[HN Gopher] How police use location/search data to find suspects...
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How police use location/search data to find suspects - not always
the right ones
Author : c420
Score : 44 points
Date : 2023-10-03 18:34 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _Now, Apple has taken steps to publish its own numbers,
| revealing that in the first half of 2022 the company fielded a
| total of 13 geofence warrants and complied with none. The
| difference? According to Apple's transparency report, the company
| doesn't have any data to provide in response._
|
| 13 geofence warrants for Apple vs. ~3500 (21000 from 2018-2020,
| averaged to 6 mo) for Google. That's a pretty stark difference.
| (I do wish they had/gave the numbers for Apple over the same
| 2018-2020 time period or at least covering a couple years for a
| more apple-apple comparison).
|
| While Apple isn't perfect (plenty of fumbles along the way and
| still), seeing stats like this make me feel a little more
| comfortable with my iPhone compared to my Android.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| My belief is that this is why we need a law saying no use of
| user information for any commercial purposes. With draconian
| penalties assessed per user-incident.
|
| Bonus points awarded for legislation that pierces the veil.
|
| So you want to play games and you "leaked" a million user
| records to your business partner? That's a million fines slick.
|
| Oh, you "leaked" them to your business partner again the next
| week? No problem tough guy, that's a million more draconian
| fines.
|
| We can play this game all the way to your bankruptcy pal.
|
| We need to stop these tech companies from trampling privacy and
| the only way to do it is to hit them _extremely hard_ where it
| hurts.
| jliptzin wrote:
| Who are those fines paid to? The government slush fund? Or to
| the people actually impacted by the leak?
| almostnormal wrote:
| How about jail time?
| didntknowya wrote:
| yea a company's word that it respects privacy has little value.
| thankfully data harvesting isn't a profit stream for Apple so
| they see no need to collect it. Google on the other hand trades
| in data and would collect as much as they can.
| jstarfish wrote:
| > But geofence warrants are sweeping in nature and are often used
| to compile a suspect list to further investigate.
|
| Yes, this is how investigations work.
|
| The actual problem with this approach is that it's lazy and
| assumes everybody involved in the crime is on-the-grid. Criminals
| could subvert the whole process and fill the dragnet with false
| leads by refusing to carry a phone.
| 99_00 wrote:
| The article presents no evidence to support that Zachary McCoy
| was a ever a suspect.
|
| If it turns out that he was present at multiple break-ins, or he
| spoke to police and gave suspicious and inconsistent responses
| that might have changed.
| kurthr wrote:
| If their sample rate and position accuracy was even remotely
| acceptable, then it should be obvious he was riding past and
| didn't spend more 1 minute with 100m of the location. They should
| only have been asking whether he saw anything suspicious.
|
| What if an airplane flew over during the burglary? Are they
| suspects?
|
| OTOH if it showed that his position was static within 10m of the
| home for 20min before leaving again... then that might be
| evidence. Almost all of us leave huge digital footprints that can
| be followed with a warrant (not sure about UK). That can be used
| for pretexting, but can also be used as an alibi.
| autoexec wrote:
| The data google had was enough to show that he wasn't the
| thief, but the police didn't bother digging that deep. They
| just took their easy answer and ran with it. He would have been
| cleared in court, but there's zero reason we should let lazy
| cops force us to spend time in jail or spend thousands on
| lawyers to avoid that fate. This needs to get regulated.
| autoexec wrote:
| Wow, I thought this article was talking about a different guy
| entirely.
|
| The difference between the photo in TFA vs the one here
| (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/google-tracked-his-bike...)
| is just insane! Crazy how much can change in a few short years!
| Good on ya Zach!
|
| I think I need to get a bike... (and leave my cell phone at home)
| luuurker wrote:
| Let's say you pause every "history" option (location, search,
| etc) in your Google Account settings. Would you still be part of
| this information they provide to the police?
| eth0up wrote:
| Perhaps you're asking rhetorically. Perhaps not.
|
| Of ducking bloody course!
|
| Simply peruse _Running services_ in Developer Options and
| proceed to purchase bulk quantities of Preparation H to ease
| the grievous pang.
|
| Android is a surveillance framework. It merely happens to be
| useful to the products utilizing it.
|
| Go forth boldly with your new understanding, oh lurker. And may
| your anonymity and dignity endure. But don't get your hopes up.
| gleenn wrote:
| For people who talk a lot of crap about Apple for advertising
| privacy but not delivering: Google responded to the government
| 84% of the time "with some data" out of 20,000 times requested in
| 2 years. Apple received 13 requests and returned information ZERO
| times. It turns out that if you don't store that _incredibly
| lucrative_ data about users, you can 't be on the hook to hand it
| over in sweeping data requests. Apple may not be perfect, but
| that has teeth. Full disclosure I work at Apple, thoughts are my
| own.
| [deleted]
| candiddevmike wrote:
| I think you're mixing up the numbers. The 84% for Google is for
| the second half of 2020, the 20k number is for the two years
| previously, and the 13 for Apple were just the first half of
| 2022.
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