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posted by chromas on Thursday October 25 2018, @01:06AM   Printer-friendly
from the all-suspects-are-guilty dept.

Feds Order Google To Hand Over A Load Of Innocent Americans' Locations

Here's how it works: cops send Google specific coordinates and timezones within which crimes were committed. Then Google is asked to provide information on all users within those locations at those times, most likely including data on many innocent people. Those users could be Android phone owners, anyone running Google Maps or any individual running Google services on their cell, not just criminal suspects.

[...] "This fishing expedition infringes on the privacy rights of so many possible people who had the misfortune of being in an area where a crime is alleged to be committed," said Jerome Greco, staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society. "We should not allow for such broad access to the data of so many on the mere speculation that a suspect may have used a cellphone near the location of the crime."

[...] Not just Google

Captain John Sherwin of the Rochester Police Department in Minnesota said it wasn't just Google that could furnish cops with a startling mount of detailed location data. Facebook and Snapchat were two others who'd proven useful, he said.

Should we be concerned that government tracks people by their cell phones instead of using mandatory brain implants?


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 25 2018, @01:56AM (9 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 25 2018, @01:56AM (#753469)

    Newest car in the fleet here is 2009 (from an estate, only 35,000 miles). It has no built in GPS or bluetooth/phone interface.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Thursday October 25 2018, @02:24AM (8 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Thursday October 25 2018, @02:24AM (#753477) Journal

    Are you positive that it has no tracking? My 2002 has OnStar. I've removed the antenna, but haven't destroyed any of the OnStar components. I'm not sure if it can track me or not, but I've surely made it more difficult for them to do so.

    • (Score: 2) by Whoever on Thursday October 25 2018, @02:54AM (7 children)

      by Whoever (4524) on Thursday October 25 2018, @02:54AM (#753490) Journal

      2002 means it would be sufficiently old that most, if not all, of the cellular infrastructure used by OnStar in the car has been decommissioned.

      Do you have license plates on it? Then you will be tracked by license plate readers.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 25 2018, @07:37AM (4 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 25 2018, @07:37AM (#753566)

        rather than insurance I'll post a bond. In California that was $30,000 at the time I got my license, I expect it's lots more now.

        While license plate readers could in principle integrate the Canadian DMV databases, I expect that they don't. Law enforcement MIS just isn't very well written.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 25 2018, @10:46AM (3 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 25 2018, @10:46AM (#753592)

          Spoken like not a very bright individual? Don't you realize that the tracking how nothing to do with "interface with some database", but that the numbers on your car stay the same. That's the tracking. Who, what, when, that's a different problem that's not applicable to actual tracking part. I know, maybe a little too abstract for some here especially people that waste their money on stupid things like posting bonds.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 25 2018, @11:35AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 25 2018, @11:35AM (#753605)

        Yep... more so than most think. I've heard first hand from DOT officers they use it to bust truckers who fake their log hours by typing in their plate number and it reveals timestamped gps locations and pictures from everywhere they've been - every "traffic" camera, speed cam, toll booth and cop car they've driven past. Most of these take pics in the cab in addition to the license plates for facial recognition too which he uses to prove it was them in the truck and not a different driver. The system only gets better as they add more cameras everywhere.

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Thursday October 25 2018, @01:55PM

          by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Thursday October 25 2018, @01:55PM (#753648) Journal

          Yeah, that's getting to be old tech. Prior to 2000, you could get an EZ-pass, which could be read at all the weigh stations. If you were "legal", and your record was good, and the company that owned the truck was in good standing, you got a green light, and drove on past the weigh station. Nice, convenient, and the cops knew where you were all the time. Drive a little fast between two weigh stations, and you were going to get a red light, which meant, "Come in and visit, boy, we want to talk to you awhile." Logging fuel stops wasn't really, really necessary, even then. I had a lady at a Montana weigh station tell me that I "forgot" to log a fuel stop. The credit card used to pay for fuel logged the stop for me - I think that was about 2005 or so. Tracking, tracking, tracking.

          Back then, we were told, "Well, you're in a commercial vehicle, you can expect to be tracked." Today, it's nearly everyone.