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> 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 lon
by 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.
- YLYvYkHeB2NRNT 5y agoIf the government was not getting what they wanted from Google, the entire alphabet company would have been broken up a long time ago just like the phone companies were.
- ByteWelder 5y agoThe same goes for their analytics "IP anonymization": it's hardly anonymous. I wrote an article about it a while back: https://bytewelder.com/posts/2021/07/08/google-analytics-ip-anonymization-is-a-joke.html https://bytewelder.com/posts/2021/07/08/google-analytics-ip-...
- wildlogic 5y agoI know for sure this is possible because I helped build it (embarassingly, I'm working on being a jeweler now).