

Law enforcement have known about iPhone tracking since at least last year - marcusbooster
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20056344-281.html

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ErrantX
_At least some phones running Google's Android OS_

Android is a _dream_ for someone like me (forensic analyst). It is easy to get
data off, and is chock full of all sorts of cached information. iPhone is more
difficult, and can sometimes be very hit and miss in what you can get off it.

I've used pretty much all of the tools listed on that page, and none are as
magical as they claim. One of the best is .XRY, which is my preference because
for a lot of phones you can use it to extract a raw memory dump and analyse it
more carefully/deeply.

The key thing to know here is that _all_ phones cache location information
like this in some form. Older phones used to only cache a little bit, but
usually enough to recover some previous cell sites. Modern phones, with more
location features, more memory and more advances OS's, just store more of this
information.

IMO it's not so much that LE have been keeping it deliberately quiet. I mean,
I for one figured it was fairly obvious. The story here is, IMO, it being sent
back to Apple/Google etc. Not that the data is cached.

~~~
mixmax
Somewhat unrelated - but who do forensic analysts work for, and what do they
look for? Are they only working for government agencies, or is there some kind
of private work as well? Are you looking for terrorists, kiddie porn or
something entirely different?

Just curious...

~~~
ErrantX
I work for a private company and we contract out to both the private and
public sectors. There is definitely a lot of private work; not just
investigations but document recovery etc. It also segues into general security
work. The public sector, at least in the UK, is on the decline. Budgets are
dropping and so everything is going in-house and they are getting rid of the
expensive contractors.

Most of the work in my experience is fraud related, probably around 80% of it.
But this can vary (with the time of year, current economic/political climate
etc.). As exciting as it sometimes gets to sound (and indeed, sometimes is)
99% of digital forensics is sheer. absolute. boredom. :)

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fmavituna
This is quite common, years ago I was working as a security consultant to a
police department and this was before EFF made it public -
<http://w2.eff.org/Privacy/printers/docucolor/> they were actually arresting
people based on tracking printer serials in money counterfeiting cases.

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jeggers5
This particular topic has been discussed to death lately. It's really not that
big of a deal. Apple is doing this to aid in the phone being able to
Triangulate it's position in relation to cell towers (when gps is
unavailable).

Also, the phone is NOT constantly tracking your location. It only logs a new
location (a) when you launch a location-aware app, e.g. Facebook, Maps etc.
And (b) when you have never been to that location before.

It does not log the amount of times you have visited the location.

I suspect Apple is planning to do something cool with this Data, because of
the way it is synced across Computer and Phone. Keep in mind however, the Data
cannot be used to Track you constantly, only to see where you have been in the
past, but, the log will never update to show that you visited a certain
location more than once. Hope this helps!

~~~
mattmanser
The article totally contradicts you:

 _Among computer forensics specialists, those location logs--which record
nearby cell tower coordinates and time stamps and cannot easily be disabled by
someone who wants to use location services_

And worse still, the article clearly shows this data is already being used by
law enforcement for unmonitored tracking.

~~~
tedunangst
That doesn't contradict him at all. "cannot easily be disabled by someone who
wants to use location services" is totally in line with "when you launch a
location-aware app".

Also, I didn't see the part of the article where law enforcement is using this
for unmonitored tracking. They can pull the data off your phone once when they
arrest you. But how do they continue to keep pulling the data off your phone?
If the police take my phone from me every day, I don't think that qualifies as
unmonitored.

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zaidf
Is there any iPhone app that can quietly log your gps location every minute
and let you replay your life's movements at the end of the day or week?

