4 ms·

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 op

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?

Normal_gaussian 9y ago
Unsurprisingly being in close proximity to a crime makes you a reasonable initial suspect. Identifying those close to a crime is and always has been standard and reasonable police procedure. The reasonableness of a subsequent search based on this location information is context dependent.
- roywiggins 9y ago
  It seems morally similar to scooping up all CCTV from nearby businesses. If this is going through a warrant process, and it's geofenced around a specific crime they're investigating, it's hard to feel too worried about it. The worst case scenario I can see is that it makes it easy to generate false hypotheses and put innocent people under suspicion, but then so can canvassing the neighborhood and trawling all the nearby CCTV.
  - Tronno 9y ago
    The difference is in that, while CCTV cameras are usually visible and obvious (many areas even have signs indicating as such), most people are unaware they are being tracked in the manner described in the article. CCTV and GPS "fencing" would be comparable if Google were to issue statements clarifying that your location is being tracked and recorded, and may be surrendered to the police without your knowledge.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - curun1r 9y ago
    CCTV is more analogous to a witness that provides a fixed point of view. Location data feels much closer to providing the point of view of the suspect and comes much closer, to my mind, to being protected by our 5th amendment rights to avoid self incrimination. Also, given that Google don't make it obvious when they're storing information in the phone or on their servers, information that intuitively feels like it's inside the phone should be protected by the 4th amendment's prohibitions on illegal searches. That's if the phone is owned by the suspect. If the phone is owned by the victim or anyone willing to give consent to search, I have no problem with police using it.
    - roywiggins 9y ago
      > 4th amendment's prohibitions on illegal searches. The due process required by the 4th amendment is performed when the court issues a warrant, which they did here. If Google were providing this without a warrant, or in response to an NSL or the feds were using the 3rd-party doctrine to argue that these searches weren't protected by the 4th amendment then I'd be worried.
      - curun1r 9y ago
        I get that existing case law is different, but I was providing my own interpretation of how I believe the 4th and 5th amendments should apply to a technology that the people who wrote those amendments could not have envisioned. I strongly believe that implementation details shouldn't be legal loopholes that allow law enforcement additional leeway. In this case, location information being stored on Google's servers is an implementation detail that isn't immediately obvious to non-technical people. > The due process required by the 4th amendment is performed when the court issues a warrant, which they did here The warrant was to search Google's servers, not the potential suspects' phones. What I'm saying is that I believe this data is logically part of the phone despite the fact that it resides on Google's servers because of the way that Google chose to implement their services. If they want to get a warrant for a specific person's phone because they believe the location information in the phone will prove that the suspect was in the area, that's different. But fishing for suspects using location data feels wrong to me. For one, it is almost guaranteed to also cover innocent people. Unless it's a remote area where only the perpetrator and victim were present, someone innocent will get unnecessarily dragged into the investigation.
  - kakarot 9y ago
    CCTVs don't invade my privacy by opening up my entire digital life to the police, including conversations and pictures that have nothing to do with the crime scene. It's completely different.
    - roywiggins 9y ago
      > CCTVs don't invade my privacy by opening up my entire digital life to the police Well, neither do the sorts of warrant mentioned in the article. They don't even get phone numbers, just arbitrary phone IDs and where they were located to be inside the region. If they were scooping up everyone's digital fingerprints en masse without probable cause and without a warrant, then that's something else entirely, but that didn't happen here.
      - kakarot 9y ago
        > They don't even get phone numbers, just arbitrary phone IDs "It's just metadata!"
Klathmon 9y ago
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 9y ago
  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-amendment-protect-21st-century-data-court-confronts-third-party-doctrine/ http://www.scotusblog.com/2017/08/symposium-will-fourth-amen...
John_KZ 9y ago
What's even worse is that sooner than later, not owning a cellphone with gps tracking will be seen as incriminating. Were you trying to hide your position? How do we know that you weren't there at the time of the crime?
- purple-again 9y ago
  I don’t think this is a valid fear. The cost of a state issued license is considered too high to be fair in use in a much less important area of society, voting. Ownership of a gps enabled tracking device? No chance that is ever cheap enough to be considered required to own as evidence against incarceration.

Normal_gaussian 9y ago

Unsurprisingly being in close proximity to a crime makes you a reasonable initial suspect. Identifying those close to a crime is and always has been standard and reasonable police procedure. The reasonableness of a subsequent search based on this location information is context dependent.

roywiggins 9y ago
It seems morally similar to scooping up all CCTV from nearby businesses. If this is going through a warrant process, and it's geofenced around a specific crime they're investigating, it's hard to feel too worried about it. The worst case scenario I can see is that it makes it easy to generate false hypotheses and put innocent people under suspicion, but then so can canvassing the neighborhood and trawling all the nearby CCTV.
- Tronno 9y ago
  The difference is in that, while CCTV cameras are usually visible and obvious (many areas even have signs indicating as such), most people are unaware they are being tracked in the manner described in the article. CCTV and GPS "fencing" would be comparable if Google were to issue statements clarifying that your location is being tracked and recorded, and may be surrendered to the police without your knowledge.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- curun1r 9y ago
  CCTV is more analogous to a witness that provides a fixed point of view. Location data feels much closer to providing the point of view of the suspect and comes much closer, to my mind, to being protected by our 5th amendment rights to avoid self incrimination. Also, given that Google don't make it obvious when they're storing information in the phone or on their servers, information that intuitively feels like it's inside the phone should be protected by the 4th amendment's prohibitions on illegal searches. That's if the phone is owned by the suspect. If the phone is owned by the victim or anyone willing to give consent to search, I have no problem with police using it.
  - roywiggins 9y ago
    > 4th amendment's prohibitions on illegal searches. The due process required by the 4th amendment is performed when the court issues a warrant, which they did here. If Google were providing this without a warrant, or in response to an NSL or the feds were using the 3rd-party doctrine to argue that these searches weren't protected by the 4th amendment then I'd be worried.
    - curun1r 9y ago
      I get that existing case law is different, but I was providing my own interpretation of how I believe the 4th and 5th amendments should apply to a technology that the people who wrote those amendments could not have envisioned. I strongly believe that implementation details shouldn't be legal loopholes that allow law enforcement additional leeway. In this case, location information being stored on Google's servers is an implementation detail that isn't immediately obvious to non-technical people. > The due process required by the 4th amendment is performed when the court issues a warrant, which they did here The warrant was to search Google's servers, not the potential suspects' phones. What I'm saying is that I believe this data is logically part of the phone despite the fact that it resides on Google's servers because of the way that Google chose to implement their services. If they want to get a warrant for a specific person's phone because they believe the location information in the phone will prove that the suspect was in the area, that's different. But fishing for suspects using location data feels wrong to me. For one, it is almost guaranteed to also cover innocent people. Unless it's a remote area where only the perpetrator and victim were present, someone innocent will get unnecessarily dragged into the investigation.
- kakarot 9y ago
  CCTVs don't invade my privacy by opening up my entire digital life to the police, including conversations and pictures that have nothing to do with the crime scene. It's completely different.
  - roywiggins 9y ago
    > CCTVs don't invade my privacy by opening up my entire digital life to the police Well, neither do the sorts of warrant mentioned in the article. They don't even get phone numbers, just arbitrary phone IDs and where they were located to be inside the region. If they were scooping up everyone's digital fingerprints en masse without probable cause and without a warrant, then that's something else entirely, but that didn't happen here.
    - kakarot 9y ago
      > They don't even get phone numbers, just arbitrary phone IDs "It's just metadata!"

Klathmon 9y ago

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 9y ago
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-amendment-protect-21st-century-data-court-confronts-third-party-doctrine/ http://www.scotusblog.com/2017/08/symposium-will-fourth-amen...

John_KZ 9y ago

What's even worse is that sooner than later, not owning a cellphone with gps tracking will be seen as incriminating. Were you trying to hide your position? How do we know that you weren't there at the time of the crime?

purple-again 9y ago
I don’t think this is a valid fear. The cost of a state issued license is considered too high to be fair in use in a much less important area of society, voting. Ownership of a gps enabled tracking device? No chance that is ever cheap enough to be considered required to own as evidence against incarceration.