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To Catch A Robber, The FBI Attempted An Unprecedented Grab For Google Location Data (forbes.com)
Back in March, as it investigated a spate of armed robberies across Portland, Maine, the FBI made an astonishing, unprecedented request of Google, Forbes reports. The feds wanted the tech giant to find all users of its services who'd been within the vicinity of at least two of nine of those robberies. They limited the search to within 30-minute timeframes around when the crimes were committed. But the request covered a total space of 45 hectares and could've included anyone with an Android or iPhone using Google's tools, not just the suspect. From a report: The FBI then demanded a lot of personal information on affected users, including their full names and addresses, as well as their Google account activity. The feds also wanted all affected users' historical locations. According to court records, while Google didn't provide the information, the cops still found their suspect in the end. Outside of concerns around government overreach, the FBI's remarkable attempt to force Google to assist in its investigation will likely worry all who were disturbed by an Associated Press investigation published on Monday that claimed Google continued to track people even when they turned location features off. The court warrants unearthed by Forbes indicate some at the FBI believe they have a right to that location data too, even if it belongs to innocents who might be unwittingly caught up in invasive government surveillance. And the government feels such fishing expeditions are permissable; it issued the warrant on Google without knowing whether or not the suspect used an Android device or any of the company services at all.
Clearly the FBI has been watching too much CSI and Criminal Minds. How did these guys do their job before technology kept track of everyone?
You have to drag police to a robbery, property crimes might as well be ignored here, and yet in the States, the Feds get involved, granted, now I see he was armed, but why wasn't this handled by local constabulary?
Getting robed isn't so bad. In fact if it fits, and the material is soft its probably nice.
But getting robbed is a different matter entirely.
Of the nine robberies, I would bet only one person was at three or more of them.
The 30 minutes time frame before and after, and two of nine, seems a bit broad to me. Suppose the FBI had asked Google:
Please let us know if you have records of one person being at at least three of these armed robberies, within 5-10 minutes of when the robbery occurred.
That would identify approximately one person, the armed robber. If Google has that information, I don't see why the FBI shouldn't ask for it.
Well, no they don't.
Google is storing this information so they can SELL IT to someone else. The FBI can't just call up a grocery store and say, "Give us all your apples!" If they want apples they can buy them like any other customer.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
> Seriously I think it's legitimate and you privacy asshats can go f*** yourselves...
I think the FIB was not especially interested in this robber. They were more interested in setting the precedent of making such a large grab of location data. One more step towards a police state. Little by little the water boils.
Nobody will need to ask "your papers please!". They'll already know who you are, they'll just need to tell you to strip for the search at each road checkpoint.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Just leave your android phone at home when you commit an armed robbery.
>> spate of armed robberies The goon was armed. Telling people he would kill them for a little money. Find him (or her), melt down his gun and toss him in the woodchipper - improve the world!
That's what us mean old white guys have been saying forever (although a tall tree and a rope is less messy) ...
We got mostly overruled though; we have to first figure out what the root causes and inequalities and so forth were that motivated this armed goon. Then and only then might we decide if he can even have a short stay at the graybar hotel.
It's better for a thousand innocent people to be prosecuted than for police to do actual police work. Extra bonus points of the police can beat them up, off camera, on the way to jail.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
> The goon was armed. Telling people he would kill them for a little money.
What if he had no arms, but told the victims that he did? (But he would be unable to wave his arms while explaining.)
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Follow the law. Wherever it may lead. To a police state. A dictatorship. Total control over the population.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
That is complete nonsense. Armed robbery is considered a violent crime under California law. But the constitution still requires reasonable bail. The founders had this ridiculous notion that someone should have a trial and be proven guilty before being punished. They also had this ridiculous notion that everyone was entitled to a trial by jury. We have come so far in our understanding of freedom that we now know both of those things just make us less safe. Better to let police, prosecutors and judges sort things out and punish people.
> Third party doctrine, do you speak it? Next time, you should be asking "why does Google store this data?"
A better question for Google's next shareholder meeting: why isn't google selling this data each time the police state wants to have a peek?
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
F: Fucktards,
B: Bitches &
I: Imbeciles
AC comments get piped to
Well, in California, that is a Catch n Release crime
Citation needed. Armed robbery is not a catch and release crime nor is it considered non-violent.
Add in the "Bail is too hard on criminals" logic from a number of left wing loons
Nice strawman. Nobody is making the argument that bail is too hard on criminals. The argument is that bail unfairly penalizes people who are poor and cannot afford bail. One's financial means should have zero relevance on whether you remain in a jail cell.
What kind of an idiot tells Google where he is at all times while committing an armed robbery?
It's a dick move to rob anyone to begin with, but it takes a special kind of stupid to broadcast your location to the world's biggest mass surveillance company while you're doing it!
So I've got this idea that we've more or less caught up to the cyberpunk genre. It's no longer sci-fi, it's just fiction. Sometimes current events. I'm collecting a pile of Articles that lend weight to that argument. This one is going on the pile.
>> Armed robbery is not a catch and release crime nor is it considered non-violent.
Right, and that's why I was annoyed by TFA headline. A "robber" (as per the headline) could potentially be non-violent, e,g., a bike thief. An "armed robber" (as per TFA; this is someone who expressly values property above life) is the worst kind of anti-social scourge and should be thinned from the herd.
FBI: Hey, we notice you were in these 2 places an these dates and times.
Me: So?
FBI: We're investigating robberies there.
Me: So? Wasn't me.
FBI: We'd like to talk to you anyway.
And now I'm spending money on lawyers just for being in the wrong area.
As with any controversial topic it is always one extreme vs the other: either we let all robbers lose or we have a police state. I cannot stress enough that there is a middle ground, a situation when the police has tools to effectively catch criminals and citizens have enough freedom to not be oppressed by the government.
People mostly do not realize how much government oversight they take for granted nowadays vs ancient times and still not ending up with a police state (e.g. there was time, when people were free to travel to any country with only restriction to report at the destination to a local duke). On the other hand technology did change reality for both police and criminals, the latter use it freely, let the police also have a chance - the point is to make enough check and balances to keep a free society.
I think a key to a free society is not police stripped of modern tools, but a healthy (being exercised by educated and informed society) democracy with police having tools but being kept accountable for its actions. Technology will keep changing the reality we live, we have to adapt, otherwise the free society many of us enjoy might perish - aka cyber-warfare dangers to democratic elections.
As the saying goes, the more laws, the better the chance that everyone is a criminal -- or could be, whenever government sees fit. With the new surveillance state created by profit-seekers, creating criminals out of nowhere just became at least an order or magnitude easier. Want to make a criminal out of Steve Smith? Just call up Spybook. Done.
You think they would believe you?
They shouldn't, I saw him do it. Filthy AC's are ruining my city, taking our jobs, bringing in drugs, hang em all.
I don't really understand the issue, the police can request a warrant of data... could be wide or narrow, its up to the judge and lawyers to fight that battle.
The real issue is google here or other tech companies who are storing this data. I havn't seen a single comment made about that. if you care for your privacy, stop using these tackers.
Ya, people got desensitized to that loooong time ago.
Google does this kind of profiling for its commercial customers (advertisers) all the time. The only difference is that they don't share the identity of the user with the advertiser, but they know who it is. The person gave up this privacy willingly. If Google wants to retain and monetize this data, they (and you) should not be surprised when law enforcement wants to use it too. A court order should take precedence over Google's privacy policy, otherwise Google is above the law. This is why privacy policies are pretty much fiction. They are essentially unenforceable. What is your recourse if it is broken? What are the damages? They can't refund your money or anything. They won't go to jail. They're too big for you to successfully sue them. Law enforcement must have a legal way to access the records for the legal system to function. That the modern internet economy is built upon this fiction doesn't make it less of a fiction.
> I don't think you should be able to request information about a large number of people, most of whom are innocent, to maybe find just one guy.
Agreed.
> If you have *a* suspect and you want to build a case by requesting information regarding his whereabouts from his cell phone company, plus google, I agree.
IF they have probable cause and a warrant, agreed.
Here we have a class that doesn't fit either of the above.
They don't need info about many people. They don't have the name of a suspect.
They have evidence that the (one) perpetrator or team repeated the crime in several locations at known times. They can ask Google for the name of the ONE person who was at all crimes. Google can run a quick database query to get one name, the very likely perp. Obviously then police would follow up and gather appropriate evidence.
I (and SCOTUS) think there is an interesting distinction between the government saying "give us data on everyone so we can see if any of it is interesting" vs "here are some criteria which will identify the armed robber. Let us know if you have the name of the person who fits these very specific criteria."
By way of analogy, it would generally be unconstitutional for the FBI to subpoena all of my emails in order to see if I ever talked to Paul Combetta. It would be legal for them to ask for "any emails you exchanged with Paul Combetta in July 2014 about wiping servers". Specificity matters.
Is it really that bad for the government to get all that information on everyone who traversed those areas at those times, when Google already has it?
Seems to me that if you're upset at the government trying to get that info, you should also be upset that Google has been recording it.
They already ask for papers at random >:(
https://www.vox.com/policy-and...
How do they know even know the robber has a smartphone? If they can't even prove that then they should be flat out denied before even broaching the issue of obtaining google location data.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
So how many people here don't understand the difference between government activities and activities of private companies? And for those (hopefully very few) that really don't understand this - why do you think these are in the linked article:
"... FBI’s remarkable attempt to force Google ..." ..."
"The court warrants
Since when is armed robbery (not of a bank, or a Federal institution) under their jurisdiction? That's a state crime, not Federal.
Sorry, but I've got to disagree. One being a problem doesn't make the other less of a problem, but rather more of a problem.
I don't like intrusive trackers, and avoid them to the extent possible. But their existence makes overreaching warrants worse.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
> Seriously I think it's legitimate and you privacy asshats can go f*** yourselves...
I think the FIB was not especially interested in this robber. They were more interested in setting the precedent of making such a large grab of location data. One more step towards a police state. Little by little the water boils.
Nobody will need to ask "your papers please!". They'll already know who you are, they'll just need to tell you to strip for the search at each road checkpoint.
First they came for the robbers, and I didn't say anything, because I wasn't a robber...
I don't think you should be able to request information about a large number of people
Here's an interesting idea: A company can only respond to requests for information that searches large numbers of people, when you give them enough limiting factors that at most one or two people are returned in the results.
As someone else said, there's no way that more than one person was at all nine of these locations around the times of the robberies - heck even from cell tower triangulation alone that would probably boil down to one person.
It seems pretty reasonable to me that if law enforcement has enough concrete details around locations and times of a crime that they can ask for searches of bulk metadata - again revealing only the very probable name of the suspect, who they can then investigate further.
You could build a great story around this where someone framed a person by stealing their phone as they slept, committing crimes, then putting the phone back along with planting evidence before the victim even woke up...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The government has no compelling interest to get everybody who drove through the neighborhood 30 minutes after the crime. Only people who were actually very near the crime scene at the time it happened.
People who happened to go through the area have not consented to having the government examine their location history and there is no probable cause for the government to do so.
An unrelated issue is how well informed they may be with their "informed consent" about what information Google keeps. That ends up in whataboutism, a fallacy. Anyway, Google doesn't send guys with guns to raid my house at 2AM when they screw up, the FBI does that. Google just shows me the wrong ads when they get it wrong. So I may reasonably consent to different things re Google vs the FBI.
Add in the "Bail is too hard on criminals" logic ...
If we're talking about bail, we're dealing with defendants, not criminals.
Nope, no sig
Now IMAGINE you are not white and that is a regular occurance...
It was partially hyperbole. There is a Catch and Release mentality in California.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
i am not saying govt overreach or authoritarianism is not an issue here, i just want to paint the problem to include the tools and companies that are colluding with the govt. for their profit motive
police should do their job within the confines of the constitution. Fishing expeditions are not part of that, regardless of how expedient they might be.
Surveillance technology and an entitlement complex from law enforcement is never a good combination.
Rules exist to keep the police honest.
Let the difference between two and three, jackass.
My daughter was two years old when she knew the difference.
Why ask for your papers at random when they could just grope everybody?
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
That's a LOT of people. Consider, you were "at" every single address you passed on the way to work as far as location data goes but you probably have never set foot in any of those places except perhaps a gas station.
If a few of those places got robbed, you were "AT" multiple locations that got robbed. Case closed, see you in 5 to 10.
Looks like it's time to repeat high school civics!
Bail is for people awaiting trial. You seem to have forgotten that in the United States, you have the right to be presumed innocent unless and untill you are found guilty in a court of law. So the actual claim is that bail is too hard on innocent people.
[Smacks desk with a ruler] *WAKE UP!!!*. Now, tell me, in the United States of America, what are you UNLESS and UNTIL you are found guilty in a court of law?
Easily handled in the states, without a lawyer. Hand this printed statement to the cops and stick to it:
Letter to the Authorities (Upon the advise of legal counsel)
I, your name, being a law abiding citizen, having never knowingly participated in any unlawful activities, therefore refuse to be interrogated or otherwise answer any questions asked by the police and/or a prosecutor.
If I am arrested or detained by the police for any reason, I do hereby through this written statement exercising my right to remain silent. If I am arrested or detained at a police station, I wish to see and be provided with a lawyer as soon as possible. If questioned by a prosecutor, I will invoke my 5th amendment right after each question.
I am familiar with the vicious Reid Interrogation Method, a system so brutal that Great Britain has outlawed its use, its use being the cause of many innocent people falsely confessing to crimes that they did not commit. I therefore refuse to cooperate with a request to come to any police agency or a police station, recognize that the purpose of such a request is to isolate a person in order to viciously attacking them for hours with accusations and threats. Having observed for many year that the authorities are habitual and incessant liars and deceivers, I therefore, will not trust them.
I have read the book The Lie Behind the Lie Detector found at antipolygraph.org, as well as read the Charlatanry in forensic speech science by Anders Eriksson and Francisco Lacerda, and thereby know that lie detectors and forensic speech science are junk science and a complete fraud. Therefore, I refuse to submit to a request to be examined by either. I also have read the article by the 'Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services' entitled Oklahoma Study Finds Voice Stress Analysis âoeTestingâ No Better Than Random Chance, and therefore refuse to submit to a Voice Stress Analysis request. I likewise refuse to take a 'Guilt Detection Test' and/or any other test requested by the authorities.
I, being educated in the history of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, being concerned about the flagrant desires of today's U. S. government to create dossiers on every citizen, prejudging all citizens as being potential criminals, refuse to cooperate with any request from the authorities.
I recognize and know the fact that all police, prosecutors, and government employees will attempt to elicit statements from people through deceptive lies, and therefore the authorities can never be trusted to be telling the truth.
I recognize that any and all questions asked by the authorities are for the purpose of trapping people in their words. I recognize that the authorities purposely ask the same or similar question multiple times, endangering the innocent of innocently forgetting a fact, misspeaking concerning a fact, or remembering a fact more clearly at a later time, and as a result, honestly answering a question truthfully, the authorities then using such innocent discrepancies to charge that innocent person with the crime (process crime) of lying to the authorities (Scooter Libby, Martha Stewart). I also understand that if someone tells the truth to a federal agent and they can find someone to contradict any part of that truth, that the truthful person can be charged with lying to a federal agent.
I, knowing that law enforcement usually demand a written and signed statement, will not make a written or sign a statements of any kind.
With the exception of a roadside breathalyzer test, you do not have my consent to take my picture, take my fingerprints, take my DNA, take a blood sample, take a urine sample, or any other forensic material for testing.
Signed:
your signature
"Unprecedented" means "nobody saw this coming".
Hands up, anybody, really, anyone at all, who didn't see this coming?
They gave up on Google. I think Google deserves a pat on the back for standing up to them.
HOWEVER if the FBI knew what they were doing they'd realize that data isn't necessary.