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I guess don't bring your phone to a bank robbery. I believe this is similar to how they nabbed the Washington State University murderer. The feds compelled Am
by petcat 4mo ago
I guess don't bring your phone to a bank robbery.
I believe this is similar to how they nabbed the Washington State University murderer. The feds compelled Amazon to give them all the bluetooth MAC addresses that was seen by the Echo device in the home around the time of the murders and were able to correlate it to other devices their suspect's phone had been visible to.
- xyzzy_plugh 4mo agoDo you have a source for this? I find it hard to believe this data is persisted, unless they tore open the device to extract logs.
- ceejayoz 4mo agohttps://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/amazon-releases-echo-data-murder-case-dropping-first-amendment-argument https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/amazon-releases-echo-dat...
- xyzzy_plugh 4mo agoThis article is about audio recordings. There's no mention of Bluetooth nor any mention as to if there were any relevant recordings, which as I understand it are not stored on the device at all. This smells like an urban myth.
- ceejayoz 4mo agoI don't think it's implausible that an Echo would have an internal list of trusted Bluetooth devices and their last date of connectivity.
- xyzzy_plugh 4mo agoThe original claim is: > all the bluetooth MAC addresses that was seen by the Echo device in the home around the time of the murders which is just not how this stuff works. I'd believe it if, say, debug-level logs were being recorded locally. But that would be an incredibly stupid way to burn through your flash storage. But that's besides the point. A record of the last date of connectivity for trusted devices is an entirely different thing. I'm interested in evidence that this type of data extraction took place. I'm not interested in speculation.
- ceejayoz 4mo agoMy car shows "last seen" on its Bluetooth connections. The murderer in this case was an invited friend; it's hardly implausible he's connected to Bluetooth there. > I'm interested in evidence that this type of data extraction took place. That they obtained access to the Echo's internals via Amazon is evidence. It sounds like you want proof of a very particular bit of data being in it, which I'd guess the FBI etc. aren't going to provide here.
- rootusrootus 4mo ago> The murderer in this case was an invited friend Huh? More and more I feel like I must not be thinking about the same Idaho murder case that y'all are talking about.
- sidewndr46 4mo agoI don't think that is ever admitted into the public record or presented to a jury. An expert reviews it and prevents the conclusions. In the even that you had the knowledge to review it yourself, you're excluded from the jury as jurors aren't allowed to question means and methods.
- kube-system 4mo agoAmazon used Echo devices for all kinds of invasive purposes other than advertised. Tracking the bluetooth identifiers of nearby devices is small potatoes compared to other things they've done: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Sidewalk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Sidewalk One of those purposes was to explicity use Echos for tracking purposes: > Amazon’s partnership will allow it beef up its tracking network, called Sidewalk, by letting Tile and Level devices tap into the Bluetooth networks created by millions of its Echo products. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/07/amazon-partners-with-tile-to-take-on-apple-airtags.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/07/amazon-partners-with-tile-to...
- autoexec 4mo ago> I guess don't bring your phone to a bank robbery. You should also make sure not to bring your phone to anywhere where a nearby crime is happening because that's all it takes to make you a suspect and force you spend a bunch of money defending yourself. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/google-tracked-his-bike-ride-past-burglarized-home-made-him-n1151761 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/google-tracked-his-bike... Hopefully rulings like this make that scenario a little less likely to happen, but it doesn't stop it entirely, it just means that the police need to spend 15 minutes to get a rubber-stamped warrant before they turn everyone within a few miles of crime into a suspect.
- bombcar 4mo agoI mean in this case it would also have helped not to have $100k in cash from a bank robbery laying around.
- jotux 4mo ago>You should also make sure not to bring your phone to anywhere where a nearby crime is happening because that's all it takes to make you a suspect Proximity to a crime makes you a suspect even without the phone, right?
- autoexec 4mo agoOnly if it's known that you were ever there in the first place, and people that typically wouldn't ever be considered, like someone who is quietly visiting in the living room of someone who lives nearby, will fall under scrutiny when police are just getting the data of everyone in a certain radius.
- kube-system 4mo agoA one hour period and 150 meter radius of a bank surrounded by cornfields? sure. A one hour period and 150 meter radius of a bank surrounded by high-rises and public transit? no.
- stinkbeetle 4mo ago
- BeetleB 4mo agoSource for this? As I recall, his phone was off when he committed the murders. In fact, they used the evidence that it had been turned off just for the duration of the murders (with some padding) against him. If you're going to commit a crime, don't suddenly turn off your phone if you don't have a history of doing so!
- rootusrootus 4mo agoOr just leave it at home on your bedside table where you ought to be sleeping instead of out killing.
- mjevans 4mo agoI have on at least two occasions forgotten my phone in my car at highly inconvenient times... One of which was just before a flight, for a vacation. I was amazed it had any battery life at all when I got back. Yes, this stuff does happen to real people doing normal things.
- BeetleB 4mo agoSure, but that pattern isn't going to make the cops think you committed a crime. And if you flew out, there's plenty of other evidence you're elsewhere (airline information, credit card usage, etc). To clarify, I'm not saying they used it against him in court (he didn't even have a trial). It did help in increasing their confidence in him as a suspect.
- dlcarrier 4mo agoHopeful they used the MAC address to find the phone, then tracked the phone itself, because an IMEI and ICCID are pretty difficult to clone, but a Bluetooth MAC address is trivially easy.
- petcat 4mo agoThe police already had the suspect in mind. They were just building supporting evidence. It was an airtight case. He ended up pleading guilty because otherwise Idaho would have executed him.
- brookst 4mo ago> I guess don't bring your phone to a bank robbery Yes, everyone knows to steal a phone from someone you hate and bring that to the robbery. Right?
- preg_match 4mo agoI mean, yeah, I wouldn’t even bring my phone to a legal protest. Or, I’d at least shut it down.