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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?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 25 2018, @02:00AM (8 children)
Have you got a clever way (like 007's rotating plate) to remove the fake plates quickly if you are stopped by a cop? Sounds like real trouble if you are stopped and your registration/insurance paper doesn't match your plate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 25 2018, @02:11AM (1 child)
It's sad that we even have to worry about this. They've taken relatively benign concepts (license plates, state IDs/drivers licenses) and turned them into tools for the police state.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday October 25 2018, @02:28AM
What makes you think they were ever benign to begin with?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 25 2018, @03:10AM (5 children)
"Have you got a clever way (like 007's rotating plate) to remove the fake plates quickly if you are stopped by a cop?"
.
No, I do not have what you suggest. I dare say that if you did have such an apparatus and you were caught with it, the resulting trouble would be even worse.
The probability of being stopped by a cop in the car I drive is vanishingly small. You are correct that I would be in trouble if I am stopped by a cop, but the car combined with the way I drive means being stopped is extremely unlikely. I'll take my chances when I think it's worth taking the chance. I'm not going to live my life in fear of some prick with a badge. And yes, I am ready to do the time in jail if I get caught. Like I said, I'm not going to live in fear, because that's not living, that is existing.
I don't always use the incorrect license plate ; most of the time I use the correct license plate.
As always, everyone else should do as he or she thinks best. I do not recommend my methods, I was simply admitting I use a few tricks when I want not to be tracked. I believe we should all resist the machinations of the police state by whatever means are available to us. Oh, and my car is 29 years old. It has exactly
one computer box, which is the ECU box which runs the engine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 25 2018, @03:39AM (3 children)
Mighty big words. Jail's going to be quite a bit different than Mom's basement.
Once you try to take your junkyard specials off the farm and into town, you may find out that cop cars have plate readers, and are networked, so that the cop gets alerted the instance your plate is spotted and the registration has lapsed.
In reality, they may not take you to jail. They'll tow the car and make you walk home. You'll receive the criminal complaint in the mail a few days later.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday October 25 2018, @07:51AM (2 children)
I staged a protest about a C-TRAN bus whose driver went right past me without even slowing down, let alone opening the door.
At that particular transit center, the bus had to make a sharp u-turn than come back in my general direction so I stood in front of it to force him to stop. He angrily opened the door to let me and another passenger in.
He quite irritably explained to me that he had to drive past me because he was behind schedule. I spent the whole time until we got to my stop giving him a hard time. He refuses to answer, wouldn't even tell me his name.
I had no reason to believe he would mend his errant ways so at my stop I sat just inside the door, my back to one half of the door, my feet against the other half then dialed 9-1-1 to ask them to send a deputy to intermediate between me and the driver.
Two deputies showed up. "Get out of the bus." "Arrest me." I Am Absolutely Serious. "Get out of the bus or I'll Taze you." He tazed me.
"I'm a physicist and my father was an electrical engineer. It's not the voltage that kills you, it's the current." Tazers have very low current.
"Get out of the bus or I'll taze you again." "Arrest me." I wanted to testify to a jury about the bus driver. He tazed me again.
The other deputy started to force my left arm backwards, so as to cause pain in my elbow. I figured he was going to break it, so I commenced Shambhala Buddhist Meditation. When he saw me doing that, he said "You are under arrest, you have a right..." at which point I jumped out of the bus, introduced myself and he - the non-tazer partner - and I had a grand old time as he drove me to the Clark County Jail.
My prosecutor eventually moved to dismiss, but not before I spent a good long time in the slammer.
There's a whole lot of good reason to practice Civil Disobedience right around now. "Civil" means you're polite about it, certainly non-violent. "Disobedient" means you violate unjust laws.
That's what got blacks the right to vote and to use the same water fountains as black people. Everybody thinks MLK and Rosa Park were righteous folk, but few remember the civil rights movement in any real detail.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by tibman on Thursday October 25 2018, @05:07PM
"There's a whole lot of good reason to practice Civil Disobedience right around now. ... means you violate unjust laws"
You were not doing that. The bus should have made the stop and didn't. No unjust laws were involved. You just threw a tantrum and wasted your city's time and money. You should stand up for yourself, yes. But don't waste emergency services time on something that is clearly not an emergency. You could have just called the "how's my driving" 1800 number on the bus and given the bus number and your complaint to the bus dispatcher.
The driver was wrong. But you were worse.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 25 2018, @09:32PM
Bro, you are literallly insane. Try to remember that whenever you get worked up over something.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 25 2018, @02:32PM
Are your incorrect plates legit with current registration and tags? If not then when you pass a cop car with an automated reader your car might light up as being invalid. In my neighborhood the police routinely drive through our parking lots about once a month or so - took me awhile to figure out they weren't just doing a friendly slow patrol but rather giving the plate reader cars to munch on. And all it takes is those plates to be run anyway (unless it came from the same color and make/model) and the cop will know he's got something more than a routine traffic stop.