem are the assholes who mistakenly define Google as a technology firm when they are actually a marketing and advertising firm. Any advanced technology they develop or champion is aimed at collecting, processing, and disseminating all the data it can collect from their user base.
In this particular case law enforcement obeyed the rules by obtaining a court ordered warrant. The warrant was limited to a small geographical region and a defined time period in which the crimes were perpetrated. And the warrant became a matter for the public record. It wasn't a FISA or NSL warrant.
The way things are going the ACLU and EFF will not be satisfied until they eliminate every single law enforcement tool or procedure because of privacy violations. These are the same people who think that US covert foreign intelligence and counter intelligence agencies should be transparent.
And for those thinking that privacy concerns only became relevant during the electronic age they best think again. The IRS makes the NSA, FBI, and CIA look like a bunch of rank amatuers when it comes to amassing information on it's citizens. And the government doesn't even need a warrant to go searching through the IRS databases. The IRS is the only agency that can defy the constitutional protection of being innocent until proving guilty. The IRS will appropriate your property and other assets before you ever get near a court house.