39 ms·

Tracking Phones, Google Is a Dragnet for the Police

411 points by rasmi 7y ago

kyrra 7y ago
Even without Google or Apple, they police have the cell service providers. In the case of the Austin bomber from a year ago[0], police got cell tower records from the multiple bombings and figured out who was at all the locations. Cell phones are little trackers unless you turn them off or don't carry one. [0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna858791 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna85...
- dvtrn 7y ago
  Reading that article reminds me of a rather prophetically-accurate movie starring Will Smith and Gene Hackman "Emeny of the State"[0]. Granted, for a film that came out in 1998 it probably wasn't too hard to guess where things were headed w/rt surveillance compared to how seemingly prescient writings from the likes of Orwell and Bradbury were for their respective times. What stands out to me about the movie (because I went and fished out my DVD and decided to watch it this fine afternoon) was just how detailed David Marconi was in his depiction of brotherly tracking and surveillance. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemy_of_the_State_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemy_of_the_State_(film) Edit: attribution for the plot goes to writer David Marconi, I've fixed this for any fellow movie geeks who also care about such things ;)
  - vermontdevil 7y ago
    Hackman was also in another movie about spying and paranoia - The Conversation. Great movie. I know it’s not about nation states spying but wanted to add that here
    - dvtrn 7y ago
      Oh? Thanks for the recommendation, I'm a big fan of Hackman's acting and spy movies especially-lately, so I'll definitely be looking this up. Cheers
      - paxswill 7y ago
        Funnily enough, it also has Harrison Ford in it as well (one of the earlier films he was in).
        type0 7y ago
        Yeah, he's great there, almost uncanny how different and cold he is in that role.
      - akira2501 7y ago
        I hate to be this off topic, but also 'Heist' is a great movie which features a lot of social engineering and exploitation tactics to drive the plot.
        bookofjoe 7y ago
        There are 2 films with this title, from 2001 and 2015. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heist_(2001_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heist_(2001_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heist_(2015_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heist_(2015_film) Both have stellar casts.
        hopler 7y ago
        2001 had a much higher acclaimed script and was more appreciated by viewers
      - fzzzy 7y ago
        The Conversation is an absolute classic.
      - sys_64738 7y ago
        It's a great movie. Harrison Ford plays a secretary if I recall correctly.
    - bookofjoe 7y ago
      Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
    - jhayward 7y ago
      Hackman played the same character in both movies. His character in enemy of the state has some deliberate references (the raincoat, the workshop, the opening sequence).
    - braythwayt 7y ago
      Francis Ford Coppola said that “The Conversation” was his favourite Francis Ford Coppola movie. Watching “Enemy of the State,” it is quite clear that Hackman’s character is a nod at The Conversation’s Harry Caul. He plays an ex-spook who is extremely paranoid about surveillance, which is the exact state Caul gets into at the end of The Conversation!
  - duxup 7y ago
    I remembered watching that and thinking that it was apt.... but there's no damn way anyone gets access to all those different systems managed by different groups seamlessly. The bureaucracy involved would be immense, the various systems that can't talk to each other efficiently endless. I imagined all the overhead that would go into that and it hurt my brain ;)
    - joshka 7y ago
      A fun thought exercise to break the "can't do it" perspective. Imagine someone says they'll give you 10 million dollars to get it done, could you do it then?
      - duxup 7y ago
        I think the challenge is you don't know where the "runner" you're tracking is going and the variety of surveillance systems they tap into is a pretty big unknown.
        webreac 7y ago
        The inefficiency of administration is the last protection of our privacy ?
        duxup 7y ago
        I worry what happens when / if that isn't the case anymore. Just with data we're crossing what seems like a lot of "too late" moments.
    - hopler 7y ago
      The modern solution is that they give a contractor like Palantir access to all the gov databases, and the contractor builds a unified UI.
    - mirimir 7y ago
      Well, there's DEA's Special Operations Division (SOD). As I recall, they've done ~real-time busts of drug shipments. That is, from a cellular intercept in California to pulling over a semi on I95 for a broken taillight.
  - kirubakaran 7y ago
    Too bad Gene Hackman became an actor, instead of a CRISPR scientist
  - bookofjoe 7y ago
    "Eye in the Sky" (2015) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_in_the_Sky_(2015_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_in_the_Sky_(2015_film) explores this theme as well. A very good film starring Helen Mirren that seems to have slipped under the radar.
  - ImaCake 7y ago
    >prescient writings from the likes of Orwell While I agree some autocracies resemble Orwell's 1984, I hardly think western states fit the description. The powers undermining Western Democracies are a complex mix of corporate/state sponsored media, surveillance capitalism, and other more mundane forms of corruption and collusion. The fact that I can state these things without fear speaks volumes about the opposition to autocratic and anti-liberal forces. Bradbury's distraction based autocracy is a lot more interesting because it beats you over the head with a different type of control that in smaller doses could be used to disuade or control in a less Autocratic society.
- ignoramous 7y ago
  The problem is compounded by the fact that 4G and beyond have location triangulation specific features specially built in to them. The tech is only going to improve as today it isn't as accurate as GPS. I found that this Wikipedia article is a great little read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_tracking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_tracking
  - bookofjoe 7y ago
    Just read that 5G is going to be exponentially more precise at location tracking than 4G because there will be many, many more base stations with comparatively short range.
- bestnameever 7y ago
  They mention that in the article but they state that the data from Google is much more precise, which makes sense. >"But despite the drawbacks, detectives noted how precise the data was and how it was collected even when people weren’t making calls or using apps — both improvements over tracking that relies on cell towers."
- Jerry2 7y ago
  Since you work at Google, do you have any knowledge about Sensorvault? Where does the data come from?
  - kyrra 7y ago
    I have zero knowledge about this thing, I know as much as you do. I can talk all day about the payments ecosystem though. :) Google does publish a bit how they handle data requests. https://support.google.com/transparencyreport/answer/7381738?hl=en https://support.google.com/transparencyreport/answer/7381738... There was an article a couple months ago about reverse location search warrants. https://www.google.com/amp/s/slate.com/technology/2019/02/reverse-location-search-warrants-google-police.amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/slate.com/technology/2019/02/re...
    - Jerry2 7y ago
      Thank you! That was helpful.
- gist 7y ago
  > Even without Google or Apple, they police have the cell service providers Important to keep in mind that additional information provides corroboration at least in the mind of the jury and also detracts from issues regarding the information. This is illustrated by one of those Datelines' (or 48 Hours don't remember) that I saw recently. They exhumed a body to determine if the deceased was buried with contact lenses on. They then had some expert do tests with pigs to determine that it was really a contact lens and not something else. It was very clear right off that it was (anyone who has worn contacts would know this and additionally they even were marked with numbers on the lens). But the expert still went to this long and drawn out trouble (buried dead pig's eyes with lense on) that they clearly didn't have to do. Reason? You spend more time in front of the jury with a long story and it detracts from the problems with the story to begin with (someone iirc said 'she never goes to bed with contact lenses'). Similar and unrelated is restaurant food. Put a lot of vegtables on the plate and a fancy sauce swirl to detract from the small piece of meat or fish you have given the diner.
  - hopler 7y ago
    Vegetables are good food. Swirls looks nice. These are things people enjoy, not distractions.
    - gist 7y ago
      I did not say 'only reason'. Of course there could be other benefits. And I am guessing we are not talking about the same restaurant experiences either.
      - maimeowmeow 7y ago
        veggies are real cheap compared to meats. 1 pound of meat or seafood is 4-30 dollars wholesale versus 1-5 dollars a pound for veggies, so after markup, what are most dishes going to contain? Fillers: carbs and veggies.
        JohnFen 7y ago
- zelon88 7y ago
  But a Google or Apple smartphone can potentially contain the contact information about third parties who don't own Apple or Google smartphones themselves. Take a young person with an iPhone. Their 95 year old grandparents might not have a single piece of technology from 1990 onwards but because their grandson has their phone number, address, and birthday in his iPhone those people could potentially be vulnerable to tracking/snooping/violations of privacy.
  - crankylinuxuser 7y ago
    You'd be surprised how cheap a mask, crowbar, and a rental van is. Never underestimate this https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/ attack.
    - mirimir 7y ago
      Sometimes you don't even need the wrench. OK, so the feds were closing in on DPR. They knew that he had everything on his laptop, and that it was full-disk encrypted. One faction wanted to catch him in his room at home, by somehow doing a SWAT from a helicopter. But cooler heads prevailed. They just tailed him for a few days. So he sits down in the public library, and starts working. Two agents pretend to be a couple having a screaming match. While he's distracted, another agent grabs his laptop. Game over, and life in prison.
- UweSchmidt 7y ago
  Next level analysis could take into account which/whose phones are (untypically) switched off when the bombs went off. Next next level would take into account phones that are "left at home" - where the phone is not in use and not moving around according to usual movement patterns. I would guess that there is already substantial research done on exactly this, and that it is possible to detect many deviations of normal behaviour.
  - kingosticks 7y ago
    They used to do that in the TV series 24.
  - incompatible 7y ago
    What are the typical movement patterns for a phone at home? Mine is usually sitting on a particular spot on my desk.
    - spurgu 7y ago
      In that case you should be safe to go out and do some mischief! Or... image recognition in CCTV's might recognize your face and couple it with the fact that you're not carrying your mobile.
      - incompatible 7y ago
        I don't usually carry it when I go out, actually. I may be unusual.
      - JohnFen 7y ago
        Face recognition (even by humans), particularly with CCTV data, has a very high rate of false positives. You might be able to make the case that the fact that your phone wasn't there is evidence that the image isn't really you.
        spurgu 7y ago
        Except that footage of someone recognized as you walking out of your own apartment might be hard to refute. Plus I only see face recognition (and CCTV quality) getting better over time. Unfortunately.
DontGiveTwoFlux 7y ago
The article describes a case where an innocent man had to spend a week in jail. Eventually, he was released and the presumed actual perpetrator was caught. The lead seemed to come from the location data, so it wasn’t useless at least. But the so called justice system says that it got it right here. The innocent man lost his job when he couldn’t work for a week. Depending on his situation he could miss rent and be evicted too. Why do we have a system that says justice was served? It’s cruel and unfair. This dragnet police tactic will scoop up more bystanders and probably convict more than a few innocents as well. I like the timeline feature- it has been genuinely helpful for remembering when I did things months ago. The tie in with photos is also a fun way to remember trips. It’s sad that the cost of these features is to roll the dice on getting arrested because a crime was committed nearby.
- JumpCrisscross 7y ago
  > Why do we have a system that says justice was served? Suggest specific improvements and call them into your representatives. The closer you can make your proposals to a bill, the more likely it is that the problem becomes an issue. In this case, I’d argue we need publicly-subsidised attorneys for wrongful arrest. It should also be unlawful to dismiss an employee because they were arrested and never indicted. Giving people the right to notify employers, upon arrest, barring a specific request by the police (approved by a court), would also be prudent.
  - floren 7y ago
    > It should also be unlawful to dismiss an employee because they were arrested and never indicted. This would be huge. It's illegal to fire someone because they got called up on jury duty, and if someone is arrested but later found innocent the same rules should apply: in both cases you're involuntarily assisting the criminal justice system :)
  - est31 7y ago
    > Giving people the right to notify employers Why not ask your lawyer to do it for you? You already have the right to make a call to a lawyer.
fharper1961 7y ago
Location data can also be used to help prove your innocence. It sucks that this innocent person ended up suffering. Hopefully law enforcement will become better at figuring out false positives before arresting someone. I do like that the gov. doesn't have direct access. Seems to me like the more independent parties required to access the data, the lower the chances of abuse.
- gist 7y ago
  > Location data can also be used to help prove your innocence. Well not really. If that were the case and if someone was going to commit a crime they could simply place their phone in someone else's auto (let's say without them even knowing) and then have that data be the data that is 'them'. This would quickly unravel. Besides I don't think it's so much that the data is useful other than it gives clues and points in a particular direction whereby the police can then narrow down or look further into a particular suspect.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- ehsankia 7y ago
  I'm a little confused here. It turned out that it was his mother's ex-boyfriend, who had taken his car without permission. That explains the car, but how does it explain the location? Did he just happen to also leave close to there and was moving in a similar pattern? Was the phone inside the car? Really, the issue here was the car, without which they wouldn't have had enough evidence to get the person's information in the first place. Are you not partly responsible to whom you give your car to?
  - jfk13 7y ago
    If someone steals my car and uses it when committing a crime, I can accept that may well lead to questioning me. But I don't think it justifies keeping me in jail for a week.
wyldfire 7y ago
I'm about to go commit a crime. How do I turn off this feature?
- greenyoda 7y ago
  If you're going to commit a crime, leave your phone at home so that (1) you can't be linked to the crime scene and (2) there's evidence you may have been somewhere else (at home) at the time.
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    Also make sure your home activities continue as normal such as electricity, water, gas, and internet usage. And don’t use any vehicle with a license plate that can be tracked to you, or the area around your house. All that effort is better focused on committing legal white collar crimes, via plausible deniability and in person conversations that aren’t recorded.
    - chachachoney 7y ago
      > All that effort is better focused on committing legal white collar crimes, via plausible deniability and in person conversations that aren’t recorded. We've got about 5 minutes before "in person conversations that aren't recorded" are a historical artifact.
    - RoadieRoller 7y ago
      > And don’t use any vehicle with a license plate that can be tracked to you, or the area around your house. And don't use any vehicle which has navigation system or live traffic info screen.
- fatjokes 7y ago
  Leave it at home. Don't think that Google is the only culprit here. As long as you're connected to public infrastructure there's a company that will be legally obligated to narc on you. Google might be just the latest addition. Or maybe the traditional media has declared outright war on internet companies in retaliation for taking their ad and subscriber revenue.
kevingadd 7y ago
Ensnaring the innocent is a feature. Cops are happy to have opportunities to prosecute people for other stuff later on, or have someone take a guilty plea even if they didn't do it. It looks good for them. Not to mention fines for missing court dates (to keep your job, or because you don't have transportation).
Jerry2 7y ago
>Though Google’s data cache is enormous, it doesn’t sweep up every phone, said Mr. Edens, the California intelligence analyst. And even if a location is recorded every few minutes, that may not coincide with a shooting or an assault. >But despite the drawbacks, detectives noted how precise the data was and how it was collected even when people weren’t making calls or using apps — both improvements over tracking that relies on cell towers. So if you use Android, there's absolutely no way to turn this type of tracking off? What exactly are they using? Anyone know? This doesn't seem like the IEMI cell tower tracking that carriers do. And according to this sentence: >Apple said it did not have the ability to perform those searches. It appears that if you use iPhone and don't use Google's apps (Google Maps is the main culprit here?), Apple doesn't have a way of identifying your data and your data won't appear in Google's Sensorvault.. which appears to be massive: >Sensorvault, according to Google employees, includes detailed location records involving at least hundreds of millions of devices worldwide and dating back nearly a decade.
- fatjokes 7y ago
  That can't be right. Fork your own build and edit out the tracking code if you have to.
  - snazz 7y ago
    I’m pretty sure it would be somewhere within the Google Play Services blob. You should be good if you build your own AOSP, although binary hardware drivers might have the ability to do shady things.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 7y ago
  It sounds like all of this is basically "location history". Turn it off, and never accidentally click agree on one of the hundreds of "turn on location history for better XXX" prompts (usually assistant-related), and if understand the article right, you should be out of the dragnet.
- kevingrahl 7y ago
  You can turn off the collection of location data for Google. [1] You can also delete old location data. Google is saying that they won’t collect location data unless you opt-in but I’d assume most people just click on “Okay” once when asked to. Of course nobody really knows if Google honors your settings. [1] - https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3118687?hl=en https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3118687?hl=en
skookumchuck 7y ago
Why would google keep this data indefinitely? It should be routinely deleted after a month or so.
- hereiskkb 7y ago
  Big difference between what should be and what is in the real world.
Crontab 7y ago
Orwell never guessed that the government could outsource our dystopian nightmare to corporations.
- Theodores 7y ago
  He never mentioned capitalism or communism in the two childhood classics you know well. Yet I am fairly sure he knew of these systems. We could draw parallels so the details were best left out. I am not sure if the details of the zero hours contract of the person hired by the mega-corp the government outsourced the provisioning of room 101 rats to would have helped with the story. During WW2 the government in the UK did a fair bit of outsourcing. In fact, it was only with the post WW2 Labour government that major parts of the UK economy were nationalised. He did write about the duties of children to report thoughtcrime, I am sure that if he had over-added details about corporations instead of keeping it simple then the subtle details of how it is would not have been beyond Orwell.
- reddog 7y ago
  He also never guessed that we would eagerly stand in line to spend $1000 to buy our own tracking devices.
  - lucb1e 7y ago
    (Explaining my downvote: you know full well that the devices are not merely that. It's a useless comment.)
  - contravariant 7y ago
    Given that TVs were one of the tracking devices in his 1984 I'm not sure he would be entirely surprised.
AlphaWeaver 7y ago
One thing I haven't seen anyone comment on yet was the article's illustration of the technology... I think it did a good job of hypothetically showing how phone data could be collected in a geofence and explaining the process of narrowing it down and picking a potential subject. Regardless of the merit of this approach, I think NYT did a great job here of illustrating the process in a way that non-technical people could understand.
tgsovlerkhgsel 7y ago
The interesting thing is that from the article, it seems to me like the only data these searches are using is location history, so if that one is off, you should be unaffected.
- godelski 7y ago
  > so if that one is off, you should be unaffected. Problem is that you can't turn it off.
- Macross8299 7y ago
  I bet you anything that the "turn location history off" switch is just a placebo switch. All it does is send the data with additional flag saying that the data shouldn't be displayed to the end user.
sbov 7y ago
I turned off almost all tracking in Android a while ago, but never scanned the data it collected. I recently looked at what data was associated with my Google account, and there I saw: every voice command I ever issued my phone, and when I used what app. I could see at 9:30am I opened my camera app. I can see I viewed a notification at 9:45am. And so on. I deleted it all, but my guess is it probably still lives somewhere in Google. I knew they tracked search. I knew they would use my voice usage to make it better. I didn't realize how pathological they were in tracking literally everything I did with my phone and tying it to my account, down to what apps I opened and when. It's creepy as hell. It really made me want to just exit this whole smartphone shitfest, because I have to assume they're still tracking all this data, just not making it visible. Maybe Apple is better, maybe not. The problem is I can't know for sure, and if they lie - what could I do about it anyways?
- andrei_says_ 7y ago
  In addition to this, if the data exists, at some point in the future it will be compromised. The only way to avoid this is to not collect it. And to anyone who says “I have nothing to hide” — imagine your worst enemy having all this information about you easily searchable with the intention to weaponize it for their purpose.
  - tssva 7y ago
    I would guess that most of the people not worried because they have nothing to hide don't have a worst enemy.
    - mirimir 7y ago
      Or at least, a worst enemy that they don't see as one.
  - godelski 7y ago
    > And to anyone who says “I have nothing to hide” To anyone saying that, they need to stop quoting Nazi propaganda. Term is coined by (but not originating from) Goebbels. Note: The origin is from a fictional dystopia.
teamspirit 7y ago
I find it interesting in the bombing warrant they describe Google as "an email provider". Then follow it with, "The information to be searched...consists of Google location data...". It's not like they looked at the suspects emails. The fact that the police must have thought, "what is Google? Well, I have a gmail account, they're an email provider!".
sys_64738 7y ago
This is for Google Android phone only? Or Apple too? What if the real perp has an iPhone but Apple doesn't provide that info. Meanwhile an innocent who has an Android phone happens to fit the profile 'enough' for the cops to collar him. Sounds pretty much like a lawsuit in waiting...
- dontbenebby 7y ago
  My guess is if you're signed into Google services and have Google Maps installed, you would be in the dataset. (I tried using a custom search operator but can't find any mentions of "sensorvault" prior to the NYT article). I'm curious if you're included if you search in private browsing mode, or use the Goole Maps iOS application but haven't signed into it.
- Despegar 7y ago
  From the article: >Investigators who spoke with The New York Times said they had not sent geofence warrants to companies other than Google, and Apple said it did not have the ability to perform those searches.
eplanit 7y ago
Wow, we're edging closer: this + AI Crime Prediction[1] + Profiling[2], and we're basically at Minority Report. [1] https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-29047-3_28 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-29047-3_... [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0950705108000610 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09507...
- PorterDuff 7y ago
  https://arxiv.org/pdf/1611.04135v2.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1611.04135v2.pdf
caymanjim 7y ago
This isn't the best case to use as an example of police overreach and information dragnets. Yes, they arrested the wrong guy and held him for a week, but the right guy was using the wrong guy's car. I realize they initially identified him--at least in part--via the Google-provided information, but the reason they held him for a week is because it was his car that was used to commit the crime. At that point, it was absolutely reasonable and correct to assume that he was the perpetrator. If that hadn't been the case, they probably would have questioned him and never even arrested him. I'm not defending Google's information collection or the use of dragnets in general, but this is absolutely the wrong case to use as an example of how things can go wrong. Things did not go wrong here. This was good police work, and ultimately the arrest was not off-base, and led directly to the real perpetrator. Find a better example if you want to drum up fear about information abuse.
- slenk 7y ago
  It says in the story in the surveillance they can't make out the plates, so they don't know for sure it was his car.
danso 7y ago
Great to see a big follow up on the story which was first reported by a local news outlet in North Carolina: https://www.wral.com/Raleigh-police-search-google-location-history/17377435/?smid=nytcore-ios-share https://www.wral.com/Raleigh-police-search-google-location-h... I remember it being reported the same time as the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke out (literally the same week IIRC) and getting almost no notice, despite being, in my mind, a story with far greater implications about our privacy.
mirimir 7y ago
So if someone steals your phone, they can "place" you at a crime scene. Or even if they get physical access long enough to clone the SIM. People already do that to clone phones, to get free calls.
caprese 7y ago
> Months after his release, Mr. Molina was having trouble getting back on his feet. After being arrested at work, a Macy’s warehouse, he lost his job. His car was impounded for investigation and then repossessed. /Facepalm But before I go further on the social commentary, can we confirm that the arrest at work was the reason he lost his job, the week of being in jail being the reason he lost his job, performance due to the arrest being the reason?
warp_factor 7y ago
Something I never managed to fully confirm or deny: I manually disabled all the data collection on my Google account (search and location history). Is Google still tracking my location? Would I still appear in that database? I'm pretty much Google-free at this point except for some spam emails and the need for a google account for Android Play.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

411 points by rasmi 7y ago

Even without Google or Apple, they police have the cell service providers. In the case of the Austin bomber from a year ago[0], police got cell tower records from the multiple bombings and figured out who was at all the locations. Cell phones are little trackers unless you turn them off or don't carry one. [0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna858791 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna85...

dvtrn 7y ago
Reading that article reminds me of a rather prophetically-accurate movie starring Will Smith and Gene Hackman "Emeny of the State"[0]. Granted, for a film that came out in 1998 it probably wasn't too hard to guess where things were headed w/rt surveillance compared to how seemingly prescient writings from the likes of Orwell and Bradbury were for their respective times. What stands out to me about the movie (because I went and fished out my DVD and decided to watch it this fine afternoon) was just how detailed David Marconi was in his depiction of brotherly tracking and surveillance. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemy_of_the_State_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemy_of_the_State_(film) Edit: attribution for the plot goes to writer David Marconi, I've fixed this for any fellow movie geeks who also care about such things ;)
- vermontdevil 7y ago
  Hackman was also in another movie about spying and paranoia - The Conversation. Great movie. I know it’s not about nation states spying but wanted to add that here
  - dvtrn 7y ago
    Oh? Thanks for the recommendation, I'm a big fan of Hackman's acting and spy movies especially-lately, so I'll definitely be looking this up. Cheers
    - paxswill 7y ago
      Funnily enough, it also has Harrison Ford in it as well (one of the earlier films he was in).
      - type0 7y ago
        Yeah, he's great there, almost uncanny how different and cold he is in that role.
    - akira2501 7y ago
      I hate to be this off topic, but also 'Heist' is a great movie which features a lot of social engineering and exploitation tactics to drive the plot.
      - bookofjoe 7y ago
        There are 2 films with this title, from 2001 and 2015. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heist_(2001_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heist_(2001_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heist_(2015_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heist_(2015_film) Both have stellar casts.
        hopler 7y ago
        2001 had a much higher acclaimed script and was more appreciated by viewers
    - fzzzy 7y ago
      The Conversation is an absolute classic.
    - sys_64738 7y ago
      It's a great movie. Harrison Ford plays a secretary if I recall correctly.
  - bookofjoe 7y ago
    Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
  - jhayward 7y ago
    Hackman played the same character in both movies. His character in enemy of the state has some deliberate references (the raincoat, the workshop, the opening sequence).
  - braythwayt 7y ago
    Francis Ford Coppola said that “The Conversation” was his favourite Francis Ford Coppola movie. Watching “Enemy of the State,” it is quite clear that Hackman’s character is a nod at The Conversation’s Harry Caul. He plays an ex-spook who is extremely paranoid about surveillance, which is the exact state Caul gets into at the end of The Conversation!
- duxup 7y ago
  I remembered watching that and thinking that it was apt.... but there's no damn way anyone gets access to all those different systems managed by different groups seamlessly. The bureaucracy involved would be immense, the various systems that can't talk to each other efficiently endless. I imagined all the overhead that would go into that and it hurt my brain ;)
  - joshka 7y ago
    A fun thought exercise to break the "can't do it" perspective. Imagine someone says they'll give you 10 million dollars to get it done, could you do it then?
    - duxup 7y ago
      I think the challenge is you don't know where the "runner" you're tracking is going and the variety of surveillance systems they tap into is a pretty big unknown.
      - webreac 7y ago
        The inefficiency of administration is the last protection of our privacy ?
        duxup 7y ago
        I worry what happens when / if that isn't the case anymore. Just with data we're crossing what seems like a lot of "too late" moments.
  - hopler 7y ago
    The modern solution is that they give a contractor like Palantir access to all the gov databases, and the contractor builds a unified UI.
  - mirimir 7y ago
    Well, there's DEA's Special Operations Division (SOD). As I recall, they've done ~real-time busts of drug shipments. That is, from a cellular intercept in California to pulling over a semi on I95 for a broken taillight.
- kirubakaran 7y ago
  Too bad Gene Hackman became an actor, instead of a CRISPR scientist
- bookofjoe 7y ago
  "Eye in the Sky" (2015) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_in_the_Sky_(2015_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_in_the_Sky_(2015_film) explores this theme as well. A very good film starring Helen Mirren that seems to have slipped under the radar.
- ImaCake 7y ago
  >prescient writings from the likes of Orwell While I agree some autocracies resemble Orwell's 1984, I hardly think western states fit the description. The powers undermining Western Democracies are a complex mix of corporate/state sponsored media, surveillance capitalism, and other more mundane forms of corruption and collusion. The fact that I can state these things without fear speaks volumes about the opposition to autocratic and anti-liberal forces. Bradbury's distraction based autocracy is a lot more interesting because it beats you over the head with a different type of control that in smaller doses could be used to disuade or control in a less Autocratic society.
ignoramous 7y ago
The problem is compounded by the fact that 4G and beyond have location triangulation specific features specially built in to them. The tech is only going to improve as today it isn't as accurate as GPS. I found that this Wikipedia article is a great little read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_tracking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_tracking
- bookofjoe 7y ago
  Just read that 5G is going to be exponentially more precise at location tracking than 4G because there will be many, many more base stations with comparatively short range.
bestnameever 7y ago
They mention that in the article but they state that the data from Google is much more precise, which makes sense. >"But despite the drawbacks, detectives noted how precise the data was and how it was collected even when people weren’t making calls or using apps — both improvements over tracking that relies on cell towers."
Jerry2 7y ago
Since you work at Google, do you have any knowledge about Sensorvault? Where does the data come from?
- kyrra 7y ago
  I have zero knowledge about this thing, I know as much as you do. I can talk all day about the payments ecosystem though. :) Google does publish a bit how they handle data requests. https://support.google.com/transparencyreport/answer/7381738?hl=en https://support.google.com/transparencyreport/answer/7381738... There was an article a couple months ago about reverse location search warrants. https://www.google.com/amp/s/slate.com/technology/2019/02/reverse-location-search-warrants-google-police.amp https://www.google.com/amp/s/slate.com/technology/2019/02/re...
  - Jerry2 7y ago
    Thank you! That was helpful.
gist 7y ago
> Even without Google or Apple, they police have the cell service providers Important to keep in mind that additional information provides corroboration at least in the mind of the jury and also detracts from issues regarding the information. This is illustrated by one of those Datelines' (or 48 Hours don't remember) that I saw recently. They exhumed a body to determine if the deceased was buried with contact lenses on. They then had some expert do tests with pigs to determine that it was really a contact lens and not something else. It was very clear right off that it was (anyone who has worn contacts would know this and additionally they even were marked with numbers on the lens). But the expert still went to this long and drawn out trouble (buried dead pig's eyes with lense on) that they clearly didn't have to do. Reason? You spend more time in front of the jury with a long story and it detracts from the problems with the story to begin with (someone iirc said 'she never goes to bed with contact lenses'). Similar and unrelated is restaurant food. Put a lot of vegtables on the plate and a fancy sauce swirl to detract from the small piece of meat or fish you have given the diner.
- hopler 7y ago
  Vegetables are good food. Swirls looks nice. These are things people enjoy, not distractions.
  - gist 7y ago
    I did not say 'only reason'. Of course there could be other benefits. And I am guessing we are not talking about the same restaurant experiences either.
    - maimeowmeow 7y ago
      veggies are real cheap compared to meats. 1 pound of meat or seafood is 4-30 dollars wholesale versus 1-5 dollars a pound for veggies, so after markup, what are most dishes going to contain? Fillers: carbs and veggies.
      - JohnFen 7y ago
zelon88 7y ago
But a Google or Apple smartphone can potentially contain the contact information about third parties who don't own Apple or Google smartphones themselves. Take a young person with an iPhone. Their 95 year old grandparents might not have a single piece of technology from 1990 onwards but because their grandson has their phone number, address, and birthday in his iPhone those people could potentially be vulnerable to tracking/snooping/violations of privacy.
- crankylinuxuser 7y ago
  You'd be surprised how cheap a mask, crowbar, and a rental van is. Never underestimate this https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/ attack.
  - mirimir 7y ago
    Sometimes you don't even need the wrench. OK, so the feds were closing in on DPR. They knew that he had everything on his laptop, and that it was full-disk encrypted. One faction wanted to catch him in his room at home, by somehow doing a SWAT from a helicopter. But cooler heads prevailed. They just tailed him for a few days. So he sits down in the public library, and starts working. Two agents pretend to be a couple having a screaming match. While he's distracted, another agent grabs his laptop. Game over, and life in prison.
UweSchmidt 7y ago
Next level analysis could take into account which/whose phones are (untypically) switched off when the bombs went off. Next next level would take into account phones that are "left at home" - where the phone is not in use and not moving around according to usual movement patterns. I would guess that there is already substantial research done on exactly this, and that it is possible to detect many deviations of normal behaviour.
- kingosticks 7y ago
  They used to do that in the TV series 24.
- incompatible 7y ago
  What are the typical movement patterns for a phone at home? Mine is usually sitting on a particular spot on my desk.
  - spurgu 7y ago
    In that case you should be safe to go out and do some mischief! Or... image recognition in CCTV's might recognize your face and couple it with the fact that you're not carrying your mobile.
    - incompatible 7y ago
      I don't usually carry it when I go out, actually. I may be unusual.
    - JohnFen 7y ago
      Face recognition (even by humans), particularly with CCTV data, has a very high rate of false positives. You might be able to make the case that the fact that your phone wasn't there is evidence that the image isn't really you.
      - spurgu 7y ago
        Except that footage of someone recognized as you walking out of your own apartment might be hard to refute. Plus I only see face recognition (and CCTV quality) getting better over time. Unfortunately.

DontGiveTwoFlux 7y ago

The article describes a case where an innocent man had to spend a week in jail. Eventually, he was released and the presumed actual perpetrator was caught. The lead seemed to come from the location data, so it wasn’t useless at least. But the so called justice system says that it got it right here. The innocent man lost his job when he couldn’t work for a week. Depending on his situation he could miss rent and be evicted too. Why do we have a system that says justice was served? It’s cruel and unfair. This dragnet police tactic will scoop up more bystanders and probably convict more than a few innocents as well. I like the timeline feature- it has been genuinely helpful for remembering when I did things months ago. The tie in with photos is also a fun way to remember trips. It’s sad that the cost of these features is to roll the dice on getting arrested because a crime was committed nearby.

JumpCrisscross 7y ago
> Why do we have a system that says justice was served? Suggest specific improvements and call them into your representatives. The closer you can make your proposals to a bill, the more likely it is that the problem becomes an issue. In this case, I’d argue we need publicly-subsidised attorneys for wrongful arrest. It should also be unlawful to dismiss an employee because they were arrested and never indicted. Giving people the right to notify employers, upon arrest, barring a specific request by the police (approved by a court), would also be prudent.
- floren 7y ago
  > It should also be unlawful to dismiss an employee because they were arrested and never indicted. This would be huge. It's illegal to fire someone because they got called up on jury duty, and if someone is arrested but later found innocent the same rules should apply: in both cases you're involuntarily assisting the criminal justice system :)
- est31 7y ago
  > Giving people the right to notify employers Why not ask your lawyer to do it for you? You already have the right to make a call to a lawyer.

fharper1961 7y ago

Location data can also be used to help prove your innocence. It sucks that this innocent person ended up suffering. Hopefully law enforcement will become better at figuring out false positives before arresting someone. I do like that the gov. doesn't have direct access. Seems to me like the more independent parties required to access the data, the lower the chances of abuse.

gist 7y ago
> Location data can also be used to help prove your innocence. Well not really. If that were the case and if someone was going to commit a crime they could simply place their phone in someone else's auto (let's say without them even knowing) and then have that data be the data that is 'them'. This would quickly unravel. Besides I don't think it's so much that the data is useful other than it gives clues and points in a particular direction whereby the police can then narrow down or look further into a particular suspect.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
ehsankia 7y ago
I'm a little confused here. It turned out that it was his mother's ex-boyfriend, who had taken his car without permission. That explains the car, but how does it explain the location? Did he just happen to also leave close to there and was moving in a similar pattern? Was the phone inside the car? Really, the issue here was the car, without which they wouldn't have had enough evidence to get the person's information in the first place. Are you not partly responsible to whom you give your car to?
- jfk13 7y ago
  If someone steals my car and uses it when committing a crime, I can accept that may well lead to questioning me. But I don't think it justifies keeping me in jail for a week.

wyldfire 7y ago

I'm about to go commit a crime. How do I turn off this feature?

greenyoda 7y ago
If you're going to commit a crime, leave your phone at home so that (1) you can't be linked to the crime scene and (2) there's evidence you may have been somewhere else (at home) at the time.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  Also make sure your home activities continue as normal such as electricity, water, gas, and internet usage. And don’t use any vehicle with a license plate that can be tracked to you, or the area around your house. All that effort is better focused on committing legal white collar crimes, via plausible deniability and in person conversations that aren’t recorded.
  - chachachoney 7y ago
    > All that effort is better focused on committing legal white collar crimes, via plausible deniability and in person conversations that aren’t recorded. We've got about 5 minutes before "in person conversations that aren't recorded" are a historical artifact.
  - RoadieRoller 7y ago
    > And don’t use any vehicle with a license plate that can be tracked to you, or the area around your house. And don't use any vehicle which has navigation system or live traffic info screen.
fatjokes 7y ago
Leave it at home. Don't think that Google is the only culprit here. As long as you're connected to public infrastructure there's a company that will be legally obligated to narc on you. Google might be just the latest addition. Or maybe the traditional media has declared outright war on internet companies in retaliation for taking their ad and subscriber revenue.

kevingadd 7y ago

Ensnaring the innocent is a feature. Cops are happy to have opportunities to prosecute people for other stuff later on, or have someone take a guilty plea even if they didn't do it. It looks good for them. Not to mention fines for missing court dates (to keep your job, or because you don't have transportation).

Jerry2 7y ago

>Though Google’s data cache is enormous, it doesn’t sweep up every phone, said Mr. Edens, the California intelligence analyst. And even if a location is recorded every few minutes, that may not coincide with a shooting or an assault. >But despite the drawbacks, detectives noted how precise the data was and how it was collected even when people weren’t making calls or using apps — both improvements over tracking that relies on cell towers. So if you use Android, there's absolutely no way to turn this type of tracking off? What exactly are they using? Anyone know? This doesn't seem like the IEMI cell tower tracking that carriers do. And according to this sentence: >Apple said it did not have the ability to perform those searches. It appears that if you use iPhone and don't use Google's apps (Google Maps is the main culprit here?), Apple doesn't have a way of identifying your data and your data won't appear in Google's Sensorvault.. which appears to be massive: >Sensorvault, according to Google employees, includes detailed location records involving at least hundreds of millions of devices worldwide and dating back nearly a decade.

fatjokes 7y ago
That can't be right. Fork your own build and edit out the tracking code if you have to.
- snazz 7y ago
  I’m pretty sure it would be somewhere within the Google Play Services blob. You should be good if you build your own AOSP, although binary hardware drivers might have the ability to do shady things.
tgsovlerkhgsel 7y ago
It sounds like all of this is basically "location history". Turn it off, and never accidentally click agree on one of the hundreds of "turn on location history for better XXX" prompts (usually assistant-related), and if understand the article right, you should be out of the dragnet.
kevingrahl 7y ago
You can turn off the collection of location data for Google. [1] You can also delete old location data. Google is saying that they won’t collect location data unless you opt-in but I’d assume most people just click on “Okay” once when asked to. Of course nobody really knows if Google honors your settings. [1] - https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3118687?hl=en https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3118687?hl=en

skookumchuck 7y ago

Why would google keep this data indefinitely? It should be routinely deleted after a month or so.

hereiskkb 7y ago
Big difference between what should be and what is in the real world.

Crontab 7y ago

Orwell never guessed that the government could outsource our dystopian nightmare to corporations.

Theodores 7y ago
He never mentioned capitalism or communism in the two childhood classics you know well. Yet I am fairly sure he knew of these systems. We could draw parallels so the details were best left out. I am not sure if the details of the zero hours contract of the person hired by the mega-corp the government outsourced the provisioning of room 101 rats to would have helped with the story. During WW2 the government in the UK did a fair bit of outsourcing. In fact, it was only with the post WW2 Labour government that major parts of the UK economy were nationalised. He did write about the duties of children to report thoughtcrime, I am sure that if he had over-added details about corporations instead of keeping it simple then the subtle details of how it is would not have been beyond Orwell.
reddog 7y ago
He also never guessed that we would eagerly stand in line to spend $1000 to buy our own tracking devices.
- lucb1e 7y ago
  (Explaining my downvote: you know full well that the devices are not merely that. It's a useless comment.)
- contravariant 7y ago
  Given that TVs were one of the tracking devices in his 1984 I'm not sure he would be entirely surprised.

AlphaWeaver 7y ago

One thing I haven't seen anyone comment on yet was the article's illustration of the technology... I think it did a good job of hypothetically showing how phone data could be collected in a geofence and explaining the process of narrowing it down and picking a potential subject. Regardless of the merit of this approach, I think NYT did a great job here of illustrating the process in a way that non-technical people could understand.

tgsovlerkhgsel 7y ago

The interesting thing is that from the article, it seems to me like the only data these searches are using is location history, so if that one is off, you should be unaffected.

godelski 7y ago
> so if that one is off, you should be unaffected. Problem is that you can't turn it off.
Macross8299 7y ago
I bet you anything that the "turn location history off" switch is just a placebo switch. All it does is send the data with additional flag saying that the data shouldn't be displayed to the end user.

sbov 7y ago

I turned off almost all tracking in Android a while ago, but never scanned the data it collected. I recently looked at what data was associated with my Google account, and there I saw: every voice command I ever issued my phone, and when I used what app. I could see at 9:30am I opened my camera app. I can see I viewed a notification at 9:45am. And so on. I deleted it all, but my guess is it probably still lives somewhere in Google. I knew they tracked search. I knew they would use my voice usage to make it better. I didn't realize how pathological they were in tracking literally everything I did with my phone and tying it to my account, down to what apps I opened and when. It's creepy as hell. It really made me want to just exit this whole smartphone shitfest, because I have to assume they're still tracking all this data, just not making it visible. Maybe Apple is better, maybe not. The problem is I can't know for sure, and if they lie - what could I do about it anyways?

andrei_says_ 7y ago
In addition to this, if the data exists, at some point in the future it will be compromised. The only way to avoid this is to not collect it. And to anyone who says “I have nothing to hide” — imagine your worst enemy having all this information about you easily searchable with the intention to weaponize it for their purpose.
- tssva 7y ago
  I would guess that most of the people not worried because they have nothing to hide don't have a worst enemy.
  - mirimir 7y ago
    Or at least, a worst enemy that they don't see as one.
- godelski 7y ago
  > And to anyone who says “I have nothing to hide” To anyone saying that, they need to stop quoting Nazi propaganda. Term is coined by (but not originating from) Goebbels. Note: The origin is from a fictional dystopia.

teamspirit 7y ago

I find it interesting in the bombing warrant they describe Google as "an email provider". Then follow it with, "The information to be searched...consists of Google location data...". It's not like they looked at the suspects emails. The fact that the police must have thought, "what is Google? Well, I have a gmail account, they're an email provider!".

sys_64738 7y ago

This is for Google Android phone only? Or Apple too? What if the real perp has an iPhone but Apple doesn't provide that info. Meanwhile an innocent who has an Android phone happens to fit the profile 'enough' for the cops to collar him. Sounds pretty much like a lawsuit in waiting...

dontbenebby 7y ago
My guess is if you're signed into Google services and have Google Maps installed, you would be in the dataset. (I tried using a custom search operator but can't find any mentions of "sensorvault" prior to the NYT article). I'm curious if you're included if you search in private browsing mode, or use the Goole Maps iOS application but haven't signed into it.
Despegar 7y ago
From the article: >Investigators who spoke with The New York Times said they had not sent geofence warrants to companies other than Google, and Apple said it did not have the ability to perform those searches.

eplanit 7y ago

Wow, we're edging closer: this + AI Crime Prediction[1] + Profiling[2], and we're basically at Minority Report. [1] https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-29047-3_28 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-29047-3_... [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0950705108000610 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09507...

PorterDuff 7y ago
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1611.04135v2.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1611.04135v2.pdf

caymanjim 7y ago

This isn't the best case to use as an example of police overreach and information dragnets. Yes, they arrested the wrong guy and held him for a week, but the right guy was using the wrong guy's car. I realize they initially identified him--at least in part--via the Google-provided information, but the reason they held him for a week is because it was his car that was used to commit the crime. At that point, it was absolutely reasonable and correct to assume that he was the perpetrator. If that hadn't been the case, they probably would have questioned him and never even arrested him. I'm not defending Google's information collection or the use of dragnets in general, but this is absolutely the wrong case to use as an example of how things can go wrong. Things did not go wrong here. This was good police work, and ultimately the arrest was not off-base, and led directly to the real perpetrator. Find a better example if you want to drum up fear about information abuse.

slenk 7y ago
It says in the story in the surveillance they can't make out the plates, so they don't know for sure it was his car.

danso 7y ago

Great to see a big follow up on the story which was first reported by a local news outlet in North Carolina: https://www.wral.com/Raleigh-police-search-google-location-history/17377435/?smid=nytcore-ios-share https://www.wral.com/Raleigh-police-search-google-location-h... I remember it being reported the same time as the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke out (literally the same week IIRC) and getting almost no notice, despite being, in my mind, a story with far greater implications about our privacy.

mirimir 7y ago

So if someone steals your phone, they can "place" you at a crime scene. Or even if they get physical access long enough to clone the SIM. People already do that to clone phones, to get free calls.

caprese 7y ago

> Months after his release, Mr. Molina was having trouble getting back on his feet. After being arrested at work, a Macy’s warehouse, he lost his job. His car was impounded for investigation and then repossessed. /Facepalm But before I go further on the social commentary, can we confirm that the arrest at work was the reason he lost his job, the week of being in jail being the reason he lost his job, performance due to the arrest being the reason?

warp_factor 7y ago

Something I never managed to fully confirm or deny: I manually disabled all the data collection on my Google account (search and location history). Is Google still tracking my location? Would I still appear in that database? I'm pretty much Google-free at this point except for some spam emails and the need for a google account for Android Play.

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