

New York City Police Amassing a Trove of Cellphone Logs - rpm4321
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/27/nyregion/new-york-city-police-amassing-a-trove-of-cellphone-logs.html?hpw

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driverdan
> Police officials declined to say how many phone records are contained in the
> database, or how often they might have led to arrests.

> Police officials would not say if detectives had used the call records of
> any cellphone theft victims in the course of investigating other crimes.

Why can police refuse to answer these questions? This information should be
publicly available by default. There is absolutely no risk to any criminal
investigations by releasing this info.

This is one of my biggest problems with government agencies. Laws should
require them to be open and transparent by default. They should have to take
additional steps to make something not available to the public and should have
to justify this action.

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rosebush
I live & work in NY. NYC is a police state. You as a citizen have no rights
until you retain a lawyer and you can be searched without probable cause (via
stop & frisk). The police along with TSA (in some cases) setup subway
checkpoints. If they pull you out for a bag search and you refuse, you cannot
enter the subway. If you do, you will be arrested. There is no law on the
books that says they can do this, but it is their policy and you must obey.
The data they collect will be used by other government agencies. They will
also collect facial data as well.

~~~
ams6110
On balance, how do you feel about this compared to say, the 1970s when
muggings in NYC were so commonplace they were almost expected. NYC has
transformed from at least a somewhat unsafe city to one of the safest big
cities in the world. Is it worth the price?

~~~
cobrausn
_Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary
Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety._

I normally hate people who just throw quotes up to answer a question, but this
one seemed appropriate.

I will never live in NYC (though I do travel upstate quite a bit). There are
plenty of large cities in the world that are safe or safer without also being
police states.

~~~
rmah
Except it's not "a little temporary safety" or "essential liberties".

First, crime has come down by huge amounts in NYC. Some crimes, like murder
are 1/4th or 1/5th of the peaks in the 1980's. For decades now, we've seen a
huge increase in safety in NYC.

Second, I question whether most of the police actions are giving up
_essential_ liberties. I can see how some might think so, but I can see how
many would not.

~~~
w1ntermute
> First, crime has come down by huge amounts in NYC.

As many other commenters have mentioned, the decrease in crime is not related
to the removal of civil liberties. The crime decreases occurred prior to the
implementation of many of these policies.

> Second, I question whether most of the police actions are giving up
> essential liberties. I can see how some might think so, but I can see how
> many would not.

They are infringing on constitutional rights. I don't see how those rights
could be seen as anything but essential.

------
ben1040
A few months ago here in St Louis, a woman was murdered in broad daylight in
an armed robbery attempt.

Police started looking at other recent street robberies reported in the area.
It turned out that a week before the murder, a person was robbed at gunpoint
just a few blocks from where the murder took place, and their cellphone was
taken. After that theft, call records for that stolen phone started showing
showed a woman's phone number.

Upon tracking down that number, they got to a woman who said her boyfriend was
involved in the murder. That led to two men being arrested for this and at
least one other previously unsolved armed robbery.

[http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/cellphone-played-
bi...](http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/cellphone-played-big-role-in-
arrest-of-two-in-central/article_25de4910-ed40-11e1-a428-0019bb30f31a.html)

However, the NYT article says it can take weeks for a subpoena to be issued
and acted upon by the phone company. So I question whether a database like
that would really have even been helpful in a situation like this, since
they'd need the data a lot sooner after an incident.

Seems to me that this might be more of an attempt to mine phone records on a
larger scale and look for drug networks or other emerging patterns.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
If everybody was forced to have the mic and camera on all the time on their
cellphone, I bet the police could catch even more criminals. That is obviously
a strawman, but there is a point: there will always be a tradeoff between
privacy and safety. I'd rather not give up my privacy to combat what are
essentially black swan events.

With my base opinion out of the way, I will say I would be comfortable with
the kind of tracking you mentioned if there were strong protections on what
the police could do with that data. For instance, the phone's owner should be
protected from prosecution in similar ways to evidence gained from an illegal
search. This data should also have a maximum lifetime. Finally, it should be
clear when the records are being requested so the owner of the number can turn
it off if they move the number to a new phone.

Unfortunately, I can't imagine these kinds of laws being passed, so, until
they do, I'll stick with my default of believing the government should require
more effort, not less, to snoop in my life.

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mseebach
"When a cellphone is reported stolen in New York, the Police Department
routinely _subpoenas_ the phone’s call records, from the day of the theft
onward. [...]

But in the process, the Police Department has quietly amassed a trove of
telephone logs, _all obtained without a court order_ , that could conceivably
be used for any investigative purpose."

Isn't a subpoena a court order?

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breckenedge
At first, I didn't feel so bad about the police actions described in this
article. I've had a phone stolen right in front of me in broad daylight, and
it sure would have been nice if the cops had nailed the guy. However, tracking
calls would have never led to the guy who stole my phone. I presume my thief
had the phone flashed within minutes.

Wouldn't it make more sense to track device stolen S/N or MEIDs, like they do
in Europe? I guess that would involve some sort of scary IT investment.

~~~
rhizome
Surely there's a form of personal insurance that would get you a new phone in
less time than it would take for the police to retrieve yours (if they ever
do).

~~~
breckenedge
Actually, i had insurance. Took about 24 hours to get a replacement on my
doorstep.

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ams6110
A question arrising from this is, is this database of cell phone records also
provided to any federal agencies, FBI, etc? My guess would be that it is, or
is easily available to them on request.

------
contingencies
How many of the same records wind up at AMDOCS/Mossad?

