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Emotionally, when I hear things like this I think unconsciously I secretly want companies not to give data over ever. And really the companies shouldn't collect

Emotionally, when I hear things like this I think unconsciously I secretly want companies not to give data over ever. And really the companies shouldn't collect it (hackers also exist).. However rationally I think there is a balance. Investigators need to do their jobs and chase every lead they can to catch criminals. I wonder if google could have complied with a query that simply grabbed the users in the areas during the 3 time periods combined. Maybe we just need laws that limit how much data can be returned per warrant, to encourage more limited warrants.

jMyles 7y ago
> Investigators need to do their jobs and chase every lead they can to catch criminals. Do they really though? This is the question. Is there no other way to live peacefully and be good to one another without an overarching busy-bodied state apparatus causing perpetual fear even among the innocent?
- jascii 7y ago
  Do you have any suggestions for this "other way"? I consider myself an anarchist in the sense that I believe that we should strive not to need government, taking responsibility for our own actions. I do not currently believe we as a society have found a way to make that a reality :(
  - robertfw 7y ago
    Implementing proper UBI and reducing poverty would cause a similar reduction in crime. It's not the end-all solution, but as societies build more safety nets, shift towards rehabilititive instead of punitive justice, and generally increase the "collective" wealth, crime will continue to fall.
wallace_f 7y ago
You say dragnet searches are rational, but your only rationalization was that "inveatigators need to do their job." That seems like remarkably lazy thinking. We have limitations for a reason, everything from separations of powers such as judicial review/warrants, to natural rights such against use of physical of force, property seizure, to privacy rights, etc. Just saying this is rational because investigators must do their jobs seems entirely ignorant of the obvious, implicit balance of powers issue here between free peoples and government authorities. In short: There are, in fact, good reasons most civil liberty organizations fight against dragnet searches. It is not an emotional hunch.
resters 7y ago
I think we have reached a point where your analysis no longer holds up. I used to agree, but: - The laws that govern legal search and seizure have departed dramatically from the protections afforded by the bill of rights. - There have been multiple incidents of companies not disclosing extralegal "cooperation" with state actors such as the US government (and others) - Warrant canaries are legal, yet big tech refuses to use them. Why not? Because using legal methods to improve user privacy and security are not considered "cooperative" enough. - We have no reason to believe that governments are following the laws, even in the US. The recently revealed CIA scandal illustrates just how out of control things are. - There is now a revolving door between big tech and state intelligence agencies, and big tech is becoming increasingly sympathetic to authoritarian candidates and hostile to third party or far left candidates.
- turc1656 7y ago
  "The laws that govern legal search and seizure have departed dramatically from the protections afforded by the bill of rights." That, right there, is the problem. That should be illegal and should have been shot down every single time such a law was challenged in court. The fact that it wasn't says something about the status of the 4th amendment. And the lack of citizen revolt over this is disheartening.
  - ct520 7y ago
    Thank Bush family friends the osamas for 9/11. Patriot act normalized sweeping search and surveillance. Just like a lobster in boiling water average citizen has became more complacent with their rights being taken away. Smh
    - arminiusreturns 7y ago
      This is the truth, and the fact it is downvoted speaks volumes as to the tech communities apathy and complacency in systems that are part of the violation of our rights. "Fuck you I got mine" might just be the death of the enlightenment. I'm honestly starting to contemplate how hard it would be to setup on Mars and breakaway from all current earth governments. Maybe the only hope is freedom of space travel.
appleshore 7y ago
Conversely, if someone smashes into my parked car and flees, most major cities won’t investigate. Whereas they could use stop light cameras and a few hours of work to potentially identify the suspect. Likewise, if live in SF and someone breaks in your car, the police won’t investigate it unless you’re A-Rod.
- blacksmith_tb 7y ago
  Isn't that just a cost/benefit calculation? How many projects have you worked on where someone suggested spending X hours on something only to have it shot down for minimal ROI? Obviously it matters more to you personally, and you'd like to have a sense that "justice is done" but really it's just an insurance claim. Of course it's also frustrating if the thief has only gotten some random junk out of your car - if it wouldn't lead to endless extortion I personally would be happy to hand him or her $10 to not break my window, even if there's no deductible, just to spare me dealing with it.
  - marcoperaza 7y ago
    There is an intangible to living in a place where cars are regularly broken into vs. living in a place where they aren't. Think of the kinds of attitudes that people develop towards others in the two places. Trust vs. distrust, comfort vs. unease, open vs. closed. There's also the second-order effects of having a class of people going around committing those kinds of crimes with impunity. Many become emboldened and move on to other malfeasance. Order breeds order and chaos breeds chaos.
    - birken 7y ago
      > Many become emboldened and move on to other malfeasance. Order breeds order and chaos breeds chaos. Why does SF have a sizable increase in property crimes over the past 10 years but a drop in violent crimes? I'd imagine if chaos did truly beget chaos, then rates of crime across the board would be going up.
    - patcon 7y ago
      Your words bring to mind my experience with gentrification in a few cities: one person's order is another person's chaos. If you ask a longterm resident in a gentrifying neighborhood how they feel about what the new developments are doing to their social fabric, you might find your simple truism gets wierded <3 It's often that crimes restore lost order and stability for some people. Not saying it's moral on one side or the other, but it certainly doesn't feel like a neat little package.
the8472 7y ago
Situation: Investigators can perform dragnet surveillance with the assistance of google > Investigators need to do their jobs and chase every lead they can That's circular reasoning. What they can and cannot do is defined by the rules we set.
mind-blight 7y ago
I think the devil is in the details with this type of data hand off. If there's no PII in the first batch of phones, just location and a unique ID, it doesn't seem intrusive compared to the benefit. Law enforcement would need to make a second request to de-identify a few specific numbers. If PII is handed over during the first request, then it's a lot more intrusive
- 867-5309 7y ago
  the unique id is probably the phone number or the device id
  - mind-blight 7y ago
    Phone number is definitely PII and can easily be used to de-identify. Mac address is better, but still not great. A Google or dump specific id would be best
    - AlexCoventry 7y ago
      I read in an earlier NYT article about geo-fencing that the initial response involves unidentifiable tags.
    - 867-5309 7y ago
      I'm not sure if MAC addresses are used in cell network negotiation, and they are easily spoofed, but the cellular network provider could certainly link an IP address to a device id. then again, most criminal "burner" phones are not internet enabled anyway
      - burpsnard 7y ago
        IMSI, IMEI, MSISDN, etc. Systems to associate 'burner' phones to individuals, with patterns of metadata, have been commonplace for decades https://github.com/kimgr/asn1ate/blob/master/testdata/public/huawei-cdr.asn https://github.com/kimgr/asn1ate/blob/master/testdata/public...
throwthisaway2 7y ago
Thats not really how warrants go. Warrants are restricted to location or an individual. So once you have access to a house you get to obtain everything in it. Once you open up the emails, its all the emails. You are asking google to predetermine certain incriminating emails and not provide thoes. Like a digital safe haven.
c3534l 7y ago
I would be okay with it if the court system actually bothered to protect people's rights and police didn't abuse their power. But abuse of power is now industry standard. In all likelihood the data will be keep beyond what is necessary to collect the necessary evidence. In all likelihood this data will then be used as a springboard for indiscriminate civilian surveillance. I don't even trust that the excuse given for the collection is in any way true. Our government has shown a willingness to enforce secret laws, put people in secret prisons through extrajudicial processes, torture them in secret, lie about it repeatedly, lie about evidence. And at no point has our justice system seen fit to hold anyone accountable for it. What balance is there when one side operates without limits or consequence and can use gag orders and the ability to classify information to operate in secret?
- lonelappde 7y ago
  How does your argument about secret data collection apply to the case of non secret data collection?
  - m00x 7y ago
    It's not an argument over secret, or non-secret data collection. It's an argument over abuse of power, secret data collection being one of the examples of abuse of power.
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
      Just so I understand, do you include this particular incident as an abuse of power? AFAICT, as long as they end up only using the data for the stated purpose, and not to charge random other people with random crimes, it would be a correct use of power, at least by my judgment.
      - beebob 7y ago
        That is correct. In his first sentence he made the assumption that this will not be the case. As such I do not see a discrepancy here.
scarface74 7y ago
Well, you presume that I should worry more about criminals than the overreach of the “justice system”.
droithomme 7y ago
> However... I upgrade infrequently. Recently I was alerted my 3G phone is not going to work after December 31 as 3G networks are being shut down in the US nationally and all bandwidth reallocated to 4G only. So, I've bought and returned 4 phones since then because I very carefully read and analyzed the terms of service and privacy policy that I couldn't read until buying them. All were totally and completely unacceptable in every way to me. But obviously not to others. As a result come the new year I'm going phone less. I literally could not find a single contract that was not morally reprehensible. I know of not a single other person sharing my concerns. Some say I am a mad man or unreasonable or unrealistic, or a potential terrorist ne'er do well. But I'm none of those. I just read the contract. Something they, and no one else in the entire USA, has done.
- AlexCoventry 7y ago
  What have your specific concerns been?
- JordanFarmer 7y ago
  Which network is that? 3G on At&t will continue to work until 2/2022 https://www.rvmobileinternet.com/att-plans-to-shutdown-its-3g-network-in-2022/ https://www.rvmobileinternet.com/att-plans-to-shutdown-its-3...
ydb 7y ago
> However rationally I think there is a balance. There is a balance. I know this is Hacker News and we're all supposed to be progressive technical vanguards fighting against The Man, but genuine bad guys exist out there. And we need to protect ourselves from them. This isn't a case of an innocent man going to prison just so we can jail a hundred criminals. This is giving up a modicum of privacy in order to make the world safer for everybody. I think that's entirely reasonable.
- kelnos 7y ago
  The feds were able to do police work just fine before everyone had a tracking device in their pocket. They'd do just fine if Google would stop storing this data and there was no way to get it.
- earthshot 7y ago
  HN does have a lot of fellow libertarians (and leftists) who oppose surveillance states. But you make a good point, that authoritarian violence has always been popular, all throughout history. It is no surprise that people like you still romanticize the notion of state violence and greater authoritarian power. Fascism is always popular amongst certain types.
  - Der_Einzige 7y ago
    This boy crying wolf bullshit of accusing everyone of being a fascist means that when it really happens here no one will believe it. Is our government getting increasingly Authoritarian and Repressive? Yes. Are we anywhere near fascism? Fucking no
    - earthshot 7y ago
      Thank you for sharing your opinion that I can't bring up fascism until there's a full on fucking genocide. It takes a special kind of stupid to blame rising fascism on people who warn about fascism. You are that stupid. In every country that had an authoritarian takeover (and there are a LOT!), there were people noting the problem early, and there were worthless pieces of shit like you who didn't want to hear it. Go fuck yourself.
nathias 7y ago
So rationally you're for corporations collecting your data under the caveat that they don't use it until it matters?
JordanFarmer 7y ago
If this becomes more common, won't criminals just turn their phones off or leave them home as an alibi? The practice is a dead end. Using this for such a thing as fire vandalism and two dead dogs is a real waste here (I realize that sounds heartless). How about tracking terror suspects? Law enforcement is showing their hand here.
georgeplusplus 7y ago
The proper laws are already in place and on the books and work remarkably well. There is a crime, you get a warrant or subpoena and you act on it. As long as it’s transparent it works. This idea that percolates particularly from the very left of the software community is dangerous as you pointed out. They are so anti law enforcement they’d prefer to never help law enforcement do their job but at the end of the day, an overwhelming majority of the crimes they investigate are in support of actual crimes and not some oppressive government overreach. It’s ok to not trust law enforcement, the US is built on distrust of government.. But then don’t cry bloody murder when nothing gets done because now you’ve tied their hands so much that they can’t investigate properly . There is an excellent podcast called intelligence matters where an FBI chief went on to talk about end to end encryption and said something along the lines of yes e2e encryption hinders their job but if the public wants and supports that. Then they’ll have to work around it as long as the public understands reaction to crimes will be slowed drastically or go uninvestigated due to lack of evidence.

jMyles 7y ago

> Investigators need to do their jobs and chase every lead they can to catch criminals. Do they really though? This is the question. Is there no other way to live peacefully and be good to one another without an overarching busy-bodied state apparatus causing perpetual fear even among the innocent?

jascii 7y ago
Do you have any suggestions for this "other way"? I consider myself an anarchist in the sense that I believe that we should strive not to need government, taking responsibility for our own actions. I do not currently believe we as a society have found a way to make that a reality :(
- robertfw 7y ago
  Implementing proper UBI and reducing poverty would cause a similar reduction in crime. It's not the end-all solution, but as societies build more safety nets, shift towards rehabilititive instead of punitive justice, and generally increase the "collective" wealth, crime will continue to fall.

wallace_f 7y ago

You say dragnet searches are rational, but your only rationalization was that "inveatigators need to do their job." That seems like remarkably lazy thinking. We have limitations for a reason, everything from separations of powers such as judicial review/warrants, to natural rights such against use of physical of force, property seizure, to privacy rights, etc. Just saying this is rational because investigators must do their jobs seems entirely ignorant of the obvious, implicit balance of powers issue here between free peoples and government authorities. In short: There are, in fact, good reasons most civil liberty organizations fight against dragnet searches. It is not an emotional hunch.

resters 7y ago

I think we have reached a point where your analysis no longer holds up. I used to agree, but: - The laws that govern legal search and seizure have departed dramatically from the protections afforded by the bill of rights. - There have been multiple incidents of companies not disclosing extralegal "cooperation" with state actors such as the US government (and others) - Warrant canaries are legal, yet big tech refuses to use them. Why not? Because using legal methods to improve user privacy and security are not considered "cooperative" enough. - We have no reason to believe that governments are following the laws, even in the US. The recently revealed CIA scandal illustrates just how out of control things are. - There is now a revolving door between big tech and state intelligence agencies, and big tech is becoming increasingly sympathetic to authoritarian candidates and hostile to third party or far left candidates.

turc1656 7y ago
"The laws that govern legal search and seizure have departed dramatically from the protections afforded by the bill of rights." That, right there, is the problem. That should be illegal and should have been shot down every single time such a law was challenged in court. The fact that it wasn't says something about the status of the 4th amendment. And the lack of citizen revolt over this is disheartening.
- ct520 7y ago
  Thank Bush family friends the osamas for 9/11. Patriot act normalized sweeping search and surveillance. Just like a lobster in boiling water average citizen has became more complacent with their rights being taken away. Smh
  - arminiusreturns 7y ago
    This is the truth, and the fact it is downvoted speaks volumes as to the tech communities apathy and complacency in systems that are part of the violation of our rights. "Fuck you I got mine" might just be the death of the enlightenment. I'm honestly starting to contemplate how hard it would be to setup on Mars and breakaway from all current earth governments. Maybe the only hope is freedom of space travel.

appleshore 7y ago

Conversely, if someone smashes into my parked car and flees, most major cities won’t investigate. Whereas they could use stop light cameras and a few hours of work to potentially identify the suspect. Likewise, if live in SF and someone breaks in your car, the police won’t investigate it unless you’re A-Rod.

blacksmith_tb 7y ago
Isn't that just a cost/benefit calculation? How many projects have you worked on where someone suggested spending X hours on something only to have it shot down for minimal ROI? Obviously it matters more to you personally, and you'd like to have a sense that "justice is done" but really it's just an insurance claim. Of course it's also frustrating if the thief has only gotten some random junk out of your car - if it wouldn't lead to endless extortion I personally would be happy to hand him or her $10 to not break my window, even if there's no deductible, just to spare me dealing with it.
- marcoperaza 7y ago
  There is an intangible to living in a place where cars are regularly broken into vs. living in a place where they aren't. Think of the kinds of attitudes that people develop towards others in the two places. Trust vs. distrust, comfort vs. unease, open vs. closed. There's also the second-order effects of having a class of people going around committing those kinds of crimes with impunity. Many become emboldened and move on to other malfeasance. Order breeds order and chaos breeds chaos.
  - birken 7y ago
    > Many become emboldened and move on to other malfeasance. Order breeds order and chaos breeds chaos. Why does SF have a sizable increase in property crimes over the past 10 years but a drop in violent crimes? I'd imagine if chaos did truly beget chaos, then rates of crime across the board would be going up.
  - patcon 7y ago
    Your words bring to mind my experience with gentrification in a few cities: one person's order is another person's chaos. If you ask a longterm resident in a gentrifying neighborhood how they feel about what the new developments are doing to their social fabric, you might find your simple truism gets wierded <3 It's often that crimes restore lost order and stability for some people. Not saying it's moral on one side or the other, but it certainly doesn't feel like a neat little package.

the8472 7y ago

Situation: Investigators can perform dragnet surveillance with the assistance of google > Investigators need to do their jobs and chase every lead they can That's circular reasoning. What they can and cannot do is defined by the rules we set.

mind-blight 7y ago

I think the devil is in the details with this type of data hand off. If there's no PII in the first batch of phones, just location and a unique ID, it doesn't seem intrusive compared to the benefit. Law enforcement would need to make a second request to de-identify a few specific numbers. If PII is handed over during the first request, then it's a lot more intrusive

867-5309 7y ago
the unique id is probably the phone number or the device id
- mind-blight 7y ago
  Phone number is definitely PII and can easily be used to de-identify. Mac address is better, but still not great. A Google or dump specific id would be best
  - AlexCoventry 7y ago
    I read in an earlier NYT article about geo-fencing that the initial response involves unidentifiable tags.
  - 867-5309 7y ago
    I'm not sure if MAC addresses are used in cell network negotiation, and they are easily spoofed, but the cellular network provider could certainly link an IP address to a device id. then again, most criminal "burner" phones are not internet enabled anyway
    - burpsnard 7y ago
      IMSI, IMEI, MSISDN, etc. Systems to associate 'burner' phones to individuals, with patterns of metadata, have been commonplace for decades https://github.com/kimgr/asn1ate/blob/master/testdata/public/huawei-cdr.asn https://github.com/kimgr/asn1ate/blob/master/testdata/public...

throwthisaway2 7y ago

Thats not really how warrants go. Warrants are restricted to location or an individual. So once you have access to a house you get to obtain everything in it. Once you open up the emails, its all the emails. You are asking google to predetermine certain incriminating emails and not provide thoes. Like a digital safe haven.

c3534l 7y ago

I would be okay with it if the court system actually bothered to protect people's rights and police didn't abuse their power. But abuse of power is now industry standard. In all likelihood the data will be keep beyond what is necessary to collect the necessary evidence. In all likelihood this data will then be used as a springboard for indiscriminate civilian surveillance. I don't even trust that the excuse given for the collection is in any way true. Our government has shown a willingness to enforce secret laws, put people in secret prisons through extrajudicial processes, torture them in secret, lie about it repeatedly, lie about evidence. And at no point has our justice system seen fit to hold anyone accountable for it. What balance is there when one side operates without limits or consequence and can use gag orders and the ability to classify information to operate in secret?

lonelappde 7y ago
How does your argument about secret data collection apply to the case of non secret data collection?
- m00x 7y ago
  It's not an argument over secret, or non-secret data collection. It's an argument over abuse of power, secret data collection being one of the examples of abuse of power.
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
    Just so I understand, do you include this particular incident as an abuse of power? AFAICT, as long as they end up only using the data for the stated purpose, and not to charge random other people with random crimes, it would be a correct use of power, at least by my judgment.
    - beebob 7y ago
      That is correct. In his first sentence he made the assumption that this will not be the case. As such I do not see a discrepancy here.

scarface74 7y ago

Well, you presume that I should worry more about criminals than the overreach of the “justice system”.

droithomme 7y ago

> However... I upgrade infrequently. Recently I was alerted my 3G phone is not going to work after December 31 as 3G networks are being shut down in the US nationally and all bandwidth reallocated to 4G only. So, I've bought and returned 4 phones since then because I very carefully read and analyzed the terms of service and privacy policy that I couldn't read until buying them. All were totally and completely unacceptable in every way to me. But obviously not to others. As a result come the new year I'm going phone less. I literally could not find a single contract that was not morally reprehensible. I know of not a single other person sharing my concerns. Some say I am a mad man or unreasonable or unrealistic, or a potential terrorist ne'er do well. But I'm none of those. I just read the contract. Something they, and no one else in the entire USA, has done.

AlexCoventry 7y ago
What have your specific concerns been?
JordanFarmer 7y ago
Which network is that? 3G on At&t will continue to work until 2/2022 https://www.rvmobileinternet.com/att-plans-to-shutdown-its-3g-network-in-2022/ https://www.rvmobileinternet.com/att-plans-to-shutdown-its-3...

ydb 7y ago

> However rationally I think there is a balance. There is a balance. I know this is Hacker News and we're all supposed to be progressive technical vanguards fighting against The Man, but genuine bad guys exist out there. And we need to protect ourselves from them. This isn't a case of an innocent man going to prison just so we can jail a hundred criminals. This is giving up a modicum of privacy in order to make the world safer for everybody. I think that's entirely reasonable.

kelnos 7y ago
The feds were able to do police work just fine before everyone had a tracking device in their pocket. They'd do just fine if Google would stop storing this data and there was no way to get it.
earthshot 7y ago
HN does have a lot of fellow libertarians (and leftists) who oppose surveillance states. But you make a good point, that authoritarian violence has always been popular, all throughout history. It is no surprise that people like you still romanticize the notion of state violence and greater authoritarian power. Fascism is always popular amongst certain types.
- Der_Einzige 7y ago
  This boy crying wolf bullshit of accusing everyone of being a fascist means that when it really happens here no one will believe it. Is our government getting increasingly Authoritarian and Repressive? Yes. Are we anywhere near fascism? Fucking no
  - earthshot 7y ago
    Thank you for sharing your opinion that I can't bring up fascism until there's a full on fucking genocide. It takes a special kind of stupid to blame rising fascism on people who warn about fascism. You are that stupid. In every country that had an authoritarian takeover (and there are a LOT!), there were people noting the problem early, and there were worthless pieces of shit like you who didn't want to hear it. Go fuck yourself.

nathias 7y ago

So rationally you're for corporations collecting your data under the caveat that they don't use it until it matters?

JordanFarmer 7y ago

If this becomes more common, won't criminals just turn their phones off or leave them home as an alibi? The practice is a dead end. Using this for such a thing as fire vandalism and two dead dogs is a real waste here (I realize that sounds heartless). How about tracking terror suspects? Law enforcement is showing their hand here.

georgeplusplus 7y ago

The proper laws are already in place and on the books and work remarkably well. There is a crime, you get a warrant or subpoena and you act on it. As long as it’s transparent it works. This idea that percolates particularly from the very left of the software community is dangerous as you pointed out. They are so anti law enforcement they’d prefer to never help law enforcement do their job but at the end of the day, an overwhelming majority of the crimes they investigate are in support of actual crimes and not some oppressive government overreach. It’s ok to not trust law enforcement, the US is built on distrust of government.. But then don’t cry bloody murder when nothing gets done because now you’ve tied their hands so much that they can’t investigate properly . There is an excellent podcast called intelligence matters where an FBI chief went on to talk about end to end encryption and said something along the lines of yes e2e encryption hinders their job but if the public wants and supports that. Then they’ll have to work around it as long as the public understands reaction to crimes will be slowed drastically or go uninvestigated due to lack of evidence.