5 ms·
I believe it was my 2010 article that was the first to highlight law enforcement obtaining cell site dumps: http://www.cnet.com/news/feds-push-for-tracking-cel
by declan 11y ago
I believe it was my 2010 article that was the first to highlight law enforcement obtaining cell site dumps:
http://www.cnet.com/news/feds-push-for-tracking-cell-phones/ http://www.cnet.com/news/feds-push-for-tracking-cell-phones/
"When the FBI was stymied by a band of armed robbers known as the "Scarecrow Bandits" that had robbed more than 20 Texas banks, it came up with a novel method of locating the thieves. FBI agents obtained logs from mobile phone companies corresponding to what their cellular towers had recorded at the time of a dozen different bank robberies in the Dallas area. The voluminous records showed that two phones had made calls around the time of all 12 heists..."
I'd be surprised if the FBI didn't do the same thing today, as a very bare minimum.
- jlgaddis 11y agoIt very well may have been. I can remember reading that article.
- dangly_bits 11y agoIt wasn't by a long shot. This very practice was a major plot point of season two of The Wire, which was aired in 2003.
- throwaway7767 11y agoNo, even in my very small country with generally pretty tech-impaired police department, this was common before 2010. There was a big issue I think around 2006 because the police requested the list of IMEIs present near a particular rural transmitter to help investigate a murder, their court order was rejected as the transmitter was serving a huge area and it was deemed too large a privacy violation for too many people. I'm sure it was done many times before that, and I'm also sure we were not the first.
- rullgrus 11y agoLogs which showed which towers a specific cellphone was connected to was important evidence in the 1999 murder case covered by the SERIAL podcast.