16 ms·

Feds ordered Google location dragnet to solve Wisconsin bank robbery

204 points by heshiebee 7y ago

693471 7y ago
That's why you do crime in airplane mode
- Litmus2336 7y ago
  Google really needs to release a dedicated "Crime Mode" so we don't need to keep using this airplane mode workaround.
  - ChuckMcM 7y ago
    $9.99 a month "identity masking", lets you run your android device in stealth mode. (I'm being sarcastic of course). One of my SDR projects was to boot a GSM base station if my burglar alarm went off and store copies of every IMEI it can see in the cloud. Seems like it would be a better lead to hand investigators than a fuzzy security camera shot.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - TuringNYC 7y ago
      And investigators probably would not care — consider how many identity theft cases have the ID thief on camera (in my case, at a hardware store opening up a line of credit in sight of store cameras, and later using a cloned card at an ATM machine, surely in view of an ATM camera.)...yet despite thousands stolen in ID theft cases, there is hardly ever any action taken.
      - ChuckMcM 7y ago
        My thought would be they could track the phone of the person, who would probably still have it on them, and using that and a fuzzy security camera image have enough evidence to arrest them at least.
    - davinic 7y ago
      It's a great idea but is it legal to operate a personal Stingray?
      - ChuckMcM 7y ago
        Yes! Well let me be a bit more clear. The FCC has a process for, and indicated they would likely approve, a special temporary operating license for such a device given that it would only operate for a short time (during the break-in) and not interfere with the thieve's or neighbor's cell phones as it would respond with no compatible roaming network. Also it wouldn't do any sort of interception or monitoring other than the tower ping. It would also need permission from the licensed spectrum holder, that could be harder to get. But yes, completely legit with the right paperwork.
        davinic 7y ago
        Wow, I'm a bit surprised by that. Thank you for answering.
        ChuckMcM 7y ago
        I was a little as well, I happened to be at an SDR conference and one of the attendees was a lawyer working with the FCC on licensing issues[1]. I gave him my use case and he said that if it was constrained the way I said it would be, then if it came through their office they would likely approve it. [1] The FCC has been pretty engaged in understanding the impacts of SDRs because of their potential for abuse (as one attendee called it, "The Drones of spectrum." As an amateur (AI6ZR) and someone in industry I've been helping as an SME to explain some of this stuff to their less technical staff.
  - bitL 7y ago
    The whole "jailbreaking the phone" business gets suddenly a completely new meaning...
  - umvi 7y ago
    I can see the mental gymnastics now: "Criminals deserve just as much privacy and safety as anyone else. If the government violates the criminal's rights to solve, prevent, or preempt crimes, even more crimes have occurred (privacy violations, killing of the criminal, etc.) There should be explicit modes for phones and browsers available to criminals that allow them to safely commit crimes without risk of their rights being infringed upon."
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - henryfjordan 7y ago
      I know you were being facetious, but a mode somewhere in between "track me" (data enabled) and "remove my phone from the network" (airplane mode) would be nice. Maybe "for the next hour, don't do the normal location-tracking/biometrics monitoring/reporting". I get that Google has no incentive to make that feature but maybe Apple does?
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    - robk 7y ago
      That sounds plausible in the UK
    - kaybe 7y ago
      Well, who defines what a crime is? The problem starts there, I'd say.
    - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
      Basically every normal adult commits at least misdemeanors daily (in the sense that a bored cop could stick you with one and an aggressive prosecutor could nail you for it if you didn't get a decent lawyer) crimes all the time. Trying to make a black and white distinction between criminals and everyone else is futile.
  - munk-a 7y ago
    I feel like, as soon as you enabled this feature, your phone would start broadcasting more. I suppose we can sorta thank the FEC for their crazy broadcast device requirements when it comes to suspecting whether airplane mode actually stops a device from dialing home.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - coding123 7y ago
    They can't call it that. But they can call it... Incognito. Plus then you can just tell the cops: "i was watching xhamster all night.. see my phone was in porn mode (you know incognito is called porn mode)"
- colechristensen 7y ago
  I certainly do not trust my phone to turn all radios off on airplane mode or with wifi or bluetooth shut off. I could pretty easily verify my suspicions but I think others already have.
  - judge2020 7y ago
    Reminds me of https://gizmodo.com/automatic-wifi-login-helped-police-id-teens-who-vandali-1836249333 https://gizmodo.com/automatic-wifi-login-helped-police-id-te...
- bitL 7y ago
  Your locations from the time your phone was in airplane mode are uploaded the moment you switch it back to normal Wi-Fi connection. I guess your only choice is going full-on tinfoil/Faraday cage-style though that might be a bit impractical while doing the deeds...
  - persistent 7y ago
    Is that true on Android? On iOS location APIs just don't work in airplane mode.
    - nradov 7y ago
      Android allows the user to turn location on in airplane mode.
      - twothamendment 7y ago
        Yes, I do this all the time when I'm hiking out backpacking. Without any cell or WiFi nearby I try to save battery by turning them off. When I want to check a location on my map I enable the location long enough to get a GPS fix and turn it off.
    - bradyd 7y ago
      I just tested this on my iPhone and location works just fine in airplane mode, even with WiFi off.
      - persistent 7y ago
        I wonder why. Mine doesn't work, it says location could not be determined. iPhone 7, iOS 12.4.
      - saagarjha 7y ago
        It's probably using GPS, which AFAIK is not affected by Airplane Mode (probably because it's passive?)
  - 7y ago
- deleted 7y ago
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- deleted 7y ago
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- Jerry2 7y ago
  > That's why you do crime in airplane mode Heh, are you a fed? ;) >Google is tracking you. Even when you're in Airplane Mode without SIM card https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0G6mUyIgyg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0G6mUyIgyg
- dane-pgp 7y ago
  I have to wonder why Google removed the ability for apps to put a phone into airplane mode / turn off the GSM antenna. Perhaps it was a legitimate UX consideration or some weird unintended consequence of a regulation about radio transmissions. Still, it would be nice if the default for phones was to not be connected to the mobile network. Instead, they could listen out for a signal broadcast on an FM frequency (for example), and only connect to the mobile network when a specific unique ID was sent, indicating that you have an incoming call. (The unique ID would be agreed with the radio transmitter in secret before hand, and changed after each call). When your phone is on a Wi-Fi network, it could instead have all incoming calls directed to it that way, like a softphone, meaning you would only rarely have to reveal your location to the mobile network. The economics of this could work in some places (based on my rough guesses), but not if users had to root their phone to grant apps this permission to turn airplane mode on and off. I also don't know how much battery life would be required to be constantly processing an incoming FM signal in software (at least whenever the phone was off a Wi-Fi network). I'm also assuming that phones have FM receivers that apps can interact with, or that this could be an external device, connected via BlueTooth, perhaps.
  - dane-pgp 7y ago
    I wish I knew what is apparently so objectionable about my comment above. Is it just that the system I'm proposing is impractical for some reason, or do people object to the goal of preventing governments from tracking the movements of basically all their citizens all the time? As an example of the sort of society I am hoping to avoid, let me offer this article: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/11/top_judge_mulls_compulsory_mobile_phone_carrying/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/11/top_judge_mulls_com...
    - salawat 7y ago
      Probably an annoyed location data salesman? In all seriousness though, I'm pretty sure your system fails in the deliverability department. Mobile phones are meant to be...well... mobile, and that functionality basically requires that when a call intended for you is started from somewhere else, there has to be a way for the signal to get correctly switched to where you are. If you treat cell towers as switches, that then means that each tower maintains a routing table of handsets within it's area which allows the signal to eventually find it's way to you. This is the fundamental operating principle behind packet switching and the Internet in general. Let's say there's 4 cells. A, B, C, and D. I call you from A. You're in D's coverage area. A can connect to B and C, and C can connect to A, B, and D, B cannot see D. My handset tells the switch behind cell tower A I'm looking for you. It checks it's routing table to see if it's serving you, and finds it can't, so it pings the next switch that has announced a possible route (C). C checks it's routing table, to find you and doesn't, but it sees D knows of you, so forwards to D. D knows you're there, so it finally connects the call. The circuit is made. This works because information about what handsets are in range, and which cell knows routes to what is constantly updated and propagated through the network. So if you took a trip out of D to B while on a call, the call would not have to terminate since the towers hand you off from tower to tower as your handset's location changes. The system you propose though, breaks that paradigm. Since the cell tower has no way of tracking the handsets in its service area, every possible tower has to chirp to see if your phone will respond. Once your session is established, some of the normal routing protocols can still be reused, however, the initial connection stage is where it gets problematic. Routing tables clean themselves up over time, so if you don't use your phone for long enough, you essentially cause the system to attempt a network-wide chirp just for you. Now multiply that by everyone, times the timeout to voicemail, on every tower on the network. Not ideal. You have no way of telling whether the call connected with the handset until the handset actually answers, or every switch gives up and returns cannot connect as dialed. You're a walking DoS attack because someone wants to call you, and you won't pick up your damn phone. Furthermore, your scheme degenerates to the current arrangement if an always available mobile data connection is assumed, as your phone will just establish a session every time it sends data. Basically, it's not the telephone part that makes you traceable. It's the "I can guarantee synchronous delivery part". And hell, even if you throw out the mobile bit, phone records still the you to a location; it just takes a bit more footwork and a cooperative witness/wiretap to prove it's you. It's a pretty in depth problem, with a lot of nuances to be squirreled out. It takes a long time to explain, and even if someone could get most of the way there, that's only the start of the issue. I've got friends who have tried making ISP's before, and the amount of friction created by monolithic telco's is absolutely insane even when you aren't doing anything exotic. You have to remember as well, telephony isn't magic. You're eating up bandwidth all the time. Stuff is incredibly fast nowadays, but everyone is using it too. Also, all successful networking suffers from tracibility problems. Things just get mitigated slightly by jurisdictional boundaries and the impracticalities of being able to trace through sufficient levels of proxy links. So it's not surprising you got a few "you really don't get it" downvotes. Anyway... Hope that explains things, and I'm sure there's a bunch of detail I'm missing. EDIT: Additional thinking: there's other reasons why a telco/mobile provider would want all handsets connected at all times even when not doing calls. It gives them an idea of where they need to install or upgrade infrastructure based on metrics w.r.t how many handsets are in the cell. Basically, from a business standpoint, there is little reason to not go the direction that we have. The privacy concern does change things a bit. Not sure whether it would be enough to drive a push to abandon/change things so drastically. It's an interesting thought experiment though that I will happily cogitate on for weeks in my idle time. I like devising new protocols.
- Ajedi32 7y ago
  Airplane mode doesn't turn off GPS. What you want to do is turn off location, or location history at the very least.
devoply 7y ago
> With nearly a year elapsed since the warrant was served, that suggests this particular reverse location search may not have been as fruitful as investigators hoped. They did not find anything. But God help you if you have a prior record and happen to be black or match the description of the assailants... and just happened to be around the bank at the time.
- henryfjordan 7y ago
  It's not like they couldn't do all that without google's help. They would have looked at every camera nearby, talked to every witness, etc. If your name/face came up and you had priors or matched the description you'd get a visit. Google's data is probably more accurate/scoped and more impervious to bias than the other options they had.
- EpicEng 7y ago
  >But God help you if you have a prior record and happen to be black or match the description of the assailants... and just happened to be around the bank at the time Seems reasonable that you would be approached by investigators if you were present at the scene and matched a witness description.
  - devoply 7y ago
    It would be fine if they simply approached people and tried to rule them out, but due to the psychopathy in the justice department they often try to paint the people they find into the perp often hiding evidence that exonerates them.. in other cases photo-shopping their face to cover up tattoos to make them look more like the assailant. The issue is that prosecutors don't act in good faith... and because of that legitimate exercises maybe used against people in illegitimate ways.
    - EpicEng 7y ago
      Yes that sort of thing happens, but "often"? How often are we talking here? You make it sound like a common occurrence and I'm not convinced that's the case.
altmind 7y ago
Can't Feds ask mobile phone servers providers(there are only couple of them in US) for phones registered at specific base station? I think police have been doing this for ages.
- javagram 7y ago
  They can but that could pick up way more people and not be accurate enough for location tracking. Cell sites can have a range of multiple miles. Phones have a much more accurate location history since they can localize using AGPS. And with google location history turned on it stores that location to googles cloud.
  - novok 7y ago
    I thought the cell sites triangulate the location of customers for better analytics. It's not AGPS level, but it isn't single cell site range either.
    - bilbo0s 7y ago
      If you were a cop, would you want the AGPS range data? or some triangulated range of phones? Cops are only doing what makes sense. You can't really blame them. There needs to be a law that prevents them from doing it. Absent that, people need to stop being so liberal with their information. This was a bank robbery, but the principle certainly applies to other activities as well. I mean really, do you really need your phone on you if you're going to see your mistress? I don't think you do.
      - Iolaum 7y ago
        Not receiving/responding to messages from family and/or friends can be a signal in itself.
    - superkuh 7y ago
      Multilateration. And yeah, it gets down to ~100 meters with good clocks. And this data is stored by all US telcos for 2-5 years.
persistent 7y ago
Governments serve Google with over-broad search warrants frequently, but there is not information in this article stating or implying that Google responded to this or other similar warrants. Google has a whole department of attorneys dedicated to evaluating search warrants. They claim they won't comply with vague and overbroad warrants. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeKKHxcJfh0&feature=youtu.be&t=72 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeKKHxcJfh0&feature=youtu.be...
- HnSpectre 7y ago
  > They claim they won't comply with vague and overbroad warrants. Assumably it’s the judge’s opinion on this that matters, right? In the case of a national security letter this fight wouldn’t even be public. Assume the worst.
  - henryfjordan 7y ago
    A judge would review the warrant before issuing it hopefully. I think Google can basically say "Look, this is a bad warrant and you'd be better off narrowing it a bit" and that would work in most cases. You, as a defendant, can also challenge the warrant as part of your trial if you are caught, potentially getting the results of the search thrown out.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      Can you if there's a national security "concern"?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- zaroth 7y ago
  TFA says the warrant was executed. > It was an aggressive technique, scooping up every Android phone in the area and trusting police to find the right suspects in the mess of resulting data. But the court found it entirely legal, and it was returned as executed shortly after.
- deleted 7y ago
rdtsc 7y ago
Wonder if someone suspected Feds would do this, they could ask their accomplice to take their phone and walk around with it in a different part of town. They would then have a alibi and be discarded as a potential suspect.
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  Just FYI, you would have to have an exceedingly clever accomplice. They would need to walk around in a part of town where there are no cameras, and preferably very few witnesses. (If someone remembers seeing him alone, or cameras verify he was alone, or God forbid, if one of his buddies sees him and strikes up a conversation, the gig is up.) Your accomplice would have to take possession of the phone at a comfortable distance from the target bank. (Again, in a place that no one, and no camera can observe the arrival of either party.) And the co-conspirator actually robbing the bank would have to make his/her way to said bank without being observed leaving the phone drop site. (And without being observed traveling in a direction inconsistent with his/her phone's location data.) All of that is not as easy as it sounds. One traffic camera on a stoplight and they got you, in your car, heading towards the bank, in the opposite direction of your phone. Now your co-conspirator is in trouble too. (Aiding and Abetting at minimum.) We're creeping towards an age of ubiquitous gaze, and only people who are way smarter than I really know if there's any averting it at this point. I think the only real defense against ubiquitous, 24/7 surveillance right now is to live life in a remarkably unremarkable fashion.
  - usujejjebe 7y ago
    Or they could just leave their phone at home, or at work, where they probably spend most their time. It's not yet illegal to walk around without phone. "Show me your papers citizen"
  - andromeduck 7y ago
    Go hiking?
  - HanayamaTriplet 7y ago
    In addition to your concerns, I don't think there's even anything to be gained by intentionally trying to create a false trail since the warrant only looked for phones in the area of the bank around the time of the robbery. The robbers could just as easily leave their phones at home (or any other place far away from the bank) and they would not be flagged by the reverse location search.
melling 7y ago
There’s probably a market for bank cameras with image recognition that automatically set a silent alarm if they spot a gun. Several cameras inside and out could track the individuals.
- inetknght 7y ago
  I don't think you understand the problem scope. Guns are hidden behind clothing and you're going to have a lot of false positives.
  - melling 7y ago
    In this instance, it certainly would have worked. “One man jumped onto the teller counter and pulled out a handgun, throwing down a garbage bag for the tellers to fill with money” Outside cameras could have tracked them into a car, if it was reasonably close. A security firm can monitor for false positive. This would probably work for your average convenience store robbery too. In the US, we have a large market for security.
    - whenchamenia 7y ago
      Perhaps you would be suprused by the number of people who carry guns 24/7. This would be very hard to implement.
      - melling 7y ago
        I didn’t say it would be easy. I said there’s probably a market for it. As with any real world problem, there are lots of obstacles. Sure, your AI will need to figure out if the gun is being pointed at someone, etc.
      - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
        Perhaps you'd be surprised that some countries with banks have very few guns in private possession.
      - toomanybeersies 7y ago
falcolas 7y ago
This is particularly relevant with the recent discussion around Amazon's Ring partnership with law enforcement. "We will always ask you for permission" gets a bit thin when warrants like this can be issued.
- sdinsn 7y ago
  Well of course. Warrants are warrants, it doesn't matter whether Amazon has a partnership or not.
m3kw9 7y ago
Like straight out of movie Hell or high water
sdinsn 7y ago
Slightly misleading title. "In an attempt to solve" would be better, since the case is still unsolved.
kissickas 7y ago
Why does the article say they got "every Android phone in the area" - are iPhones using Google Maps not going to get picked up as well?
- uponcoffee 7y ago
  There's a difference between always on location data/telemetry baked into android and using google msps.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- megaremote 7y ago
  Google maps is not on all the time.
  - hans1729 7y ago
    IIRC, Google Maps is still opt-in (opposed to "Maps"), at least it was when I got my phone ~3 years ago
doodliego 7y ago
"If you do the crime, leave the phone behind." Criminals will adapt, they always do. Because this was a bank robbery, it's a Federal warrant which is harder for Google to fight or procrastinate on (if for some reason they chose to).
- girvo 7y ago
  Most criminals I knew over a decade ago knew this already. Phones were left behind as much as possible, batteries pulled out when discussions happened, and so on. I’m long away from that world (been clean for 7 years), but I would be surprised if they’ve not adapted even further
Zenst 7y ago
Most criminals tend to use burner phones of the non-smart variation.
rhacker 7y ago
2010 - 2030 This kind of thing happens with lots of alarming stories in the news. People are kind of worried that they will get dragged in as a crime suspect simple because they were driving by the area when a crime was being committed nearby. 2030 - 2040 This kind of investigation becomes so common that the independent news outlets just stop finding instances of it. People are kind of relaxing about it. 2040 - 2050 It turns out that, like DNA evidence, there's now an entire innocence project started dedicated to getting people out of incarceration for any crime where the totality of evidence was GPS data and some made up stories. 2050 -> Oh sorry that new energy source blew up, earth is gone.
- cf498 7y ago
  I fear the timeline is way too optimistic. It wont take till 2030 to normalize. >It turns out that, like DNA evidence, there's now an entire innocence project started dedicated to getting people out of incarceration for any crime where the totality of evidence was GPS data and some made up stories. Is also already the case. Denmark had such a problem recently. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/20/world/europe/denmark-cellphone-data-courts.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/20/world/europe/denmark-cell... https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/23/20829490/denmark-cellphone-location-data-evidence-flaw-police-trial-convictions https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/23/20829490/denmark-cellphon...
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  You're assuming this will wind up being like DNA. Given the history of every other technique the cops have ever used to solve crime I'm betting it's gonna wind up somewhere between forensic bite mark analysis and eyewitness testimony (i.e. not worth shit unless you've got a lot of other stuff to corroborate it). Of course a generation of prosecutors will get to make their careers on this kind of crap before it gets debunked.
  - rhacker 7y ago
    Well beyond suggesting that, as stated in other threads, as the criminals get smarter they will simply leave the phone at home and yes, innocent people that have a digital footprint near (and when) the crime will be caught instead. Once the police have identified a potential fall guy and they are black, or an immigrant or some other disadvantage, we'll see eyewitnesses come forward to "help" the police officer.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
_trampeltier 7y ago
- Why asking Google? (My GPS is allways off) - Why not ask the phone providers? - Even the dumbest criminal does know today, don't carry your phone with you, if you do something like this. I switzerland was a murder an rape case close to one of most busy highway. The police asked the phone providers for phones in this area (highway included). The first bill from the providers was 860'000CHF, they reduced it later to 200'000CHF. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nzz.ch/amp/schweiz/teure-ueberwachungen-kantone-sollen-kuenftig-pauschale-bezahlen-ld.1446017 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nzz.ch/amp/schweiz/teure-ue...
- loa_in_ 7y ago
  I wonder, is Google even compensated by US feds in the article story?
wpdev_63 7y ago
Isn't this a blatant constitutional violation? Maybe while they are at it they can search through everyone's house as they "might be there". Granted the fusion center already have access to this information - alot of times they have to make it official to be admissible in court. So there might be something foul in play here(besides the blatant 4th amendment violation).
mtgx 7y ago
It looks like the expression "build it and they will come" is true after all. Build the spying infrastructure against your users, and the government will inevitably come to ask for (full) access to it. I feel like this should be a new "law" of some kind, like MTGX's Law. Or fine, don't give me credit, call it something more generic like the Law of Corporate Surveillance.

204 points by heshiebee 7y ago

693471 7y ago

That's why you do crime in airplane mode

Litmus2336 7y ago
Google really needs to release a dedicated "Crime Mode" so we don't need to keep using this airplane mode workaround.
- ChuckMcM 7y ago
  $9.99 a month "identity masking", lets you run your android device in stealth mode. (I'm being sarcastic of course). One of my SDR projects was to boot a GSM base station if my burglar alarm went off and store copies of every IMEI it can see in the cloud. Seems like it would be a better lead to hand investigators than a fuzzy security camera shot.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - TuringNYC 7y ago
    And investigators probably would not care — consider how many identity theft cases have the ID thief on camera (in my case, at a hardware store opening up a line of credit in sight of store cameras, and later using a cloned card at an ATM machine, surely in view of an ATM camera.)...yet despite thousands stolen in ID theft cases, there is hardly ever any action taken.
    - ChuckMcM 7y ago
      My thought would be they could track the phone of the person, who would probably still have it on them, and using that and a fuzzy security camera image have enough evidence to arrest them at least.
  - davinic 7y ago
    It's a great idea but is it legal to operate a personal Stingray?
    - ChuckMcM 7y ago
      Yes! Well let me be a bit more clear. The FCC has a process for, and indicated they would likely approve, a special temporary operating license for such a device given that it would only operate for a short time (during the break-in) and not interfere with the thieve's or neighbor's cell phones as it would respond with no compatible roaming network. Also it wouldn't do any sort of interception or monitoring other than the tower ping. It would also need permission from the licensed spectrum holder, that could be harder to get. But yes, completely legit with the right paperwork.
      - davinic 7y ago
        Wow, I'm a bit surprised by that. Thank you for answering.
        ChuckMcM 7y ago
        I was a little as well, I happened to be at an SDR conference and one of the attendees was a lawyer working with the FCC on licensing issues[1]. I gave him my use case and he said that if it was constrained the way I said it would be, then if it came through their office they would likely approve it. [1] The FCC has been pretty engaged in understanding the impacts of SDRs because of their potential for abuse (as one attendee called it, "The Drones of spectrum." As an amateur (AI6ZR) and someone in industry I've been helping as an SME to explain some of this stuff to their less technical staff.
- bitL 7y ago
  The whole "jailbreaking the phone" business gets suddenly a completely new meaning...
- umvi 7y ago
  I can see the mental gymnastics now: "Criminals deserve just as much privacy and safety as anyone else. If the government violates the criminal's rights to solve, prevent, or preempt crimes, even more crimes have occurred (privacy violations, killing of the criminal, etc.) There should be explicit modes for phones and browsers available to criminals that allow them to safely commit crimes without risk of their rights being infringed upon."
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - henryfjordan 7y ago
    I know you were being facetious, but a mode somewhere in between "track me" (data enabled) and "remove my phone from the network" (airplane mode) would be nice. Maybe "for the next hour, don't do the normal location-tracking/biometrics monitoring/reporting". I get that Google has no incentive to make that feature but maybe Apple does?
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
  - robk 7y ago
    That sounds plausible in the UK
  - kaybe 7y ago
    Well, who defines what a crime is? The problem starts there, I'd say.
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    Basically every normal adult commits at least misdemeanors daily (in the sense that a bored cop could stick you with one and an aggressive prosecutor could nail you for it if you didn't get a decent lawyer) crimes all the time. Trying to make a black and white distinction between criminals and everyone else is futile.
- munk-a 7y ago
  I feel like, as soon as you enabled this feature, your phone would start broadcasting more. I suppose we can sorta thank the FEC for their crazy broadcast device requirements when it comes to suspecting whether airplane mode actually stops a device from dialing home.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- coding123 7y ago
  They can't call it that. But they can call it... Incognito. Plus then you can just tell the cops: "i was watching xhamster all night.. see my phone was in porn mode (you know incognito is called porn mode)"
colechristensen 7y ago
I certainly do not trust my phone to turn all radios off on airplane mode or with wifi or bluetooth shut off. I could pretty easily verify my suspicions but I think others already have.
- judge2020 7y ago
  Reminds me of https://gizmodo.com/automatic-wifi-login-helped-police-id-teens-who-vandali-1836249333 https://gizmodo.com/automatic-wifi-login-helped-police-id-te...
bitL 7y ago
Your locations from the time your phone was in airplane mode are uploaded the moment you switch it back to normal Wi-Fi connection. I guess your only choice is going full-on tinfoil/Faraday cage-style though that might be a bit impractical while doing the deeds...
- persistent 7y ago
  Is that true on Android? On iOS location APIs just don't work in airplane mode.
  - nradov 7y ago
    Android allows the user to turn location on in airplane mode.
    - twothamendment 7y ago
      Yes, I do this all the time when I'm hiking out backpacking. Without any cell or WiFi nearby I try to save battery by turning them off. When I want to check a location on my map I enable the location long enough to get a GPS fix and turn it off.
  - bradyd 7y ago
    I just tested this on my iPhone and location works just fine in airplane mode, even with WiFi off.
    - persistent 7y ago
      I wonder why. Mine doesn't work, it says location could not be determined. iPhone 7, iOS 12.4.
    - saagarjha 7y ago
      It's probably using GPS, which AFAIK is not affected by Airplane Mode (probably because it's passive?)
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Jerry2 7y ago
> That's why you do crime in airplane mode Heh, are you a fed? ;) >Google is tracking you. Even when you're in Airplane Mode without SIM card https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0G6mUyIgyg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0G6mUyIgyg
dane-pgp 7y ago
I have to wonder why Google removed the ability for apps to put a phone into airplane mode / turn off the GSM antenna. Perhaps it was a legitimate UX consideration or some weird unintended consequence of a regulation about radio transmissions. Still, it would be nice if the default for phones was to not be connected to the mobile network. Instead, they could listen out for a signal broadcast on an FM frequency (for example), and only connect to the mobile network when a specific unique ID was sent, indicating that you have an incoming call. (The unique ID would be agreed with the radio transmitter in secret before hand, and changed after each call). When your phone is on a Wi-Fi network, it could instead have all incoming calls directed to it that way, like a softphone, meaning you would only rarely have to reveal your location to the mobile network. The economics of this could work in some places (based on my rough guesses), but not if users had to root their phone to grant apps this permission to turn airplane mode on and off. I also don't know how much battery life would be required to be constantly processing an incoming FM signal in software (at least whenever the phone was off a Wi-Fi network). I'm also assuming that phones have FM receivers that apps can interact with, or that this could be an external device, connected via BlueTooth, perhaps.
- dane-pgp 7y ago
  I wish I knew what is apparently so objectionable about my comment above. Is it just that the system I'm proposing is impractical for some reason, or do people object to the goal of preventing governments from tracking the movements of basically all their citizens all the time? As an example of the sort of society I am hoping to avoid, let me offer this article: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/11/top_judge_mulls_compulsory_mobile_phone_carrying/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/11/top_judge_mulls_com...
  - salawat 7y ago
    Probably an annoyed location data salesman? In all seriousness though, I'm pretty sure your system fails in the deliverability department. Mobile phones are meant to be...well... mobile, and that functionality basically requires that when a call intended for you is started from somewhere else, there has to be a way for the signal to get correctly switched to where you are. If you treat cell towers as switches, that then means that each tower maintains a routing table of handsets within it's area which allows the signal to eventually find it's way to you. This is the fundamental operating principle behind packet switching and the Internet in general. Let's say there's 4 cells. A, B, C, and D. I call you from A. You're in D's coverage area. A can connect to B and C, and C can connect to A, B, and D, B cannot see D. My handset tells the switch behind cell tower A I'm looking for you. It checks it's routing table to see if it's serving you, and finds it can't, so it pings the next switch that has announced a possible route (C). C checks it's routing table, to find you and doesn't, but it sees D knows of you, so forwards to D. D knows you're there, so it finally connects the call. The circuit is made. This works because information about what handsets are in range, and which cell knows routes to what is constantly updated and propagated through the network. So if you took a trip out of D to B while on a call, the call would not have to terminate since the towers hand you off from tower to tower as your handset's location changes. The system you propose though, breaks that paradigm. Since the cell tower has no way of tracking the handsets in its service area, every possible tower has to chirp to see if your phone will respond. Once your session is established, some of the normal routing protocols can still be reused, however, the initial connection stage is where it gets problematic. Routing tables clean themselves up over time, so if you don't use your phone for long enough, you essentially cause the system to attempt a network-wide chirp just for you. Now multiply that by everyone, times the timeout to voicemail, on every tower on the network. Not ideal. You have no way of telling whether the call connected with the handset until the handset actually answers, or every switch gives up and returns cannot connect as dialed. You're a walking DoS attack because someone wants to call you, and you won't pick up your damn phone. Furthermore, your scheme degenerates to the current arrangement if an always available mobile data connection is assumed, as your phone will just establish a session every time it sends data. Basically, it's not the telephone part that makes you traceable. It's the "I can guarantee synchronous delivery part". And hell, even if you throw out the mobile bit, phone records still the you to a location; it just takes a bit more footwork and a cooperative witness/wiretap to prove it's you. It's a pretty in depth problem, with a lot of nuances to be squirreled out. It takes a long time to explain, and even if someone could get most of the way there, that's only the start of the issue. I've got friends who have tried making ISP's before, and the amount of friction created by monolithic telco's is absolutely insane even when you aren't doing anything exotic. You have to remember as well, telephony isn't magic. You're eating up bandwidth all the time. Stuff is incredibly fast nowadays, but everyone is using it too. Also, all successful networking suffers from tracibility problems. Things just get mitigated slightly by jurisdictional boundaries and the impracticalities of being able to trace through sufficient levels of proxy links. So it's not surprising you got a few "you really don't get it" downvotes. Anyway... Hope that explains things, and I'm sure there's a bunch of detail I'm missing. EDIT: Additional thinking: there's other reasons why a telco/mobile provider would want all handsets connected at all times even when not doing calls. It gives them an idea of where they need to install or upgrade infrastructure based on metrics w.r.t how many handsets are in the cell. Basically, from a business standpoint, there is little reason to not go the direction that we have. The privacy concern does change things a bit. Not sure whether it would be enough to drive a push to abandon/change things so drastically. It's an interesting thought experiment though that I will happily cogitate on for weeks in my idle time. I like devising new protocols.
Ajedi32 7y ago
Airplane mode doesn't turn off GPS. What you want to do is turn off location, or location history at the very least.

devoply 7y ago

> With nearly a year elapsed since the warrant was served, that suggests this particular reverse location search may not have been as fruitful as investigators hoped. They did not find anything. But God help you if you have a prior record and happen to be black or match the description of the assailants... and just happened to be around the bank at the time.

henryfjordan 7y ago
It's not like they couldn't do all that without google's help. They would have looked at every camera nearby, talked to every witness, etc. If your name/face came up and you had priors or matched the description you'd get a visit. Google's data is probably more accurate/scoped and more impervious to bias than the other options they had.
EpicEng 7y ago
>But God help you if you have a prior record and happen to be black or match the description of the assailants... and just happened to be around the bank at the time Seems reasonable that you would be approached by investigators if you were present at the scene and matched a witness description.
- devoply 7y ago
  It would be fine if they simply approached people and tried to rule them out, but due to the psychopathy in the justice department they often try to paint the people they find into the perp often hiding evidence that exonerates them.. in other cases photo-shopping their face to cover up tattoos to make them look more like the assailant. The issue is that prosecutors don't act in good faith... and because of that legitimate exercises maybe used against people in illegitimate ways.
  - EpicEng 7y ago
    Yes that sort of thing happens, but "often"? How often are we talking here? You make it sound like a common occurrence and I'm not convinced that's the case.

altmind 7y ago

Can't Feds ask mobile phone servers providers(there are only couple of them in US) for phones registered at specific base station? I think police have been doing this for ages.

javagram 7y ago
They can but that could pick up way more people and not be accurate enough for location tracking. Cell sites can have a range of multiple miles. Phones have a much more accurate location history since they can localize using AGPS. And with google location history turned on it stores that location to googles cloud.
- novok 7y ago
  I thought the cell sites triangulate the location of customers for better analytics. It's not AGPS level, but it isn't single cell site range either.
  - bilbo0s 7y ago
    If you were a cop, would you want the AGPS range data? or some triangulated range of phones? Cops are only doing what makes sense. You can't really blame them. There needs to be a law that prevents them from doing it. Absent that, people need to stop being so liberal with their information. This was a bank robbery, but the principle certainly applies to other activities as well. I mean really, do you really need your phone on you if you're going to see your mistress? I don't think you do.
    - Iolaum 7y ago
      Not receiving/responding to messages from family and/or friends can be a signal in itself.
  - superkuh 7y ago
    Multilateration. And yeah, it gets down to ~100 meters with good clocks. And this data is stored by all US telcos for 2-5 years.

persistent 7y ago

Governments serve Google with over-broad search warrants frequently, but there is not information in this article stating or implying that Google responded to this or other similar warrants. Google has a whole department of attorneys dedicated to evaluating search warrants. They claim they won't comply with vague and overbroad warrants. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeKKHxcJfh0&feature=youtu.be&t=72 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeKKHxcJfh0&feature=youtu.be...

HnSpectre 7y ago
> They claim they won't comply with vague and overbroad warrants. Assumably it’s the judge’s opinion on this that matters, right? In the case of a national security letter this fight wouldn’t even be public. Assume the worst.
- henryfjordan 7y ago
  A judge would review the warrant before issuing it hopefully. I think Google can basically say "Look, this is a bad warrant and you'd be better off narrowing it a bit" and that would work in most cases. You, as a defendant, can also challenge the warrant as part of your trial if you are caught, potentially getting the results of the search thrown out.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Can you if there's a national security "concern"?
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zaroth 7y ago
TFA says the warrant was executed. > It was an aggressive technique, scooping up every Android phone in the area and trusting police to find the right suspects in the mess of resulting data. But the court found it entirely legal, and it was returned as executed shortly after.
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rdtsc 7y ago

Wonder if someone suspected Feds would do this, they could ask their accomplice to take their phone and walk around with it in a different part of town. They would then have a alibi and be discarded as a potential suspect.

bilbo0s 7y ago
Just FYI, you would have to have an exceedingly clever accomplice. They would need to walk around in a part of town where there are no cameras, and preferably very few witnesses. (If someone remembers seeing him alone, or cameras verify he was alone, or God forbid, if one of his buddies sees him and strikes up a conversation, the gig is up.) Your accomplice would have to take possession of the phone at a comfortable distance from the target bank. (Again, in a place that no one, and no camera can observe the arrival of either party.) And the co-conspirator actually robbing the bank would have to make his/her way to said bank without being observed leaving the phone drop site. (And without being observed traveling in a direction inconsistent with his/her phone's location data.) All of that is not as easy as it sounds. One traffic camera on a stoplight and they got you, in your car, heading towards the bank, in the opposite direction of your phone. Now your co-conspirator is in trouble too. (Aiding and Abetting at minimum.) We're creeping towards an age of ubiquitous gaze, and only people who are way smarter than I really know if there's any averting it at this point. I think the only real defense against ubiquitous, 24/7 surveillance right now is to live life in a remarkably unremarkable fashion.
- usujejjebe 7y ago
  Or they could just leave their phone at home, or at work, where they probably spend most their time. It's not yet illegal to walk around without phone. "Show me your papers citizen"
- andromeduck 7y ago
  Go hiking?
- HanayamaTriplet 7y ago
  In addition to your concerns, I don't think there's even anything to be gained by intentionally trying to create a false trail since the warrant only looked for phones in the area of the bank around the time of the robbery. The robbers could just as easily leave their phones at home (or any other place far away from the bank) and they would not be flagged by the reverse location search.

melling 7y ago

There’s probably a market for bank cameras with image recognition that automatically set a silent alarm if they spot a gun. Several cameras inside and out could track the individuals.

inetknght 7y ago
I don't think you understand the problem scope. Guns are hidden behind clothing and you're going to have a lot of false positives.
- melling 7y ago
  In this instance, it certainly would have worked. “One man jumped onto the teller counter and pulled out a handgun, throwing down a garbage bag for the tellers to fill with money” Outside cameras could have tracked them into a car, if it was reasonably close. A security firm can monitor for false positive. This would probably work for your average convenience store robbery too. In the US, we have a large market for security.
  - whenchamenia 7y ago
    Perhaps you would be suprused by the number of people who carry guns 24/7. This would be very hard to implement.
    - melling 7y ago
      I didn’t say it would be easy. I said there’s probably a market for it. As with any real world problem, there are lots of obstacles. Sure, your AI will need to figure out if the gun is being pointed at someone, etc.
    - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
      Perhaps you'd be surprised that some countries with banks have very few guns in private possession.
    - toomanybeersies 7y ago

falcolas 7y ago

This is particularly relevant with the recent discussion around Amazon's Ring partnership with law enforcement. "We will always ask you for permission" gets a bit thin when warrants like this can be issued.

sdinsn 7y ago
Well of course. Warrants are warrants, it doesn't matter whether Amazon has a partnership or not.

m3kw9 7y ago

Like straight out of movie Hell or high water

sdinsn 7y ago

Slightly misleading title. "In an attempt to solve" would be better, since the case is still unsolved.

kissickas 7y ago

Why does the article say they got "every Android phone in the area" - are iPhones using Google Maps not going to get picked up as well?

uponcoffee 7y ago
There's a difference between always on location data/telemetry baked into android and using google msps.
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megaremote 7y ago
Google maps is not on all the time.
- hans1729 7y ago
  IIRC, Google Maps is still opt-in (opposed to "Maps"), at least it was when I got my phone ~3 years ago

doodliego 7y ago

"If you do the crime, leave the phone behind." Criminals will adapt, they always do. Because this was a bank robbery, it's a Federal warrant which is harder for Google to fight or procrastinate on (if for some reason they chose to).

girvo 7y ago
Most criminals I knew over a decade ago knew this already. Phones were left behind as much as possible, batteries pulled out when discussions happened, and so on. I’m long away from that world (been clean for 7 years), but I would be surprised if they’ve not adapted even further

Zenst 7y ago

Most criminals tend to use burner phones of the non-smart variation.

rhacker 7y ago

2010 - 2030 This kind of thing happens with lots of alarming stories in the news. People are kind of worried that they will get dragged in as a crime suspect simple because they were driving by the area when a crime was being committed nearby. 2030 - 2040 This kind of investigation becomes so common that the independent news outlets just stop finding instances of it. People are kind of relaxing about it. 2040 - 2050 It turns out that, like DNA evidence, there's now an entire innocence project started dedicated to getting people out of incarceration for any crime where the totality of evidence was GPS data and some made up stories. 2050 -> Oh sorry that new energy source blew up, earth is gone.

cf498 7y ago
I fear the timeline is way too optimistic. It wont take till 2030 to normalize. >It turns out that, like DNA evidence, there's now an entire innocence project started dedicated to getting people out of incarceration for any crime where the totality of evidence was GPS data and some made up stories. Is also already the case. Denmark had such a problem recently. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/20/world/europe/denmark-cellphone-data-courts.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/20/world/europe/denmark-cell... https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/23/20829490/denmark-cellphone-location-data-evidence-flaw-police-trial-convictions https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/23/20829490/denmark-cellphon...
dsfyu404ed 7y ago
You're assuming this will wind up being like DNA. Given the history of every other technique the cops have ever used to solve crime I'm betting it's gonna wind up somewhere between forensic bite mark analysis and eyewitness testimony (i.e. not worth shit unless you've got a lot of other stuff to corroborate it). Of course a generation of prosecutors will get to make their careers on this kind of crap before it gets debunked.
- rhacker 7y ago
  Well beyond suggesting that, as stated in other threads, as the criminals get smarter they will simply leave the phone at home and yes, innocent people that have a digital footprint near (and when) the crime will be caught instead. Once the police have identified a potential fall guy and they are black, or an immigrant or some other disadvantage, we'll see eyewitnesses come forward to "help" the police officer.

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_trampeltier 7y ago

- Why asking Google? (My GPS is allways off) - Why not ask the phone providers? - Even the dumbest criminal does know today, don't carry your phone with you, if you do something like this. I switzerland was a murder an rape case close to one of most busy highway. The police asked the phone providers for phones in this area (highway included). The first bill from the providers was 860'000CHF, they reduced it later to 200'000CHF. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nzz.ch/amp/schweiz/teure-ueberwachungen-kantone-sollen-kuenftig-pauschale-bezahlen-ld.1446017 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nzz.ch/amp/schweiz/teure-ue...

loa_in_ 7y ago
I wonder, is Google even compensated by US feds in the article story?

wpdev_63 7y ago

Isn't this a blatant constitutional violation? Maybe while they are at it they can search through everyone's house as they "might be there". Granted the fusion center already have access to this information - alot of times they have to make it official to be admissible in court. So there might be something foul in play here(besides the blatant 4th amendment violation).

mtgx 7y ago

It looks like the expression "build it and they will come" is true after all. Build the spying infrastructure against your users, and the government will inevitably come to ask for (full) access to it. I feel like this should be a new "law" of some kind, like MTGX's Law. Or fine, don't give me credit, call it something more generic like the Law of Corporate Surveillance.