
“Reverse location” search warrants identify all cellphones near a crime scene - Jerry2
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2019/02/07/google-location-police-search-warrants
======
renholder
> _He noted that even if it did target the wrong person, "it doesn't mean
> they're going to get convicted or arrested, it just gives the detective a
> look at who could be involved."_

...because no case has _ever_ been so righteously pursued, with such a
vigorous degree of righteous indignation, that an innocent person was _ever_
thrown in prison[0], yeah?

This blasé attitude about sweeping-up data of innocent people is precisely how
you arrive at it eventually being abused.

The eroding of rights isn't a flagrantly giant leap but tiny concessions that
occur until it's too late to reverse what has essentially become the modus
operandi.

[0] -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19186759](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19186759)

~~~
nabla9
All criminal investigations start with group of innocent people. That's the
only way to investigate.

Police collects data from security cameras, road cameras, credit card
purchases, witnesses, and now from mobile service providers.

I agree that privacy erosion is real, but you argument was not convincing.

~~~
jancsika
> All criminal investigations start with group of innocent people. That's the
> only way to investigate.

Agreed. Also, all methods of gathering evidence from a group of innocent
people are not legal. So let's take your examples one at a time:

> Police collects data from security cameras,

 _If_ a proprietor wishes to give the police footage. If not, they need a
warrant in the U.S. to search them. If the police asked for a general warrant
to go collect footage from everyone's security cameras in the same area it
would probably have been denied, no?

> road cameras,

Agreed.

> credit card purchases,

Citation needed for local law enforcement getting a general warrant to run a
credit card purchase history search "so expansive in time and geography that
it had the potential to gather data on tens of thousands of Minnesotans."

> witnesses,

Again, citation needed where police can force tens of thousands of witnesses
to answer questions and/or submit relevant data to the police.

> and now from mobile service providers.

Agreed.

> I agree that privacy erosion is real, but you argument was not convincing.

I agree it's not very persuasive, but neither is your counterargument. I'd
like to have a deeper discussion about what triggers a violation of
constitutional rights, and how to design technology that doesn't threaten to
erode those protections.

~~~
fixermark
If your train of logic basically reaches the conclusion "police cannot legally
investigate crimes," I'm afraid I have some bad news about the facts
underpinning your train of logic, because society will not conclude crimes can
no longer be investigated.

~~~
jancsika
That sentence was poorly worded.

But then if this least generous interpretation you chose represented my train
of thought, one would have expected me to clearly argue that both "road
cameras" and "mobile service providers" are illegal. Instead I replied with,
"Agreed." Did you read down to those parts? If so I'm curious what you thought
that could mean in a worldview where police cannot legally investigate crimes.

~~~
fixermark
No, the error was mine. I zoned out on details because I misinterpreted your
earlier sentence and assumed the remainder of the post was poor justification
of my misunderstanding of your thesis.

~~~
michaelmrose
This is surprisingly civil for an internet discussion forum. Kudos on having
good manners.

------
JoeSmithson
So essentially they asked for anonymised lists of phones (i.e. not even the
actual numbers) that had been in the locations where the suspects had been,
then cross-referenced these to find potential suspects, presumably finding
some phones that exactly matched the reported movements of the suspects which
they then made a second application to de-anonymise.

Do people honestly think this is disproportionate for investigating a home
invasion? It seems like they have been quite privacy conscious in my opinion.

What would have been a better way to investigate this crime?

~~~
michaelt

      Do people honestly think this is disproportionate
      for investigating a home invasion?
    

I think the concern is not Google sharing this data once they have it. The
concern is Google having it, in the first place (in personally identifiable
form).

There's a lot of unclarity about which free and paid Google services and
products are and aren't tracked. Who knows if their DNS resolver or their
wifi-visibility-to-phone-location service or google-maps-used-without-logging-
in would have come up in such a search warrant?

~~~
bepvte
We know, because its outlined in their privacy policy that they store dns logs
for 24 hours, and store the location data of devices which allow the location
history feature, and provide data to governments who send a proper search
warrant with reasonable cause.

~~~
pubutil
My problem isn’t so much that Google is storing location data _if people have
agreed to allow it_. The semantics of agreeing to enable location history are
arguable, but by default Google’s location history feature is opt- _out_. I’d
prefer it be not be that way, but that’s a debate for another time.

What I do have a problem with is what this line from the article suggests:

>An Associated Press investigation last year revealed that even with these
settings disabled, Google continued to collect and store users' location data.

Maybe I’m missing something from the TOS, but it seems to me that the opt-out
process doesn’t do what it describes; so what is it for?

------
knolan
Several years ago while living in London we had a visit from the police
because they were able to access my partner’s Oyster travel card registration
details — she had provided her home address and I hadn’t.

They were following up on an apparently minor assault and pulled tbe Oyster
card details for everyone on a specific train.

Considering this is a city with ubiquitous CCTV, smart phones are just another
data source.

~~~
Jerry2
> _Considering this is a city with ubiquitous CCTV, smart phones are just
> another data source._

London is quickly becoming one of the most dystopian cities in the world. I
recently read a story [0] how London police are now face-scanning pedestrians
and you are not allowed to cover up you face. If you protest this scanning,
you're issued a £90 fine. You're basically treated like cattle.

[0] [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/facial-
recogniti...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/facial-recognition-
cameras-technology-london-trial-met-police-face-cover-man-fined-a8756936.html)

~~~
dsfyu404ed
It's like the middle ages all over again. Citizens are a resource of the land
and have no say in things except in the most extreme cases. The people in
charge only care about the masses insofar as it relates to GDP growth (or
whatever their metric of the day is) and is perfectly happy to subjugate them
for that goal. God forbid we endure some economic instability while we deal
with social issues. /s

I'm exaggerating but that sort of paternalistic authoritarianism seems to be
more and more common among the politicians who's job it is to do things such
as check the power of law enforcement.

------
jamiethompson
I find it concerning that a judge, being presented with a textual description
of four GPS coordinates would sign off on a warrant without simply asking...
"okay, can you show me that on a map then?"

~~~
FartyMcFarter
Do we know that the judge didn't simply plug the coordinates into some online
mapping service to find out? It's not that hard...

~~~
jamiethompson
It's alluded to in the article that judges aren't aware of the size of the
geofences they're asked to sign off on, yeah.

------
fixermark
This feels like a method of catching criminals that criminals will rapidly
adapt to avoiding. "Don't carry the thing that broadcasts your location at all
times while you're committing a home invasion" seems like a pretty obvious
thing to avoid once a threat model is understood.

Regardless of the privacy issues, I don't anticipate this approach will stay
useful in the long run.

~~~
anderspitman
Or better yet, pick pocket someone else's phone at another location. Commit a
small but likely-to-be-reported crime near that location. Then carry their
phone (and not yours) while committing a much more serious crime. They'll be
tagged at both locations.

~~~
fixermark
That breaks down fast when the pickpocketing victim reports their phone
stolen. Police have retrieved stolen phones via the pickpocketing victim
running "find my phone" on their property when they realize it is gone.

------
maweki
In Germany the "Funkzellenabfrage" ("reverse location" request by cell)
provided by the providers is used quite often. On the last Chaos Communication
Congress there was a talk about this and the police uses it quite frequently.

The guesses were that on average every german phone is identified multiple
times per year during this procedure. According to the Berlin statistics from
2017 there were nearly 450 requests resulting is 60 Million returned phones.
Just compare that to Berlin's population...

~~~
chosenbreed37
"Funkzellenabfrage" \- That's a great word. Is there a word describing the
ability of the German language to condense English phrases into a single word?
:)

~~~
zimpenfish
I think this would come under "agglutination"[1].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agglutination](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agglutination)

~~~
sshanky
One of my favorites was "Vorlesungsverzeichnis" (lecture directory/course
catalog).

Vorlesung = lecture

\- Lesung = a reading (like a book reading)/lesson

\- add "Vor" ("before" as in "in front of [a group]") and it becomes Lecture

Verzeichnis = directory

\- Zeichnis = symbol, signal, reference, sign

\- add "Ver" (hard to really explain what it does) and it becomes directory,
index, register, list

------
philipodonnell
> Bruley said detectives learned about the potential value of the practice and
> how to write the warrant applications at an August training seminar held by
> ZetX, an Arizona-based company that teaches police about cellphone
> investigations, and sells software called TRAX that generates legal
> documents and maps cellphone data to assist in analysis. The company holds
> trainings all across the country.

> Material from the U.S. Department of Justice was presented, said Bruley,
> including suggested language for use in these types of warrants.

I found this bit to be concerning as well. Create software that is more
valuable with more warrants? "Train" officers on how to carefully write
warrants to sneak them past overworked and less-technologically-sophisticated
judges. Judicial deception as business development.

------
yread
Do they also give it to you so that you can use it in defense?

~~~
thecatspaw
If it gets brought up by them during trial then they need to submit it during
discovery

IANAL TINLA etc

------
bloak
How often does someone carrying out a planned crime carry a phone with them
that is switched on, these days? Use of mobile phone data by the police has
been standard practice since 2001, at least, and widely publicised.

~~~
coldtea
> _How often does someone carrying out a planned crime carry a phone with them
> that is switched on, these days?_

Almost all of the time.

~~~
bloak
Do you have a source for that?

I read somewhere how the police once solved a crime by analysing a cigarette
butt left behind in a stolen car, but within a few years it was quite common
for them to find that a stolen car had its ashtray filled with cigarette butts
apparently taken from a public ashtray: even joyriders were clever enough to
thus outwit forensics. So it would seem weird to me if armed robbers or
professional burglars were carrying switched on phones, and most crimes are
committed by people who commit multiple crimes, as I understand it, people who
have plenty of experience of how the police and the courts operate.

In online discussions there are always people who claim that criminals are
idiots, but I don't think that's accurate. I reckon that when it comes to
crime, most criminals are in effect a lot more intelligent than I am with my
elite university degree and so on. But in general, the older I get, the more
aware I become of my own limitations and the less likely I am to dismiss
anyone else as an idiot.

~~~
coldtea
> _In online discussions there are always people who claim that criminals are
> idiots, but I don 't think that's accurate. I reckon that when it comes to
> crime, most criminals are in effect a lot more intelligent than I am with my
> elite university degree and so on._

Career criminals (mob, drug cartels, etc) yes.

But people who commit random premeditated crimes are more often than not
(judging from trial) in "Fargo" movie territory, and most smaller criminals
(e.g. gang members, methheads, etc) are dumber than cotton.

------
jjbinx007
So would this work the other way around? Leave your phone at home to prove you
didn't go somewhere?

~~~
oh_sigh
No, because people leave their phone at home all the time, but phones rarely
go on trips without the owner.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
So, send phone on trip to "prove" I wasn't somewhere else; put it in my kids
backpack, fix it under my neighbours car.

~~~
nagyf
So you put it in your kid's backpack and later the police will see that you
spent your day in an elementary school. Does not seem like a very good alibi.
The same is true for your neighbor, they will see that you spent your day in
the parking lot of your neighbor's workplace, pretty suspicious.

~~~
amvalo
So put in your wife’s purse and say you spent the day with your wife (maybe
spousal privelege would be useful there)

------
Animats
Why did the police ask Google, and not the cellular operators? They know who
was where to the level of positioning detail this requires.

~~~
VectorLock
Cell providers have information on what cell sites a mobile user has connected
to and rough triangulations of the devices position.

Google has the exact GPS coordinates sent by the device itself, WiFi networks
around it, and other location data.

~~~
baud147258
But that's only if the GPS and wifi are activated on the phone. On my phone
it's rarely the case.

~~~
VectorLock
I'm sure if there is no data from Google they get it from the cell provides,
or they _also_ get it from cell providers, but Google is definitely going to
have much richer and detailed information on an individual -- if they have it
turned on.

I bet in 7/10 cases they do.

~~~
baud147258
I don't disagree, I just wanted to point that Google might not have all info
on all Android phones.

------
slack3r
Of course, Palantir is behind this. Someone should really start putting checks
on Silicon Valley executives, especially Peter Thiel.

------
nraynaud
In France that’s how the former president got busted, he used his burner phone
from a sparsely populated area.

~~~
baud147258
Which president got busted for what?

~~~
nraynaud
Nicolas Sarkozy, for peddling influence. He was under investigation for
getting money from Gaddafi when the police discovered he had another phone and
was peddling influence with his lawyer as accomplice. He was trying to get
informations on yet another enquiry against him by promising a judge he would
use his influence to find him a higher job.

------
hrdwdmrbl
In the future I think that the idea that the government doesn't know where
everyone is at all times will seem hard to imagine. (This is an IS statement
not an OUGHT statement)

~~~
growlist
I'm actually kind of surprised that we don't all have permanent connected
heart rate monitors already, in order that an ambulance can be called
automatically should something happen.

~~~
Ajedi32
[https://www.apple.com/apple-watch-
series-4/health/](https://www.apple.com/apple-watch-series-4/health/)

> With the new accelerometer and gyroscope, Apple Watch Series 4 can detect
> that you’ve fallen. When an incident like this occurs, a hard fall alert is
> delivered, and you can easily initiate a call to emergency services or
> dismiss the alert. If you’re unresponsive after 60 seconds, the emergency
> call will be placed automatically and a message with your location will be
> sent to your emergency contacts.

------
titzer
Carrying a phone can make you a suspect. Not carrying a phone can make you a
suspect.

Conclusion: You are a suspect.

I can't stand our culture's constant fear of people.

~~~
freeflight
Sadly it ain't even exclusive to the US [0]

[0] [https://youtu.be/pdIA0jeW-24](https://youtu.be/pdIA0jeW-24)

------
flavioramos
Good to know Google could help find missing people (specially in disasters
like missing planes and floods) but they just don't want to.

------
weej
>But by that point, police had already developed suspects without Google's
help, based on vehicle descriptions and a confidential informant, they said in
court filings.

Even with a lack of probable cause and massive data surveillance, good old
fashion police work is what mattered.

------
Paul-ish
My concern with this sort of search is it could evolve to be used in a
pretextual manner on small crimes.

"We have a reported flasher in this area, lets dump the cell phone record
locations to find them. Oh looks, there are people with warrants that live in
the area."

------
clort

      "Most human beings can't interpret large strings of numbers
      and GPS coordinates without a map to illustrate them, and
      judges are no exception," said Nathan Freed Wessler, an
      attorney for the national American Civil Liberties Union.
    

One would hope though (clearly not, in this case) that a judge would be
motivated to recognise when they were unable to interpret data like this that
they were given, and request that it be provided in a clearer form that they
could interpret.

If judges do not do that routinely then perhaps they should be required to do
so

~~~
justjash
You would hope, but I bet it rarely happens. I've only been in a courtroom
once and hope to never have to deal with that again. Its a real let down
seeing how decisions are made so quickly.

------
warp_factor
this article convinced me to never use an Android phone nor Google maps ever
again,

~~~
RestlessMind
Because you think Apple (iOS, Maps) is not susceptible to warrants? Or is
there some alternative which won't track you at all?

~~~
warp_factor
Apple doesn't track you by default (or when it does, it sends the data
anonymously).

The Apps on ios might track you, and that's why I will not use Google maps
again.

Your provider indeed tracks you, but at least for now, the accuracy is way
below GPS. It is an issue and we should all be worried about slippery slope
that it puts us all on.

~~~
Brotkrumen
>it sends the data anonymously

It shouldn't send anything at all if Apple was privacy minded. A warrant for
all anonymous data from that location combined with a provider data from that
cell and the user isn't anonymous anymore.

~~~
renholder
> _It shouldn 't send anything at all if Apple was privacy minded._

You can turn location services off at the device-level, which _stops_
everything from collecting your location data.

You can disallow apps, individually, from having access to your location data,
as well; but that requires granual settings that most people aren't aware of
and/or can't be arsed to go check every time that they install an app.

If I recall, correctly, apps using the Facebook SDK will still retrieve and
push the last known location (yay for pointers...) but that's a problem with
the app (and Facebook) moreso than it is with Apple.

So, this was just a long-winded and pointless way to say, you can prevent the
data from being sent but, agreed, Apple could do slightly better in this area;
however, I think it's a trade-off betwixt absolutely strict-privacy (e.g.:
explicit deny until approved) and usability for them.

------
VectorLock
Looking at the graph of reverse location searches over time (despite being an
atrocious way to present the information) shows that there were a lot when it
was first started and then quickly petered off. Is this an indication of its
efficiency, pushback from Google, or denials from judges, I wonder?

Edit: Or they were just hot on it after the training and then their interest
petered out.

~~~
rocqua
Or they had a backlog of active cases where it was effective, and then it
slowed to a steady-state of incoming cases.

------
forgottenpass
>ordering Google to identify the locations of cellphones that had been near
the crime scene in Eden Prairie

So, is the court pretending that Google isn't conducting a search that
involves every cell phone Google has ever known about, or are they saying
that's "Google's database" particularly describes the place to be searched?

------
aussieguy1234
So the police have a list of 1000 people who were near a crime scene. Next
step is to narrow it down - racial profiling, who has a criminal record...
Young people are statistically more likely to commit violent crime, that's
probably taken into account.

It might be wise to turn off location if you belong to any minority group.

------
acd
The interesting point would be if its repeat crime by the same person. Say
that the same cell phone has been at several crime scenes during the crime
period.

The combined data set/cluster of cell phones present at the time during crime
scenes would be interesting for the police.

~~~
tyingq
Or maybe casing places/people for something they want to do later. You
know...pre-crime.

------
onetimemanytime
question: can an appeals judge later throw out the warrant, if the judge
applied the law "incorrectly"?

This technique makes sense _for cops_. For a lot of killings there's a lit of
potential suspects so this weeds out all but a few.

~~~
cf141q5325
It doesnt weed out anyone. You dont have to have your phone with you during a
crime.

~~~
onetimemanytime
sure, but not everyone plans it perfectly. Plus, some are crimes of
opportunity

------
zyxzevn
Next steps: Identify all cars near a crime scene.

~~~
908087
Thanks to ALPR-laden vehicles constantly cruising around collecting this data
for sleazy companies like Vigilant, this is probably already happening.

This will be made even easier as more car manufacturers start installing GPS,
wifi and 4G as standard features so they can double dip by collecting data on
the people who pay them tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for a car.

~~~
the_pwner224
This is already happening

We have a 2018 Nissan Rogue and Toyota RAV4 (as well as previously a 2015
RAV4). Every time you start the Rogue, it flashes a message saying that
"Vehicle Data Transmission is ON" (or "OFF"), and that certain features (live
traffic updates, etc.) may not work if data transmission is off. It is clearly
stated that data is transmitted to "Nissan and its business partners."

And these days the trend is for devices to have non-owner-controllable
software updates, so there's no guarantee that purchasing a car without this
antifeature will keep you safe.

With the Rogue you at least can (apparently) make a choice on keeping your
privacy or selling out in exchange for a better navigation system (still kind
of sad that this needs to be done after spending >$30k on it...), but with the
Toyotas there's no choice... they have some "HD Radio" technology (not related
to audio quality) which is used for traffic and weather data, and there's no
way to find out or control what it sends.

------
Kenji
Is anyone surprised that your cellphone location is used in a criminal
investigation? Silly people. Just a few years ago they caught a killer like
this around here. They asked the cell phone providers for location data,
pruned the group with what they knew about the killer and took a DNA test of
the remainder of the suspects. Easy.

------
iceninenines
Note that most police in the US can locate any mobile number _in real-time,_
usually within 100m, without a warrant.

------
_bxg1
Every time I see one of these I'm validated in my decision to switch to Apple.

~~~
stunt
Apple is the same. There are a lot of hidden regulations when you work on that
scale.

~~~
stunt
btw, this is the same story even if you use a feature phone. Mobile operators
are also sharing data and they have to keep all your data and activities for
at least 6 months. Telecommunications is full of these regulations.

------
turc1656
This should surprise no one. I believe this has been known for a while now.
This is one of the many reasons I have location services and GPS disabled on
my Android and have all that tracking/history disabled in my Google account.
GPS is only ever enabled precisely when I need it and only at those times (for
navigation only).

I also disable my wifi as well for the same reason - Google is able to track
your location based on that, and they absolutely do so. I've seen it
documented elsewhere. Only if you really need wifi enabled should you use it.

Also, call me crazy but I'm pretty sure there is a legal requirement that
mandates that warrants be very specific about who/what they apply to and what
they expect to find in order to be justifiable.

~~~
everdrive
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Android really appears to be a
different beast:

[https://qz.com/1131515/google-collects-android-users-
locatio...](https://qz.com/1131515/google-collects-android-users-locations-
even-when-location-services-are-disabled/)

~~~
turc1656
Interesting. But Google has something that allows all users to see what has
been collected on them. All of my stuff is empty - no website history, no
location history, no youtube history, etc. All of it is empty and always has
been when I check periodically.

So then the question becomes...is Quartz wrong or is Google simply lying about
what they have on me? And FWIW, I checked prior to the Quartz article being
written so it would have been before any actions were taken by Google to
modify its practices.

