
To find suspects, police quietly turn to Google - dlgeek
http://www.wral.com/to-find-suspects-police-quietly-turn-to-google/17377435/
======
nkurz
This is an important story, but a little difficult to summarize. Here's my
attempt at an overview:

1\. Google stores location history data for more of its mobile users than you
might expect. The precision is greatest when GPS is on, but less precise data
from cell towers and WiFi sources is used almost any time a Google app is
being used on an Android or non-Android phone. There have been cases in the
past where Google has recorded such information even when the user has
explicitly turned off all location services, but Google says they have stopped
this practice.

2\. On multiple recent occasions, police in North Carolina have quietly been
successful in obtaining search warrants that force Google to turn over these
records. Rather than "standard" search warrants asking for the location of a
particular suspect in a crime, these "reverse" or "area based" warrants ask
for time and location data for all users who have entered a geographical area
during a time of interest. The records returned are initially anonymous
account numbers, and the police then make followup requests for identifying
information of the subset of accounts that they think are of interest to the
case.

3\. This open-ended "drag net" approach scares some people. Typically, at
least in the US, suspects are identified first, and then further information
is gathered that confirms or removes the suspicion. The express fear seems to
be that innocent people will be falsely accused due to coincidence, but there
is also a more general fear that once mechanisms are in place that allow the
police to have easy access to location tracking information, this information
will end up being abused.

~~~
dwaltrip
Holy shit. So my paranoia about turning off Google location tracking was
completely well-founded, and way more quickly than I would have hoped.

GDPR can't come soon enough...

~~~
petilon
You live in Los Angeles (according to Google). How will GDPR help you?
Companies such as Google and Facebook aren't going to implement European laws
for their American customers!

~~~
dwaltrip
Laws are ideas, and ideas spread.

Hopefully it affects U.S. policy in the next decade or so.

P.S. I'm curious how you found my city. LinkedIn?

~~~
hollander
@Petilon works at google maybe? (Joking of course!)

~~~
bigiain
Not really all that funny though...

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/16/silicon-v...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/16/silicon-
valley-internal-work-spying-surveillance-leakers)

'“When you first get to Facebook you are shocked at the level of transparency.
You are trusted with a lot of stuff you don’t need access to,” said Evans,
adding that during his induction he was warned not to look at ex-partners’
Facebook accounts.'

------
cornholio
In principle and with some caveats, I support this use of tracking
information: it's usually quite specific, it has a very positive efect for law
enforcement, it's not a breach of fundamental rights of the suspect as
confirmation of the physical location at a certain time is not secret and can
be obtained by the police from CCTV cameras, eyewitnesses etc.

The privacy of the bystanders is not significantly reduced if and only if the
police will use the specific datadump for the purpose of solving the crime for
which the warant has been issued - as opposed to building a massive cross-
referenced database from multiple such incidents. I am concerned that a few
warrants like 'all information on everybody who was at the Superbowl' would
quickly download massive amounts of data from Google to the police.

I think regulation should be enacted that balances the social interest with
the private interest, for example, Google could be issued a specific warrant
of the type "data on all individuals that were in location X1,T1 and also in
X2,T2", and Google should answer only when the query is sufficiently specific
to return only a handful of results.

~~~
dwaltrip
The idea that they will use such data responsibly seems like handing a bag of
candy to a 6 year-old and saying "Make sure to only eat one!"

Perhaps I'm wrong, but I can't imagine them managing the overwhelming
temptations to quietly abuse the data, especially as time goes on.

Edit: I realize this is a crude analogy that glosses over a lot of important
details, but it gets at the heart of my intuition on the matter. The lack of
restraints found in the child-candy system seems to mirror very well the
weakness of restraints found in the dynamics between government apparatuses
and fancy tools.

For many tools, this is fine. But I'm worried about the long tail risks and
externalities of large-scale privacy destroying tools.

I don't think this is exclusively an issue with government organizations.
However, in America they are the only organization with the ability to
forcefully restrict the actions of individuals and groups. So extreme
vigilance is required to balance out this immense power. If a random company
overuses a fancy tool, the potential damages are more limited.

~~~
Digit-Al
I can see both sides on this. I do think that such data when used responsibly
can really help in solving serious crimes. But, as you say, there is a serious
danger of law enforcement abusing the system and gathering far more data than
they need. It's not like they haven't been guilty of such abuses in the past.
Look at the situation with gathering fingerprints or DNA and then not
scrubbing the data of innocents once an investigation has finished.

I am wondering if the solution is to have an independent service. One that
would sit as a middleman between police and technology companies such as
Google. Their mandate would be to provide the minimum amount of data required
for an investigation (the example used in the article is a good one, where
anonymous data for a particular location at a particular time-frame is
requested and used to narrow down the search and then get more information on
a subset of that data). They could be required to keep logs of what is being
requested and what is being provided and could be audited at intervals by,
say, the EFF. Obviously this is only a rough sketch of the idea, it would need
fleshing out more completely.

------
danso
This seems to me to be a major revelation: police in North Carolina have
successfully requested Google account information on all phones near a crime
scene. While Google routinely responds to search warrants, this is a much
broader type of data request.

~~~
londons_explore
Arguably, this leaks _everyones_ data. Anyone who was _not_ in the area will
be excluded from the list, therefore letting the police know where I wasn't at
the time.

I wonder how Google show that on their transparency report? Hopefully
"Accounts searched: 1.5 Billion"

~~~
salad77
> Anyone who was not in the area will be excluded from the list, therefore
> letting the police know where I wasn't at the time.

No, at best this only shows that your _google linked device_ (presumably a
phone) did not have location information for that area at the specific time.

Alternatively it suggests the device could have been switched off/disconnected
from the network to hide your presence - making you really a suspect of
interest if your name comes into the investigation for some reason.

Dragnet approaches to law enforcement are inherently wrong. They unreasonably
cast suspicion on everyone without any good basis and reverse the accepted
safeguard that your guilt requires to be proven, and replace it with the idea
that you require to prove your innocence.

~~~
bilbo0s
"...Alternatively it suggests the device could have been switched
off/disconnected from the network to hide your presence - making you really a
suspect of interest if your name comes into the investigation for some
reason..."

That's really interesting. If I'm understanding you correctly, people who
routinely switch off their location services, could potentially end up as
suspects in crimes if they, for instance, live in the apartment across the
hall from the victim or something.

So keeping location services on let's the police keep tabs on you, potentially
making you a suspect in some crime in the future. Alternatively, turning it
off potentially turns you into a suspect of interest in some potential crime
in the future.

~~~
logic101010
Welcome to police logic!

Sounds like you agree entirely with the poster's final comment :

"They unreasonably cast suspicion on everyone without any good basis and
reverse the accepted safeguard that your guilt requires to be proven, and
replace it with the idea that you require to prove your innocence."

------
larkeith
Yet another reason to disable GPS and location history (and any other
functionality you use infrequently) when not actively necessary.

~~~
dumbsite5692
That does absolutely nothing. If you don't want to be tracked, don't carry a
phone. It's the only way.

~~~
giancarlostoro
Airplane mode?

~~~
copperx
Now you're just carrying a brick. What's the point?

~~~
giancarlostoro
I have many apps I can use offline, plus if I need to use my phone it doesn't
take long to turn it off airplane mode and have everything reconnect. It's
amazing how fast all the notifications come in once you turn off Airplane
mode. I don't do that daily, but when I am conscious about battery usage I do.
Maybe I just might try doing it more often. I also do it when charging my
phone.

------
arca_vorago
Stop using Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc if you care about privacy!

~~~
bitmapbrother
I noticed you left out Apple - the same company that handed over control of
their cloud servers to a Chinese state run company.

~~~
SubiculumCode
I notice you left out Amazon. In fact, there are a number of players to list,
which is the reason the grandparent wrote 'etc..'

~~~
bitmapbrother
Apple is the biggest company in the world, by market cap. I would hardly call
Apple a member of the 'etc..' list.

~~~
SubiculumCode
Mentioning Apple to bring up the point is different than calling out parent
for leaving it off. It was petty.

~~~
bitmapbrother
Petty is allowing Chinese state run companies to hand over all of their users
data to the Chinese government while proclaiming you respect and protect your
users privacy.

------
YaxelPerez
[https://www.google.com/maps/timeline](https://www.google.com/maps/timeline)

------
mtgx
And Google, now a defense contractor willing to work on weapons of war to make
a (bigger) profit, will gladly assist them.

They're _themselves_ creating the incentive to do that, just as when they got
into the content and content licensing game, they ended up creating the most
aggressive content censorship system on the (free) internet, beyond even what
the laws require. It's no longer a matter of "choosing to do the right thing".
The (bad) incentives are already in place. Now Google just reacts to the
incentives it created.

We're also supposed to "just trust them" that their secret AI Ethical Board,
which can be replaced at any moment, also in secret, will do the right thing
when things will go bad with its AI. They've already created the incentive to
_cheat_ by keeping that board secret.

~~~
gourou
> Google, now a defense contractor

They sold their stake in Boston Dynamics

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-17/google-
is...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-17/google-is-said-to-
put-boston-dynamics-robotics-unit-up-for-sale)

~~~
kodablah
That's not their only defense contract. E.g. [https://gizmodo.com/google-is-
helping-the-pentagon-build-ai-...](https://gizmodo.com/google-is-helping-the-
pentagon-build-ai-for-drones-1823464533)

------
Bizarro
_City and county officials say the practice is a natural evolution of criminal
investigative techniques._

Ah yes, very "natural"

And _they 're carefully balancing civil rights with public safety._

and "carefully balancing"

Bureaucrats and their weasel words.

------
Overtonwindow
Wow that's deeply disturbing but also feels like a similar tactic to the
stingrays. Does simply owning a cell phone and being in a geographical area
make you open to 4th amendment search and identification?

~~~
Klathmon
Hasn't it been shown that the 4th doesn't apply to information you give to
someone else?

They are requesting this from Google, not you, so your 4th amendment rights
don't matter.

I don't necessarily agree with that ruling, but as far as I know that's the
current state of things.

~~~
roywiggins
Well, they did get a warrant. The 3rd party doctrine would say that you don't
need a warrant at all.

There's actually a court case at SCOTUS that may more closely define what is
and isn't covered by the 3rd party doctrine when it comes to phones.

[http://www.scotusblog.com/2017/08/symposium-will-fourth-
amen...](http://www.scotusblog.com/2017/08/symposium-will-fourth-amendment-
protect-21st-century-data-court-confronts-third-party-doctrine/)

------
joering2
This is probably one of the cons of using VPN. If criminal used VPN service
that you happen to use and connect to the same node, expect police to read
your emails, courtesy of Google.

I'm still in the process of getting off google mail and switching to Proton.
It takes time to go thru all my google emails and clean them up. Yes I know
deleting them won't change a thing BUT at least I consent to deleting them on
my end, versus merely abandoning my mailbox altogether.

I know Google has capacity to keep all emails forever, but whether they do so
or delete them after X amount of years, I don't know.

~~~
londons_explore
Google guarantees to actually delete your emails 30 days after you delete them
from your account.

The GDPR law in europe requires them to do this for european citizens.

~~~
olympus
Does it guarantee to do this for everyone or just Europeans? Genuinely curious
here since they might have separate policies in place for different countries-
I imagine that China prefers to keep all its citizens' emails indefinitely.

~~~
puzzle
Google has been doing this for years, before even making public guarantees.
There wasn't a separate policy for China when I left years ago and Gmail is
blocked there anyway.

------
alexandercrohde
Well I'm sure this seems really neat, but criminals will simply not bring
their phones and then be excluded from the search.

------
aiCeivi9
But why Google? Shouldn't they ask mobile operators in first place?

------
lopmotr
I used to wonder why New York subways were somehow a high crime area. I
thought, surely they're such small closed places that if there's a crime, the
police can just block the exits and check everyone leaving, or look at the
CCTV footage to identify them. But then I found out that they don't do that!
Americans are so concerned about privacy, they let themselves get robbed and
murdered every day.

It's clear that they don't trust their own police. That's perhaps the real
problem. If they could be made trustworthy like in many other countries,
people would probably be happy to have murders solved through video footage,
cellphone locations, etc. It amazes me that even one person on here thinks
this is a bad idea. Real killers would have got away otherwise. This isn't
some wild NSA anti-terrorism dragnet, it's just normal police work collecting
normal evidence specific to the crime.

~~~
deathhand
Why don't people trust cops?

Asset forfeiture, crooked cops, shoot first ask questions later, a strong
union which protects their own, and their ability to spy on their personal
rivals through NSA/FBI tools makes us a paranoid bunch.

The last part.. NYPD mis-used tools to track former lovers[1] and there was no
reprocussion. How can we feel safe?

[1][https://nypost.com/2013/11/08/jealous-cop-admits-to-
hacking-...](https://nypost.com/2013/11/08/jealous-cop-admits-to-hacking-nypd-
files-to-spy-on-ex/)

~~~
thomasahle
Also, location data has a history of getting many people convicted innocently:
[https://www.economist.com/news/united-
states/21615622-junk-s...](https://www.economist.com/news/united-
states/21615622-junk-science-putting-innocent-people-jail-two-towers)

