Police Use Fitbit Data To Charge 90-Year-Old Man In Stepdaughter's Killing (nytimes.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The New York Times: The last time Anthony Aiello spoke to his stepdaughter, he took homemade pizza and biscotti to her house in San Jose, Calif., for a brief visit. Mr. Aiello, 90, told investigators that she then walked him to the door and handed him two roses in gratitude. But an unnoticed observer in the house later revealed that their encounter ended in murder, a police report said. Five days afterward, Mr. Aiello's stepdaughter, Karen Navarra, 67, was discovered by a co-worker in her house with fatal lacerations on her head and neck. She had been wearing a Fitbit fitness tracker, which investigators said showed that her heart rate had spiked significantly around 3:20 p.m. on Sept. 8 (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source), when Mr. Aiello was there. Then it recorded her heart rate slowing rapidly, and stopping at 3:28 p.m., about five minutes before Mr. Aiello left the house, the report said. Mr. Aiello was arrested last week on murder charges and booked into the Santa Clara County Jail, the San Jose Police Department said. On Thursday, he will appear in court in the Hall of Justice in San Jose, according to the Santa Clara County district attorney's office. "[T]he police said their investigation used a combination of video surveillance and data from Ms. Navarra's Fitbit, an Alta HR device, which she wore on her left wrist and synchronized with a computer in her home, where she lived alone," reports NYT. When asked for comment, Fitbit shared a copy of its privacy policy, stating in part that they comply with legal processes, including search warrants and court orders, when it shares data.

Comments

Re:Just a handy reminder

[Gilgaron]

It is sort of weird to consider these gadgets like an airplane's blackbox...its impressive and horrifying at the same time

Where's the problem in this case?

[damn_registrars]

Tech companies are not, will not, and cannot be your friends.

A certain amount of paranoia is certainly warranted in technology any time it harvests your information, for sure.

However in this case a device that the victim owned and activated was used to obtain information on her last moments alive. The NYT article shows that the police obtained a warrant to get the data, as they should. The data then was used to construct a timeline to determine what happened, when.

While the fitbit is not marketed as a crime-fighting device, it was a useful tool in this investigation. I don't really see what the problem here is. There is no indication that the victim was wearing the fitbit against her own will.

Re:Where's the problem in this case?

[damn_registrars]

I hope they checked the time on the fitness tracker. It says she died shortly before the guy left... Assuming that the fitness tracker data was correctly timestamped.

The NYT article mentions that the fitbit was using NTP, as was the camera that showed what time he left. The USA Today summary left that (and arguably more importantly the fact that the police obtained a warrant to get the fitbit data) out.

Re:90 year old?

[sinij]

When you are 90 year old, your 24 year old ninja girlfriend is a necrophiliac, not nymphomaniac.