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Police Are Using Google's Location Data From 'Hundreds of Millions' of Phones (cnet.com)
"When law enforcement investigations get cold, there's a source authorities can turn to for location data that could produce new leads: Google."
An anonymous reader quotes CNET: Police have used information from the search giant's Sensorvault database to aid in criminal cases across the country, according to a report Saturday by The New York Times. The database has detailed location records from hundreds of millions of phones around the world, the report said. It's meant to collect information on the users of Google's products so the company can better target them with ads, and see how effective those ads are. But police have been tapping into the database to help find missing pieces in investigations.
Law enforcement can get "geofence" warrants seeking location data. Those kinds of requests have spiked in the last six months, and the company has received as many as 180 requests in one week, according to the report.... For geofence warrants, police carve out a specific area and time period, and Google can gather information from Sensorvault about the devices that were present during that window, according to the report. The information is anonymous, but police can analyze it and narrow it down to a few devices they think might be relevant to the investigation. Then Google reveals those users' names and other data, according to the Times...
[T]he AP reported last year that Google tracked people's location even after they'd turned off location-sharing on their phones.
Google's data dates back "nearly a decade," the Times reports -- though in a statement, Google's director of law enforcement and information security insisted "We vigorously protect the privacy of our users while supporting the important work of law enforcement." (The Times also interviewed a man who was arrested and jailed for a week last year based partly on Google's data -- before eventually being released after the police found a more likely suspect.)
"According to the Times, Google is the primary company that appears to be fulfilling the warrants," reports Gizmodo, adding that Apple "says it can't provide this information to authorities..."
"A thriving black market in location data has persisted despite promises from carriers to stop selling it to middlemen, who divert it from intended uses in marketing and other services."
An anonymous reader quotes CNET: Police have used information from the search giant's Sensorvault database to aid in criminal cases across the country, according to a report Saturday by The New York Times. The database has detailed location records from hundreds of millions of phones around the world, the report said. It's meant to collect information on the users of Google's products so the company can better target them with ads, and see how effective those ads are. But police have been tapping into the database to help find missing pieces in investigations.
Law enforcement can get "geofence" warrants seeking location data. Those kinds of requests have spiked in the last six months, and the company has received as many as 180 requests in one week, according to the report.... For geofence warrants, police carve out a specific area and time period, and Google can gather information from Sensorvault about the devices that were present during that window, according to the report. The information is anonymous, but police can analyze it and narrow it down to a few devices they think might be relevant to the investigation. Then Google reveals those users' names and other data, according to the Times...
[T]he AP reported last year that Google tracked people's location even after they'd turned off location-sharing on their phones.
Google's data dates back "nearly a decade," the Times reports -- though in a statement, Google's director of law enforcement and information security insisted "We vigorously protect the privacy of our users while supporting the important work of law enforcement." (The Times also interviewed a man who was arrested and jailed for a week last year based partly on Google's data -- before eventually being released after the police found a more likely suspect.)
"According to the Times, Google is the primary company that appears to be fulfilling the warrants," reports Gizmodo, adding that Apple "says it can't provide this information to authorities..."
"A thriving black market in location data has persisted despite promises from carriers to stop selling it to middlemen, who divert it from intended uses in marketing and other services."
This is a great way to catch criminals.
Will make it a lot easier for the next fascist government to identify all those that were at the "wrong" events or ever physically close to the "wrong" people, even decades later.
This data should be deleted after at most a year.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Does moving your Android phone to a Lineage build solve the tracking problems?
Left or Right? Democrat or Republican? C++ or Fortran? Pro or Anti Apple? We are polarized in so many ways. Let's not let our bias work against our vested interests however. Where privacy matters there is only one company that provides hardware that stands out.
Yes, it's certainly a marketing gimmick. Apple was slow to capitalize on the advertising / sale of customer info bandwagon. Now, to cover that error before shareholders, they present that as a 'feature'. "See," they will tell investors, "we've locked in customer loyalty by not selling them out!"
It's a fragile benefit to Apple buyers. For now they can trust that Apple will protect their privacy rather diligently. But corporate winds change like the tide and the future may not be so kind to Apple consumers.
...omphaloskepsis often...
It's wrong. Our devices should not work that way. It is too easy to be accused of wrongdoing, and have our privacy further violated. You will be added to a watchlist for the unsolved crime. You employer will likely be contacted by the police and they will not tell you. Your career could end simply because you were in the vicinity of a crime.
Never, never give a company or the police more information than absolutely necessary.
This time around Anne Frank's diary will be on a remote wipeable smartphone, and it won't take them years to find them hiding in a attic or cellar, it will just take a check of facebook posts and friends webs to track down and purge the undesirable cultural, relgious, sexual, or ethnic groups we need demonized for the temporary stability of our regime. Of course the addition this time, is that we can take DNA samples from everyone and sequence them so even the most tenuous member of a group can be ethnically purged, and only our purest brethren saved and allowed into leadership positions in the party.
You think I am kidding? Just watch.
It's meant to collect information on the users of Google's products so the company can better target them with ads
After all those billions spent, I am still waiting for my first relevant ad. I either see ads for products I have no interest in at all, or ads for products I have already looked at.
1) If you are going to commit a crime. leave your phone at home. Are there apps that can call other people at pre-scheduled times? Sounds like an alibi to me.
2) Don't livestream your crime to bookface, or your piles of money, drugs, or weapons.
3) Give a bum some money, have them buy you a couple non-sequential serial burner phones.
Simple fix: Just give _any_ crime at least a 15 years sentence. I am sure you would find plenty of people that would think that a good idea.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
All the companies that collect this data have vulnerable storage of the raw data. If the NSA is willing to spend the money to analyze, they can harvest the raw, ananonymized data by tapping the exposed load balancers or copying the logs from the hosts in AWS or elsewhere. And so can every other nation's security experts and moles, by getting employees inside those companies to steal encryption keys or access keys. It's just not that well secured.
I simply don't understand how this behavior can be tolerated by anyone.
I think we need a law that says companies like Google are not allowed to retain this sort of intimate data for such a long time. Though I fully agree with the idea that if such data is allowed to be used, there needs to be sufficient cause, with access requiring a warrant.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
That’s gonna be tough on the litterers...
#DeleteChrome
And people wonder why I still use a "dumb" phone. My cellular provider may know where I am, but Google doesn't.
I look at my location history sometimes, especially after long trips. Two years ago on reviewing a trip to India it said I had been in Patna, a city I've never been within several hundred miles of. So I knew it was not dependable. I've just looked up the location history for that period in detail. It is still there. It says that I was in Domino's Pizza in Ashok Rajpath Rd, Chowk, Patna, it also says that I then travelled a distance of 1100 miles to a place in southern India where I had actually been, in 13 minutes, by car. It was probably caused by someone identifying a business address wrongly, but it is absolutely not reliable. Lawyers should question its accuracy.
Apple can't hand over what they don't have. Google keeps your location history and Apple might not have any data to give or it could be encrypted in a way that even Apple can't access it.
Google's not being forced. They're profiting from selling your location.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
I mean, it's a feature that makes me prefer Apple. Is it a gimmick, or do they recognize there are people willing to pay to not be tracked? Is' there qany feature taht is not a gimmick in your eyes?
And maybe Aple changes in the future, but that seems less likely. They make tons of money now, why change? Although Microsoft was makign tons of money pre-Windows 10, so...
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Walled garden in one ecosystem, pervasive spying in the other. Hmm...
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Google claims our location data is anonymous, but it's not anonymous if it can be looked up.
the simple reason that phones/tablets need a physical power off switch which actually disconnects the battery AMEN
I don't get your logic. You seem to be taking their marketing at face value. Apple joined PRISM in 2012. They seem to spy at least as much as any other company. The only difference is that, as with their devices, they want tight control over their product. Apple also shows no sign of any interest in moral values. They use virtual slave labor, offshore their money to avoid taxes, and deliberately design hardware to maximize sales. I wouldn't trust Apple any more than I'd trust Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook -- except in high profile cases where Tim Cook sees a chance to make Apple look like a white knight.
Discounting outright ballot fraud, influencing the outcome of political elections has always been a past time available to a very small fraction of the richest and most powerful humans on the planet. For the longest time, consolidation of the distribution of news to the public was a popular way to shape opinion by political Kingmakers. These activities have rarely been constrained within the sovereign border the Kingmaker resides.
Totalitarian regimes lock down control of the press and constantly monitor for dissent. In nations with the freedom to use the ballot box, wealthy individuals seeking power bought up newspaper, radio, and television properties to control the flow of information to the voting citizens.
Making life difficult for the rich and powerful, we have this damn internet thingie that virtually anyone can use to attempt to shape public opinion, even on a shoestring budget. I suppose at the very least, we have democratized the influencing business.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
It's too bad for progress
What the heck is that? Do you have an objective definition? Maybe we can scrap the whole voting thing entirely and let you just run things!
I've been getting nonstop ads for Gundam model kits. Too lazy to build them anymore so I haven't bought anything, but I click and ogle the kits every now and then (current gen Master Grades are damn near as good as perfect grades were when I was a kid, just need to add the LEDs yourself).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Just logging out of Google (delete the Google account on your phone) can make a difference. There is no requirement that a Google account be active to use your Android phone. There are app updates available elsewhere. You can still be tracked, but logging out makes it you more difficult to track.
Not sure I can agree w/ the use of iDevices from that standpoint; at least some Android devices still have removable batteries.
I met a German traveler the other day. He built a niche app for parking management. (Think big institutional parking lots.). He said that selling data to the gestapo is a big part of his business. Apparently Big Brother pays his collaborators well.
It's a nicer-sounding euphemism for "blackmail database".
As Bart Simpson says "It never hurts to have an extra set of fingerprints on your knife." Or something like that.
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
(The Times also interviewed a man who was arrested and jailed for a week last year based partly on Google's data -- before eventually being released after the police found a more likely suspect.)
This is why dragnets are so evil. The only thing that matters is if it can be pinned on you, not whether or not you were guilty.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
Very boring.