[HN Gopher] Federal appeals court finds geofence warrants "categ...
___________________________________________________________________
Federal appeals court finds geofence warrants "categorically"
unconstitutional
Author : computerliker
Score : 241 points
Date : 2024-08-12 19:57 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.eff.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.eff.org)
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Related:
|
| _No reasonable expectation of privacy in one 's Google location
| data_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40958458 - July 2024
| (163 comments)
| londons_explore wrote:
| Wonder if this case will make google backtrack on their move to
| purge all location data from their users server-based location
| histories?
| fortran77 wrote:
| They are a very effective tool for finding burglars.
|
| That's how many burglaries are solved in my area. If the exact
| time of the burglary is known (from alarm or security camera) a
| very specific warrant is given for all phone activity at or near
| that time at that location.
|
| I'm hoping if the warrent is more specific (perhaps finding
| similar burglaries and requesting information only for matches
| between the two locations) they can still be used.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| There are more important things than punishing petty theft.
| fortran77 wrote:
| Residential burglary is not petty theft. If the house isn't
| empty, a person could be seriously injured or killed.
| ryaneager wrote:
| Well, that sounds like you're not not scared of burglary,
| but rather assault and/or murder
| kstrauser wrote:
| I confess that finding any stranger in my house for any
| motive would frighten the hell out of me. I suspect
| that's true of nearly the whole population.
| vuln wrote:
| They're just seeking refuge.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| And the residential burglars probably started with petty
| theft and got away with it, and became emboldened. Also see
| the broken window theory.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory
| giantg2 wrote:
| I wonder if there can be nuance that if a person owns a private
| location, they can request the data for their property. This
| seems reasonable to me. The only people on the property should
| have permission and already be known to the owner. The ones who
| don't are trespassing and can be suspects for crimes committed
| during that time.
| kardos wrote:
| You'd need geofencing of mobiles to be precise and accurate
| to about a meter for that to work. Is that the case?
| giantg2 wrote:
| "You'd need geofencing of mobiles to be precise and
| accurate to about a meter for that to work."
|
| That's not true. There are many types of properties. Large
| properties could accomodate large margins of error,
| multiple times greater than the fine grain location data
| when using a poont in the middle of the property. There are
| some types of properties that this couldn't be applied to,
| such as apartments.
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| If there are 5G towers that might be possible
| ziddoap wrote:
| They are also quite effective at subjecting completely innocent
| people to criminal investigations.
| deelowe wrote:
| Exactly. Some people seem to have the opinion that a thing is
| good if it generally proves effective a capturing criminals.
| Others have the opinion that capturing criminals is only good
| if there's a very low risk of innocents being caught up in
| the process.
|
| I'm in the latter group.
| alwa wrote:
| In general, though, doesn't more (and more reliable)
| information permit more accurate conclusions? Wouldn't this
| type of data reduce the risk of innocents being caught up,
| compared to asking cops or neighbors to hazard their best
| guess at who might have been around at the time of the
| crime?
| jliptzin wrote:
| I'm ok with TVs and jewelry getting stolen occasionally
| if it means my government is not constantly tracking my
| every move
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| That happens all the time during normal, legal place
| investigations. What's wrong with that? The concept of an
| investigation almost necessarily requires there to be
| innocent people involved, to differentiate the guilty from
| the innocent.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Eh. There is a big difference between an investigation ( as
| one sees in most American cinema hence why this particular
| phrasing is likely chosen ) and a fishing expedition, where
| LEOs go through data they in likelihood should not ( and to
| make it more annoying -- are highly unlikely to delete once
| done ).
|
| I am saying this as a person who got LEO request for JUAN
| no last name and no other identifiers. As you can imagine,
| some of us are not amused by such requests.
|
| edit: Location is much, much more telling than basic name
| and address.
| Noumenon72 wrote:
| They never make these decisions with regard for the societal
| benefits of solving crime, they just ban policing and
| congratulate themselves on preventing bad policing. They could
| have narrowed this down to a new definition of probable cause
| rather than saying "See that terrorist on video using his GPS
| to plant bombs at the orphanage? Sorry, we can't find 'im."
| vuln wrote:
| Must have been the guy planting pipe bombs at the DNC during
| the insurrection.
| bee_rider wrote:
| We have a rule-of-law system in the US, at least that's the
| ideal. The court shouldn't be changing the laws to make
| policing easier. That's what the legislative branch is for.
| jfengel wrote:
| I hear that a fair bit: "that's what the legislature is
| for". Has the Congress ever responded by actually passing a
| law?
|
| Passing a law is a very high bar, especially with the
| filibuster, and a President can still veto it. It's
| supposed to be for checks and balances, but I see a lot of
| checks and very few balances.
|
| I know that it's not the court's responsibility to fix the
| rest of the system. But it feels disingenuous to say that
| the legislature could fix it when they know perfectly well
| that they won't.
| Shog9 wrote:
| > Has the Congress ever responded by actually passing a
| law?
|
| Yes. Despite appearances to the contrary (and the
| exceptionally lethargic behavior of the current (118th)
| congress), Congress does actually pass laws (and
| revisions to existing laws), often in response to
| deficiencies identified by courts and law enforcement in
| what is currently on the books. If you're interested in
| following this, the library of congress website [1] has
| half-way decent filtering.
|
| > I know that it's not the court's responsibility to fix
| the rest of the system. But it feels disingenuous to say
| that the legislature could fix it when they know
| perfectly well that they won't.
|
| Forget responsibility, it's not even within the court's
| _purview_ - in order for a ruling to stand (much less set
| precedent), it must be based on the law as it exists
| (including past precedent); ignoring that might feel good
| to watch, and would certainly make life interesting for
| participants in one specific case... But in no way
| compensates for an inability to legislate on the part of
| actual, elected, legislators.
|
| If you're frustrated, vote for congressfolk who get
| things done vs. blather on, don't wish for a magic judge.
|
| [1]: https://www.congress.gov/search?q=%7B%22source%22%3A
| %22legis...
| bee_rider wrote:
| > I hear that a fair bit: "that's what the legislature is
| for". Has the Congress ever responded by actually passing
| a law?
|
| I'm not 100% clear on what the question is, in the sense
| that I want to give you a good-faith reading but, of
| course, the answer is obviously no. I doubt congress has
| even read any of our posts, haha.
|
| I think the general expectation is that when chatting
| about politics the best hope we could have is that we
| could cause the other person (or some other person
| reading along) to vote differently, and maybe we'll all
| get some better representatives if this conversation
| repeats enough times. It is a pretty indirect strategy, I
| don't think it will have any big obvious wins.
|
| > Passing a law is a very high bar, especially with the
| filibuster, and a President can still veto it. It's
| supposed to be for checks and balances, but I see a lot
| of checks and very few balances.
|
| I agree that our system has a lot of checks and might be
| too logjam-prone. (Although, over the last 8 years we've
| probably both appreciated this feature at some point or
| another, maybe at different times). But that's the system
| we have, we should fix it in an above the board fashion,
| not hope for judges to circumvent it.
|
| > I know that it's not the court's responsibility to fix
| the rest of the system. But it feels disingenuous to say
| that the legislature could fix it when they know
| perfectly well that they won't.
|
| Well, to be entirely transparent, there's a dual purpose
| to this. So maybe it is a bit disingenuous. I mean the
| ingenuous element is there: it is always good to keep in
| mind how our system works, and I do think people should
| target their irritation at the correct party.
|
| But also, not many of our (democratically elected)
| representatives are willing to argue for increasing
| surveillance. So the reminder that it is their job is a
| slightly circuitous way of indicating that it is maybe
| not a popular idea. If it were, somebody would run on it.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Fix the root cause of why folks need to steal instead of
| invading everyone's privacy?
| mc32 wrote:
| I see this implication over and over (that poor hungry people
| steal). Poor people don't often steal. They might pilfer here
| and there, but they're not doing outright stealing or
| robbing. I've known poor people, I've lived with poor people
| and by and large they are not thieves. They may keep
| something, sneak something, but they are not breaking in and
| stealing stuff --if they do take things not theirs, it's
| "passive" (i.e. opportunistic.)
|
| People who steal are often of two types, career criminals,
| pert of an organized (this can be peripheral) crime
| organization, or drugged out zombies who could not hold a
| job. There's a possible third, impulse theft by teenagers
| --these are low numbers.
|
| It sticks in my craw when people so easily imply poor people
| steal and burgle. All the hand to mouth poor people who on
| occasion dumpster dove and all that, did not steal things,
| break into homes etc.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Sorry, can you show me where in my comment I pointed at
| poverty being the root cause?
| mc32 wrote:
| So, according to you what are the root causes of burglary
| and theft?
| em-bee wrote:
| poverty is not the problem, lack of moral education is.
|
| we teach STEM in schools, but we assume that moral behavior
| is obvious and natural. we don't teach children why moral
| behavior is important, and more critically we don't teach
| that moral behavior includes caring for others, and that
| doing so will benefit all of us. instead we teach children
| to compete against each other, and we put them in
| situations where selfish behavior is the best way to get
| ahead. at best we try to scare them about the risks of
| crime, but we don't show them the benefits of being helpful
| instead of selfish.
|
| no education is going to completely eradicate crime, but i
| do believe there is a correlation between the quality of
| education and the amount of moral education and crimerates.
| andrewla wrote:
| I don't know if you are a parent or have first-hand
| experience here. But I am and do, and schools spend an
| inordinate amount of time doing this. Especially in
| elementary school, but throughout the public education
| system messages of caring for others are literally
| everywhere in every possible context.
|
| Even when I was a student this was the case; we had units
| and assemblies presenting these concepts to an incredibly
| frustrating and condescending degree.
| mc32 wrote:
| Point taken. But these days they teach STEAM. Which is a
| weird way of saying they've gone back to not being STEM.
| STEM was to focus on the sciency, mathy, technical
| curricula as opposed to the non-STEM, like art and social
| things. But to undermine the whole STEM they went and
| braded regular curricula STEAM curricula so people would
| think, yeah, it's basically STEM with an "A" in it.
| Brilliant bastards.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| That's not what STEAM is at all. Please actually look up
| the term before deciding what it means and deriding it
| (it does deserve derision, but mostly for a terrible
| rollout and lesson plans that misunderstand it).
| jonas21 wrote:
| And what would that root cause be?
| candiddevmike wrote:
| I don't think there is _one_ root cause. But I can tell you
| that burglary is a symptom, and seeing increases in it year
| over year (outpacing population growth) is a sign of
| systemic problems.
| milesskorpen wrote:
| Burglary rates have dropped precipitously in the past 30
| years from ~1250 per 100k to ~300 per 100k.
|
| Source:
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/191243/reported-
| burglary...
| deelowe wrote:
| LOL. There's no reason a lot of times. We have a major
| "joyriding" epidemic in my city and it's just idiot kids
| making tiktok videos for fun.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Society probably needs to have a frank conversation about
| if things like TikTok are a net benefit or not.
| willmadden wrote:
| TikTok is fine. Criminals need to be locked up in a
| prison.
| andrewla wrote:
| If you can make it win-win for everyone involved, then sure,
| but there's no such thing as a free lunch.
|
| Individuals have agency; they are not slaves of any "root
| cause". The individual decision of a person to burgle may
| have correlations to statistical characteristics of their
| situation, but unless we understand the base rate of that set
| of circumstances we will never be able to address it without
| restricting the agency of others in that cohort.
|
| And the level of intrusiveness necessary to establish the
| cohort of individuals requires a degree of surveillance that
| is ripe for abuse and incompatible with personal liberty.
| hed wrote:
| > Unsurprisingly, however, the court found that in 2018, police
| could have relied on such a warrant in "good faith," because
| geofence technology was novel, and police reached out to other
| agencies with more experience for guidance. This means that the
| evidence they obtained will not be suppressed in this case.
|
| That the guy's case gets a right affirmed yet in his individual
| case it won't make a difference has to be a pretty bitter pill to
| swallow.
| cryptonector wrote:
| It also makes it hard for the government to appeal the ruling,
| which then might just stand as precedent throughout the 5th
| circuit.
| RetpolineDrama wrote:
| What utter nonsense on behalf of the courts. The "good faith"
| defense is irrelevant to the finding that a fundamental right
| was violated, and to deny the original defendant relief like
| this is just absurd.
| cryptonector wrote:
| This is a way for the courts not to get bad press. For the
| defendant at the time this is a terrible ending. For everyone
| else it's still nice. From a court's perspective this is a
| good compromise.
| Supermancho wrote:
| If this was about discrimination of race, as a rights
| violation, it is clear that good faith is irrelevant.
| Rights supercede good faith and the presumption or previous
| decisions are improper.
| khuey wrote:
| Basically every noteworthy Fourth Amendment case works this way
| unfortunately.
| andrewla wrote:
| I am not a lawyer, but the language of the opinion [1] seems to
| indicate that the geofence itself is not admissible, but
| evidence obtained as a result of it is still admissible:
|
| > On November 4, 2022, Smith filed a Motion to Suppress-- which
| the other Appellants joined--seeking to suppress all evidence
| derived from the November 2018 geofence warrant which was used
| to identify them as suspects.
|
| They were identified as suspects, and further investigation
| produced more evidence, which formed the case. What they are
| saying is that the good faith exception prevents this from
| tainting all derived evidence in this case, which seems
| reasonable.
|
| The good faith exception is an exception to the exclusionary
| rule, not to the admissibility of the evidence itself.
|
| [1]
| https://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/23/23-60321-CR0.pd...
| flavius29663 wrote:
| > the opinion [1] seems to indicate that the geofence itself
| is not admissible, but evidence obtained as a result of it is
| still admissible
|
| That means they can geofence to get a short list of suspects,
| and then file proper warrants for some of them if they have
| more clues?
| burkaman wrote:
| Not anymore, now that this precedent is set.
| ticviking wrote:
| I'm still wondering how this precedent prevents parallel
| construction nonsense
| bongodongobob wrote:
| I don't see how that's reasonable.
|
| "Well we kicked down the door to your house, which was wrong,
| but look at all this good evidence we got! I mean, c'mon, the
| guy is clearly guilty..."
| jkeuhlen wrote:
| Intent is the key to the good faith exception here.
|
| If you intend to kick down a door to find evidence of
| wrongdoing, anything you find is inadmissible. But if you
| kick down a door because someone on the other side is
| screaming for help, evidence of other wrongdoing that you
| find is admissible still.
|
| Here, they are saying that they had good reason to believe
| they could operate in the way that they did, so while the
| geofence evidence itself isn't able to be used, other
| evidence derived from that work is still usable. But going
| forwards, no one can use the geofence technique in good
| faith.
| OldSchool wrote:
| Was "Stop and Frisk" by the NYPD also in good faith for the
| decade or more that it took to get it declared
| unconstitutional?
| Terr_ wrote:
| Even if practices so far have been unconstitutionally broad and
| sloppy, are there _any_ scenarios where such a warrant for that
| kind of data could be valid?
|
| For example, a small cottage in the woods is burned down with
| gasoline on a night the owner is absent. The police want to find
| the arsonist by asking for phones that connected to that tower
| that night, and there happen to be only 3 results, two of which
| are known neighbors. Still too broad?
|
| In other words, should some of this hinge on the varying
| size/specificity of the result-set, rather than the query-
| parameters in isolation?
| wordpad25 wrote:
| I think maybe they will still use it, it's just not admissable
| as evidence in court
| hwillis wrote:
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree
|
| > Fruit of the poisonous trees is a doctrine that extends the
| exclusionary rule to make evidence inadmissible in court if
| it was derived from evidence that was illegally obtained.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
|
| Another officer will get an "anonymous tip".
| andrewla wrote:
| GP is probably referring to the practice of "Evidence
| Laundering" which has been deployed from time to time by
| law enforcement.
|
| Still dubious that this would be used that way just because
| telecoms would be aware of this potential for misuse and
| would not give the data up without a subpeona or warrant,
| which under this ruling would not be allowed.
| cryptonector wrote:
| Government: we want a geofence warrant for ...
|
| Court: no
|
| Government: how much $ for this data?
|
| Telco/bigtechco: ah, now we're talking
| cryptonector wrote:
| _Back reconstruction enters the chat_
| hwillis wrote:
| A suspect runs into a garage with several unlocked cars,
| including yours. The suspect had drugs when he went into the
| garage and didn't when he came out. The drugs may be in any of
| the cars or none of them.
|
| You would not get a search warrant in that case unless your car
| was the only one in the garage. The police don't know if there
| is three or even one phone connected to the tower in that time,
| and they should not get a warrant.
| tantalor wrote:
| How far can probable cause stretch?
|
| Can I say, "well it's probably in one of those 3 cars" so
| then I can get a warrant?
|
| After the Boston Marathon bombing, they searched a 20-block
| area for the suspect (and found him). Was that legal?
| HeatrayEnjoyer wrote:
| Wasn't it a voluntary search?
| vngzs wrote:
| There's actually a _Slate_ article covering this topic[0].
| First, consent was given for certain homes. However, the
| article also notes that under "exigent circumstances"
| warrantless searches are permitted:
|
| > In _exigent circumstances_ , or emergency situations,
| police can conduct warrantless searches to protect public
| safety. This exception to the Fourth Amendment's probable
| cause requirement normally addresses situations of "hot
| pursuit," in which an escaping suspect is tracked to a
| private home. But it might also apply to the events
| unfolding in Boston if further harm or injury might be
| supposed to occur in the time it takes to secure a warrant.
| A bomber believed to be armed and planning more violence
| would almost certainly meet such prerequisites.
|
| [0]: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2013/04/boston-
| bomber-ma...
| nvy wrote:
| A resident found him in his boat in his back yard and
| called police.
| lesuorac wrote:
| > After the Boston Marathon bombing, they searched a
| 20-block area for the suspect (and found him). Was that
| legal?
|
| Uh, why wouldn't a cop be allowed to walk/drive/fly-over
| public roadways in a 20-block area and look from public
| land in any direction?
|
| Also do note, they knew specifically who they were looking
| for and had location data from their cellphones [1]. Not a
| judge, but if I was and somebody wanted a search warrant to
| find a person at a location and their evidence was the
| dude's cellphone is there, I'd grant it.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzhokhar_Tsarnaev#Manhun
| t_and_...
| deelowe wrote:
| > The police don't know if there is three or even one phone
| connected to the tower in that time.
|
| Huh? The entire point the parent was making is that they do
| "know" which cell phones were connected during specific
| times.
| bryant wrote:
| > Huh? The entire point the parent was making is that they
| do "know" which cell phones were connected during specific
| times.
|
| As I understand it, the point is that law enforcement does
| not know this, and thus they send a request to the service
| provider for _all_ devices within this geofence within this
| timebox.
|
| The service provider must then search the entirety of the
| relevant datastores for devices matching the geo- and time
| requirements.
| andrewla wrote:
| In the specific cases in question, the officers had video
| evidence of one of the perpetrators using a cell phone, and
| used that to justify the warrant. The court ruled that even
| this was insufficient, but is part of the reason why they
| are not applying the exclusionary rule to these cases even
| though the evidence itself is inadmissible.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Wait, really?
|
| If police say they have extremely good evidence to believe
| the drugs are in the garage, in the scenario you described, a
| court wouldn't issue a search warrant for the garage
| including any cars it contains?
|
| I'm genuinely surprised. Is there a name for whatever legal
| principle prevents the court from doing so? I'd like to learn
| more about this.
|
| Because from Wikipedia [1], I'd have assumed that this would
| be a cut-and-dried instance of probable cause [2]. Is it
| about the vehicle owners being different from the garage
| owner?
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_warrant#United_States
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probable_cause
| fsckboy wrote:
| I'm pretty up on current events, but I did not know/recall what a
| geofence warrant is. It's the "what cellphones pinged here"
| search warrant:
|
| _A geofence warrant is a type of search warrant that allows law
| enforcement to collect location data from devices within a
| specific geographic area (the "geofence") during a particular
| time period. This warrant enables investigators to:_
|
| _1. Identify devices present in the area_
|
| _2. Collect location data, such as GPS coordinates or cell tower
| information_
|
| _3. Link devices to specific locations and times_
| cryptonector wrote:
| It's also "what devices Google saw in these areas at these
| times", which is much higher quality than cell tower
| triangulation.
| xyst wrote:
| Can a FOIA request reveal if your phone has ever been included in
| one of these geofence warrants?
| from-nibly wrote:
| > it is essential that every person feels like they can simply
| take their cell phone out into the world without the fear that
| they might end up a criminal suspect because their location data
| was swept up in open-ended digital dragnet.
|
| This single ruling, does nothing to make me feel any better about
| this. Everyone can be swept up in "some digital dragnet" because
| everyone's data is everywhere, and it's impossible to manage
| without hauling off to the woods and disconnecting from the
| internet at large.
| cryptonector wrote:
| This ruling is a huge step in the right direction. To gather
| all the data you speak of requires some entity (entities,
| really) -currently not the government- to gather it and then
| make it available for subpoenas and warrants, which would then
| fall [in the 5th circuit anyways, right now] under this
| precedent.
|
| The government could get into the business of building [under
| cover] popular apps so as to gather that data themselves, but
| that would take a great deal of time and money, and most
| importantly competence!
| sroussey wrote:
| Or just pay a data broker.
| w10-1 wrote:
| > the quintessential problem with these warrants is that they
| never include a specific user to be identified, only a temporal
| and geographic location where any given user may turn up post-
| search
|
| In that case, it's illegal to look in the phone book for names
| starting with "john" because that's not a specific user.
|
| From the ruling emphasizes a search through the "entire" database
| as a kind of rummaging through everything in a house, but that's
| clearly inapt. First, it shouldn't matter whether Google just
| needs to check an index vs. doing a full scan. Second, there's no
| reason to assume a digital search has the same privacy
| implications as a house search. It's just assuming what you're
| trying to prove. `While the results of a geofence warrant may be
| narrowly tailored, the search itself is not` is relevant only if
| the search itself is an invasion of privacy.
|
| So even (especially?) if I preferred the result in this case,
| that reasoning is not likely to hold up in a conflict with the
| 4th circuit. It's exactly this kind of weak conflict that gives
| the Supreme Court too much latitude to draw lines as they see
| fit.
|
| edit: sorry, removed disrespect for the EFF
| nvy wrote:
| >In that case, it's illegal to look in the phone book for names
| starting with "john" because that's not a specific user.
|
| That's an absurd reduction, and not at all analogous to the
| situation discussed in TFA.
| w10-1 wrote:
| I agree the situations are different and this situation
| warrants privacy protection.
|
| However, the court fails to articulate anything close to a
| workable rule in its reasoning.
|
| Further, because the actual outcome was an upheld search d/t
| good faith reliance, the finding of unconstitutionality is
| basically dicta, and would/should be ignored by other
| districts and even in the same district.
|
| I don't think this ruling offers the protections people want
| or should have. I think that point stands, however hidden by
| downvoting.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > In that case, it's illegal to look in the phone book for
| names starting with "john" because that's not a specific user.
|
| No. Working with that analogy, this ruling indicates you can't
| get one warrant that applies to everyone in the book - simply
| because they are listed in the same geographic area.
|
| A phone-book warrant would not be in harmony with the 4th
| Amendment.
| creer wrote:
| Does it mean that it would be constitutional if each tower
| kept its own log? Or then, if the database server collated a
| separate log for each tower as it went?
|
| How would one-log-per-tower be different from a surveillance
| video tape?
|
| Hmmm... elements of an answer: there is no doubt more in the
| decision but from the EFF writeup: (1) "individuals have a
| reasonable expectation of privacy in the location data", (2)
| "sensitive information about a person's associations and
| allow police to "follow" them into private spaces", (3)
| "require a provider, almost always Google, to search "the
| entirety" of its reserve of location data "while law
| enforcement officials have no idea who they are looking for,
| or whether the search will even turn up a result.""
|
| So it sounds like one-log-per-tower would take care of the
| third point (the warrant would call for 1-4 specific towers
| or something), but the court still found an expectation of
| privacy in cell phone location, and an expectation that this
| sensitive private info might intrude of private spaces. As
| opposed to a video camera which views a public space.
| andrewla wrote:
| Interesting tangent to this is that Google has recently announced
| that they are shutting down their "Timeline" service in favor of
| having that information stored locally on the user device. I
| wonder if this is a "do no evil" reaction to geofence warrants --
| if Google does not have the information they cannot give it to
| law enforcement. This has been Google's practice in other
| situation (GDPR) where retaining information inherently exposes
| Google's customers to law enforcement violations of their privacy
| via Google itself.
| weaksauce wrote:
| > do no evil
|
| google dropped that slogan a decade or more ago
| andrewla wrote:
| > And remember ... don't be evil, and if you see something
| that you think isn't right -- speak up! [1]
|
| [1] http://abc.xyz/investor/google-code-of-conduct
| mc32 wrote:
| Please snitch. No, I mean it, snitch on the dirty things
| Google does in gathering user data and selling behavioral
| data to the largest bidder.
|
| I'm for total blind advertising. Non-targeted --not on the
| individual level. No smaller than ZIP.
| ikmckenz wrote:
| No, they didn't. After corporate restructuring, parent
| company Alphabet uses a different cute slogan, while Google
| retains "don't be evil" in their code of conduct.
| whartung wrote:
| So, this is about taking a blind sample of an area to see if
| anyone is suspicious.
|
| This is in contrast to having a named suspect, and then analyzing
| their phone data to see if they were in the area? That's still
| legit discovery?
| jmyeet wrote:
| This is an interesting decision in historical context for several
| reasons.
|
| First, the Fifth Circuit is conservative. It includes Texas,
| Louisianna and Alabama. It's become known as the fast-track to
| the Supreme Court as it has ruled very conservatively at both the
| district and appellate level. This problem is exacerbated by how
| the Fifth Circuit is organized where the districts in the circuit
| are divided into divisions of often 1-2 judges, allowing
| plaintiffs to very effectively "judge shop".
|
| Second, in modern times the Fourth Amendment has been
| consistently weakened by successive Supreme Court. A notable
| example if the 1968 case Terry v. Ohio that allowed police to
| stop people and search them without probably cause. Another huge
| example if the whole concept of civil asset forfeiture, which was
| justified by (IMHO) the most contorted mental gymnastics: this
| pile of money has no rights. But it was found in someone's car.
| How is it not their property and thus the Fourth Amendment
| limitation on unlawful search and seizure should apply?
|
| Third, the Supreme Court will likely take this case up now. Why?
| Because the Fourth and Fifth Circuits have issued conflicting
| rulings. That's when the Supreme Court steps in, more often than
| not.
|
| Fourth, if a user's location data has a rasonable expectation of
| privacy, it raises the question of what other data has a
| reasonable expectation of privacy? What about law enforcemen tuse
| of Stingrays? Or facial recognition systems?
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-08-12 23:00 UTC)