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posted by martyb on Tuesday March 20 2018, @07:51AM   Printer-friendly
from the do-not-enable-evil dept.

Fast Company reports that Police in Raleigh, North Carolina, have presented Google with warrants to obtain data from mobile phones from not just specific suspects who were in a crime scene area, but from the mobile phones of all people in the area.

The above story links to an investigative piece at WRAL:

In at least four investigations last year – cases of murder, sexual battery and even possible arson at the massive downtown fire in March 2017 – Raleigh police used search warrants to demand Google accounts not of specific suspects, but from any mobile devices that veered too close to the scene of a crime, according to a WRAL News review of court records. These warrants often prevent the technology giant for months from disclosing information about the searches not just to potential suspects, but to any users swept up in the search.

City and county officials say the practice is a natural evolution of criminal investigative techniques. They point out that, by seeking search warrants, they're carefully balancing civil rights with public safety.

Defense attorneys and privacy advocates, both locally and nationally, aren't so sure.

They're mixed on how law enforcement turns to Google's massive cache of user data, especially without a clear target in mind. And they're concerned about the potential to snag innocent users, many of whom might not know just how closely the company tracks their every move.

"We are willingly sharing an awful lot of our lives with Google," said Jonathan Jones, a former Durham prosecutor who directs the North Carolina Open Government Coalition at Elon University. "But do people understand that in sharing that information with Google, they're also potentially sharing it with law enforcement?"

[...] Users can switch location tracking off to prevent the device from pinging GPS satellites. But if it's on a cellular network or connected to Wi-Fi, the device is still transmitting its coordinates to third parties, even if they're far less accurate than GPS.

In the past, at least, turning off that technology has been no guarantee of privacy.

Business and technology news site Quartz discovered late last year that Google continued to track devices even when all GPS, Wi-Fi and cell networks were supposedly disabled. The tech giant says it has updated its software to stop the practice.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 21 2018, @03:26AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 21 2018, @03:26AM (#655852)

    #1 and #2 are effectively the same thing in the real world. The whole idea of being powerful is to have greater immunity to such stuff :).

    Only in a few countries is Rule of Law really paramount. In other countries the ruler caste and their pets do what they want, the middle caste get Rule of Law and the lowest caste get "sucks to be you".