https://yro.slashdot.org/story/18/03/17/...ime-scenes

An anonymous reader quotes the public records reporter from North Carolina TV station 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... The demands Raleigh police issued for Google data [i][in two homicide cases] described a 17-acre area that included both homes and businesses... The account IDs aren't limited to electronics running Android. The warrant includes any device running location-enabled Google apps, according to Raleigh Police Department spokeswoman Laura Hourigan...

On March 16, 2017, a five-alarm fire ripped through the unfinished Metropolitan apartment building on West Jones Street... About two months later, Raleigh police obtained a search warrant for Google account IDs that showed up near the block of the Metropolitan between 7:30 and 10 p.m. the night of the fire... In addition to anonymized numerical identifiers, the warrant calls on Google to release time stamped location coordinates for every device that passed through the area. Detectives wrote that they'd narrow down that list and send it back to the company, demanding "contextual data points with points of travel outside of the geographical area" during an expanded timeframe. Another review would further cull the list, which police would use to request user names, birth dates and other identifying information of the phones' owners.[/i]
"Do people understand that in sharing that information with Google, they're also potentially sharing it with law enforcement?" asks a former Durham prosecutor who directs the North Carolina Open Government Coalition at Elon University. And Stephanie Lacambra, criminal defense staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, also criticized the procedure. "To just say, 'Criminals commit crimes, and we know that most people have cell phones,' that should not be enough to get the geo-location on anyone that happened to be in the vicinity of a particular incident during a particular time." She believes that without probable cause the police department is "trying to use technology as a hack for their job... It does not have to be that we have to give up our privacy rights in order to participate in the digital revolution."

Nathan Freed Wessler, staff attorney with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, put it succinctly. "At the end of the day, this tactic unavoidably risks getting information about totally innocent people."

This sounds like a really good reason for leaving google locater services off. I do anyway for the mere fact that anytime I went anywhere with it turned on, google was always bugging me to write reviews of "anywhere" I had gone. Go to the coffee shop, google asks me to write a review about it. Go to the auto parts store, yup, google was hounding me about it. Hey google, where's my check? 

(03-17-2018, 03:25 PM)Ballenxj Wrote: This sounds like a really good reason for leaving google locater services off. I do anyway for the mere fact that anytime I went anywhere with it turned on, google was always bugging me to write reviews of "anywhere" I had gone. Go to the coffee shop, google asks me to write a review about it. Go to the auto parts store, yup, google was hounding me about it. Hey google, where's my check? 

Sadly it won't do any good. The gov is 10 yrs adavnced in technology than the private citizen most likely.  I explain it this way... They sent a shuttle to the moon with computers (i'm sometimes doubt that this actually happened). That was probably 10 yrs before citizens had access to it. 
Ohh..Remember our last POTUS gave the keys to our core internet system to foreign non profit group to be "fair" to the rest of the globe. 
Maybe Technomadness can give us better info. I would trust what he says over stuff I have read. This is just my opinion.

Just to get this out of the way...

"This is no way affects me because I have nothing to hide. I am not a criminal and if this helps catch criminals I am all for it."

Could go on but it's boring and I think there's enough meat there to discuss.

I agree Wabbit. I hope it helps save lives and catch many perps. I can’t imagine the police NOT using everything in their arsenal when a child is abducted or an innocent person is killed. I keep thinking what if it was someone in my family or a friend? This could save innocent lives.

If it violates the constitution(4rth amendment), there needs to be a conversation about it first.

(03-17-2018, 09:51 PM)Wabbit Wrote: If it violates the constitution(4rth amendment), there needs to be a conversation about it first.

Won’t matter one iota to you if someone abducts your grandchild. Course- I used to be a cop and I know what monsters there are out there.

I hear what you're saying, if it was one of my kids, I wouldn't care what I would have to do. However, this isn't about a child of mine. In one case, it was a case of possible arson. The way I read is that is they didn't even know if a crime had been committed. The Supreme Court has ruled on police over reach before. It's not a fun conversation.

Yet another reason to not use google apps or devices. If they were a moral company they would be fighting these illegal searches in courts.

As to the “if you were a victim of a crime...” argument— everyone compromised by this illegal search is a victim of a crime.

So long as the government is out there violating the law, they don’t get to use an “end justify the means” argument. Fishing expeditions existed in the 1700s— in fact that’s exactly WHY we have the fourth amendment.

Fortunately technology is advancing and people are getting smarter about these kinds of vulnerabilities. As criminals (not just cops but thieves) use them people are starting to lock their devices down.

Lord knows we can’t count of the government to enforce the law against itself. The FBI spent forty years perpetuating scientific fraud in court and people are having trouble getting those convictions overturned— of course no prosecutors are doing their job and bringing charges against the FBI for their crime.




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Benjamin Franklin summed it up for me hundreds of years ago....... "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."