20 ms·
Google says geofence warrants make up one-quarter of all US demands
- SevenSigs 5y agoHow large are those areas?
- _rpd 5y agoThe Google doc doesn't say. The article says: > details of who was in a geographic area, such as a radius of a few hundred feet at a certain point in time It probably depends on whether the suspect was on foot or driving.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- twodave 5y agoActually it depends on the signal, whether WiFi is turned on, etc. I used to build mobile apps for luxury clubs who wanted to know which members were arriving at the club (e.g. to go ahead and start getting their golf clubs ready. First world problems, I know). The GPS data we get access to for both Google and Apple includes lat/lng plus a radius in meters that represents the accuracy of the measurement. Depending on the different factors it can be over 100m or as little as about 5m.
- nitrogen 5y agoDid the club members have to install an app, or were you able to get the data some other way?
- twodave 5y agoThey had to install the app and also consent to have their location tracked by the club. They could still use the app without that stuff, obviously, and the platform actually didn’t allow club admins to see where members were at all times—just which members were entering/exiting designated areas. It was actually quite a challenge to get that kind of information to the club in a timely fashion, especially if the club was situated near a busy roadway. You wanted the geofence large enough to give the club time to prepare to receive the guest, but not so large that it gave false positives for members simply driving past the club.
- laurent92 5y agoCould you have pinged a server that only existed on the public wifi, and made the public wifi keyless?
- twodave 5y agoAn actual connection is not necessary for wifi to contribute to location accuracy. It just uses signal strength to available access points to triangulate. How folks like Google/Apple/etc. are able to get accurate location data for those access points is unknown to me.
- judge2020 5y agohttps://www.zdnet.com/article/how-google-and-everyone-else-gets-wi-fi-location-data/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-google-and-everyone-else-g... https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207056#:~:text=If%20Location%20Services%20is%20on%2C%20your%20iPhone%20will%20periodically%20send%20the%20geo-tagged%20locations%20of%20nearby%20Wi-Fi%20hotspots%20and%20cell%20towers%20(where%20supported%20by%20a%20device)%20in%20an%20anonymous%20and%20encrypted%20form%20to%20Apple%2C%20to%20be%20used%20for%20augmenting%20this%20crowd-sourced%20database%20of%20Wi-Fi%20hotspot%20and%20cell%20tower%20locations https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207056#:~:text=If%20Locati.... TLDR Android & iOS Location Services will automatically contribute wifi data and correlate it with GPS. This can be audited to prove it's anonymously uploaded but it does happen.
- literallyaduck 5y agoSo if you are "doing the crime" leave your electronics behind?
- kook_throwaway 5y agoI'm sure that most criminals know to either turn phones off or leave them behind, and if they don't they surely will if this kind if thing becomes more widespread. This seems like a system designed to ensnare innocents.
- phsau 5y agoNot all crime is premeditated and most people aren't described as criminals.
- rolph 5y agoi had an LEO [homocide] tell me that most murders are committed in a less than thinking state of mind, and solved in about 15 minutes.
- mrlonglong 5y agoWtf is "homocide" though?
- rolph 5y agoit is the key right next to homicide on the keyboard.
- jdavis703 5y agoI would assume this LEO works in a relatively low-crime area. I know that where I am most murders remain unsolved and and the shootings that I’ve witnessed appear to be premeditated.
- 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- threatofrain 5y ago> Google has long shied away from providing these figures, in part because geofence warrants are largely thought to be unique to Google. Law enforcement has long known that Google stores vast troves of location data on its users in a database called Sensorvault, first revealed by The New York Times in 2019. > Sensorvault is said to have the detailed location data on “at least hundreds of millions of devices worldwide,” collected from users’ phones when they use an Android device with location data switched on, or Google services like Google Maps and Google Photo, and even Google search results. In 2018, the Associated Press reported that Google could still collect users’ locations even when their location history is “paused.”
- titzer 5y agoIf by hundreds of millions they mean "tens of hundreds of millions", then yes. > "with location data switched on" People need to realize what these two things together mean. Google believes that its anonymization strategy for device location data masks user identity. This is why they use the term "devices". It depersonalizes the information they have. De-anonymizing high-accuracy location data is easy. That means they really have location records on people. They don't technically store and index by people, that's why they can keep making carefully worded plain-English (but mark my words, it is absolutely lawyer-speak) explanations that sound innocent. But de-anonymization is just a map-reduce away, and the government knows this. They will not open up technical details of Google Location Service (GLS) until they are forced by court order, and even then, maybe never, as it will be redacted for the public. It will be redacted because its very existence represents next-generation espionage capabilities. Read their own documentation [1]: > On most Android devices, Google, as the network location provider, provides a location service called Google Location Services (GLS), known in Android 9 and above as Google Location Accuracy. This service aims to provide a more accurate device location and generally improve location accuracy. Most mobile phones are equipped with GPS, which uses signals from satellites to determine a device’s location – however, with Google Location Services, additional information from nearby Wi-Fi, mobile networks, and device sensors can be collected to determine your device’s location. It does this by periodically collecting location data from your device and using it in an anonymous way to improve location accuracy. [1] https://policies.google.com/technologies/location-data?hl=en-US https://policies.google.com/technologies/location-data?hl=en... They use it in an "anonymous way". Pardon my french, but horseshit! They are sucking accelerometer and WiFi data with GPS and calling that "anonymous". When are people going to realize the technical capabilities of Google's dystopian location tracking? The US government already has. Google has built a one-stop shop for totalitarian government's location-tracking needs.
- dredmorbius 5y agoData are liability. https://web.archive.org/web/20170604101018/https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/foKDxbyhYUF https://web.archive.org/web/20170604101018/https://plus.goog... https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/106775595907820294 https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/106775595907820294 Gene Spafford is, I believe, amongst those who've noted that you cannot reveal what you do not have.
- codegladiator 5y ago> Data are liability Data is gold
- monkeybutton 5y agoHaving a large amount of gold sitting around is also a big liability too, so the analogy works in more than one way.
- jdavis703 5y agoThis is not how GAAP accounting works.
- csomar 5y agoThat's actually how GAAP accounting works. Having a large amount of gold is both an asset and a liability (see double-entry accounting).
- dredmorbius 5y agoThat's not the sense in which I find "data are a liability" to be useful. Double-entry bookkeeping records transactions as debits and credits to different entities. "Data are a liability* is a recognition that whilst there may be a positive value to data, there is also a probabalistic negative value, especially in the event of unauthorised access or disclosure. That's not a double-entry value, where debits equal credits, it's an independent value, independent of the asset value, dependent on the nature of the data, the type of disclosure, the subject of the data, and the identity of the actor(s) who gain access to the information. The role is the same as that of any other business liability risk. And again, is independent of the asset value. As with other liabilities, the actual extent and probability of the liability-based cost is often unclear, and may change with time, particularly as the environment changes.
- newbamboo 5y agoIt’s interesting to contrast the communist and western (liberal) approaches. See for instance: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28252667 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28252667
- lifeisstillgood 5y agoBeing a spy is only getting harder. I remember reading a few years back how biometric scanning meant the CIA spy could not enter CountryX as a Textiles importer one week and a Olive salesman the next. They had to bribe people at the passport office into fixing their biometrics etc. Now this sort of thing must make it almost impossible. You can't even leave your mobile at home accidentally - that would trip alarm bells, especially if your contact does it at the same lunch hour. Spying seems to be a necessary part of how States understand one another. If human level intelligence work simply gets blown apart by technology then yeah we can keep track on what the other side is doing, but so very often we want to know why.
- makomk 5y agoYou've seen this right? https://www.wired.com/2007/06/st-cia/ https://www.wired.com/2007/06/st-cia/ There was a more detailed presentation about it from Defcon or somewhere, and one of the details that apparently gave them away was that the cellphones used only communicated with each other and not with anyone outside the group, aside from the odd screw-up.
- dublinben 5y agoSomething similar happened to the CIA in Lebanon as well. One hopes they've improved their tradecraft in the decade since. https://www.gawker.com/5861484/iran-and-hezbollah-caught-all-the-cia-spies-at-pizza-hut https://www.gawker.com/5861484/iran-and-hezbollah-caught-all...
- kbsspl 5y agothere can only be one spy now.
- tester756 5y ago>You can't even leave your mobile at home accidentally - that would trip alarm bells, especially if your contact does it at the same lunch hour. sometimes I do wonder whether if i'll be going to US to steal some faang jobs, then TSA will mark me as a terrorist/spy internally cuz I don't have smartphone?
- fulafel 5y agoIs there a difference in what iscollected and stored in EU?
- kbsspl 5y agosuch geographies have probably become redundant as there is no way to summon for this data
- judge2020 5y agoEU data is technically owned and stored by Google Ireland Limited (not Google LLC), but i'm sure Google's own legal data sifter software ensures US investigations can't pull data on locations within the EU.
- slownews45 5y agoLocation history is default off - but in general is useful enough you'll want to turn it on. To have it turned on you would need to * Sign into your google account * Turned on location history (google account level) - default is off * Turn on location reporting (device level option). --- A reasonable balance I've found is to have Google delete old location history - to do that you go to Google Maps Timeline http://www.google.com/maps/timeline http://www.google.com/maps/timeline Then do automatically delete location history. This deletes after some time. So you get the benefits of history without the forever record. --- You can also see what location history has been tracked for you with Takeout. Some cool visualizers there.
- sneak 5y agoPolice investigate crimes shortly after the crime (within the location data retention period). This would result in your stored data being used against you to build a case for criminal liability.
- gretch 5y agoOr it could exonerate you
- AnthonyMouse 5y agoIf your phone shows up at the scene of a crime, even if you weren't the perpetrator, they use it against you. If your phone shows it wasn't anywhere near the scene of the crime, they claim it's irrelevant because you knew you were going to commit a crime and left your phone somewhere else.
- throwaway0a5e 5y agoIf your phone is elsewhere you might not even be interesting enough to be questioned in the first place. Unless the police have reason to suspect specific people then casting drag nets (phone location data, ALPR data, etc) and then sifting through the list of people they get for the most probable suspects is SOP.
- Threeve303 5y agoCameras with facial and gait recognition everywhere you go RFID/NFC broadcasters/scanners all over the place Credit cards that track your spending and movement Contact tracing Daily massive data breaches Social media manipulation Every modern car has built in GPS tracking that is uploaded to the dealer and stored Three letter agency programs to capture as much metadata and content as possible Hash bashed copyright scanning enforcement on your local devices Oh and the stuff you create on these services? They own it. Everything they "sell" to you? You're renting it. -- Sorry for the rant but the reality is that this is already a dystopian nightmare and there is no way to go back.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- leotravis10 5y ago> Sorry for the rant but the reality is that this is already a dystopian nightmare and there is no way to go back. No need to be sorry since it's the way the world is headed now. This will soon be the norm. I won't be surprised in 5-10 years those you mentioned will be even more expanded and current laws can't keep up. There's even recent talk of a national ID system in the US for instance which would expand it even more. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/08/voting-rights-national-id-card/619772/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/08/voting-...
- tempfs 5y agoAnd ofcourse the government while it can't collect all that information on its own can sure as hell buy or rubber-stamp warrant their way into these datasets at will in order to side step the 4th amendment all together. If people are generally willing to accept the axiom that information is power, I am continually baffled as to why they can't understand how reckless it is to allow all of this capture, sale and sharing of the intimate details of their lives. How can we possibly defend ourselves or have any control over our lives while giving this much power to profit motive corporations? It is just pure madness.
- donmcronald 5y agoDon't forget "AI" that's just the pattern matching ability of a 2 year old enforcing security policies.
- LatteLazy 5y agoIts probably redundant for the HN audience, but some people are shocked to see the location data google has. See for yourself: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/timeline https://www.google.co.uk/maps/timeline
- headShrinker 5y agoJust curious where all the Apple CSAM defenders are when information like this comes to light. All the "I have nothing to hide people", don't understand they don't control when or how the information is used or if the information is even accurate. Your information is power given to an invisible fist, that you will need to defend yourself against. > NBC News reported last year how one Gainesville, Fla. resident whose information was given by Google to police investigating a burglary was able to prove his innocence thanks to an app on his phone that tracked his fitness activity. He was forced to prove his innocence because a tech company gave incorrect information as incontrovertible 'evidence'. Everyone let that sink in as your spyPhone scans all your photos looking for 'evidence'. You don't have access to all the information they collected and they don't share it with you even if it will prove your innocence. All prosecutors want is a persecution and they don't care if they have the wrong person. Giving them information is equivalent to slowly closing the steel door of the jail cell you didn't realize you were standing in.
- tinus_hn 5y agoYou’re telling a story about Google and blaming Apple. You’re telling a story about tracking Google does and Apple does not, and blaming Apple.
- brokenmachine 5y agoYou're missing the point.
- tinus_hn 5y agoThat is why the argument is a poor one.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- timwaagh 5y agoThe combination of this sort of data mining of circumstantial evidence combined with a justice system that mostly relies on the hunches of bunch of randoms for convictions, yes I can see how potentially innocent people will end up going to jail. But I don't think the geofence warrants are ultimately at the heart of the issue.
- GeekyBear 5y agoGoogle's practice of keeping mountains of personal data on their servers where it can be misused by anyone who can issue a subpoena needs to end. >Innocent man, 23, sues Arizona police for $1.5million after being arrested for murder and jailed for six days when Google's GPS tracker wrongly placed him at the scene of the 2018 crime https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7897319/Police-arrested-innocent-man-murder-using-Google-location-data.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7897319/Police-arre... It's not just creepy, it's dangerous.
- PoignardAzur 5y agoHe sued for $1.5 million for being jailed for a week? That seems completely unreasonable. The police operates on imperfect evidence, and as long as we don't switch to an omniscient surveillance state, that will always be the case. Catching the wrong guy and letting him go after a week seems like a reasonable mistake when you're looking for a murderer. If it had been 6 months, he would have had way more of a point.
- throwaddzuzxd 5y agoCan you imagine being wrongly imprisoned for a week and wondering if you'll ever get out? Living with the fear of something happening to you in an unknown and potentially unsafe environment? What about his reputation that might be permanently stained to his family members, friends, employers, the cops? I'd also try to get the most out of this awful week.
- JCharante 5y agoAlso if you are not privileged enough in your place of employment, you could lose your job from being arrested due to missing work.
- inetknght 5y ago> He sued for $1.5 million for being jailed for a week? > That seems completely unreasonable. Here's [0] another article. He showed up in the location (Google) and his ownership of same make/color vehicle (surveillance video) added to his suspectibility. So he was arrested. A week later he was released. A year later he's suing for defamation, gross negligence, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. In that one week: > the arrest causes him to fail background checks > news coverage prominently features in Google searches of his name > forced to drop out of school, having missing too many classes of the accelerated college program he was enrolled in So, he lost his job and his school. In one week he easily could have missed rent -- and this is before the pandemic so there's no moratorium on evictions. $1.5 million definitely isn't unreasonable for problems caused from being in jail for a week despite innocence. [0]: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10760055/innocent-man-23-sues-arizona-cops-for-1-5million-after-they-used-faulty-google-gps-data-to-arrest-him-for-murder/ https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10760055/innocent-man-23-sues-...
- jedberg 5y agoWe need a law that requires a private company to notify the user any time their data is shared with a 3rd party, regardless if it is for commercial or warrant (or any other) purpose. That would solve a lot of problems. We also need a law to outlaw these warrants, but I doubt that will ever happen, because I can see how useful they can be to legitimate investigations.
- specialist 5y agoI prefer that notification come in the form of payment. I own all my data about me. If any one else is using it, I demand my cut. Pay me.
- modriano 5y agoWow. There are about 14k to 19k homicides per year in the US. I think there should be at least 1 geofence warrant per homicide. I can't imagine anyone would find that controversial, to just see what devices were in the vicinity of a homicide around the time it happened. But it per these numbers, investigators are dropping the ball on at least thousands of homicide investigations.
- shakna 5y agoThere's been a recent uptick in murder (not crime) [0] rates in the US, which can skew the numbers, depending on how you choose to source your per-year stat. However, the US does tend to drop the ball on homicides [1], with some of the lowest clearance rates in the Western world. Though that's skewed by some states being utterly atrocious, and some being more average. > Across the country, North Dakota has the highest solved-murder rate among U.S. states for homicides reported from 1976 to 2019. It also has the fewest reported murders, according to the Murder Accountability Project. Its 94 percent solved rate dwarfs New York state’s 55 percent solved rate. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/30/us-crime-rate-homcides-explained https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/30/us-crime-rat... [1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/track-solved-murder-rates-united-states-n1271928 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/track-solved-murder-rat...
- KingMachiavelli 5y agoOccasionally I will use Google maps to get more accurate travel time estimates but for navigation open street maps via the OsmAnd app is good enough.
- gpt5 5y agoI don’t think you understand how this data is collected
- KingMachiavelli 5y agoI guess I forgot to mention I don't have Google services installed either altough that isn't any different than having background location access disabled for the Google Maps app on an iPhone. Is there some other mechanism that Google can gather location data?
- jstummbillig 5y agoDoes anyone around here know if using geofence warrants increase or decrease the conviction to false conviction ratio and by how much? Have any numbers been published and studies conducted on this?
- mistermarcus 5y agoIt's not only location data, but also the words spoken over these devices that's available for casual perusal....a recent acquaintance mentioned working for a Google subsidiary meant signing a non-disclosure agreement that stipulated their lead sheet came from recorded user conversations. "They record everything. I literally know everything about the person I'm selling to."
- StrLght 5y agoThe problem with that claim is that it's verifiable – you could spend time reverse engineering apps from Google and/or looking at their outgoing traffic with a proxy. And there quite a few people who do exactly that, yet no-one managed to find anything remotely like this. Do you have any other proof of this? If not I'd advise you not to blindly trust this (or any other) person.
- plaidfuji 5y agoFrankly I would be much more concerned about the false positive rate of this particular digital dragnet than about that of Apple’s CSAM.