location services + police

[cellio]

We know that any device (like a phone) with location services turned on is generating a large pile of data about your every movement. If you don't want Google or Apple to know that, you turn location services off.

And if you're about to commit a crime and you're planning to get away with it, you leave your phone at home, or you turn location services off well in advance and keep them off so you don't create an obvious window.

These things I knew. What I hadn't previously heard of is geofencing warrants, where police can subpoena location data for everything in range of a crime scene, dig through it, and then get an arrest warrant for the owner of a specific device. Fortunately Google give the target a heads-up; unfortunately I do not know if that is them "just being nice" (so they could decide not to) or if they have to.

H/t madfilkentist.

Comments

[madfilkentist]

Strictly speaking, the article doesn't talk about getting an arrest warrant. But they could have called the guy in for questioning, which is unpleasant in itself and could lead to charges based on vague suspicions.

On a writers' forum, one person talked about getting some harsh questioning just because he went jogging near a building while the police were investigating a crime there. Getting the attention of the police while they're investigating a crime is a bad thing in general.

[cellio]

Oh you're right; I read that into the article. Still, as you say, getting the attention of the police for a crime you had nothing to do with is not a good thing.

[dsrtao]

An active cell radio is a location service. If you need to conceal your location, turn off your phone entirely or leave it behind. If your phone is specifically built to have physical disconnect switches for all the radio devices, you might be able to trust those -- but it's probably simpler to turn the whole thing off.

[cellio]

Oh good point -- you'll be betrayed by the cell towers even with location services turned off. Which means there's no reasonable safeguard against being caught in police geofencing, because of course we keep our phones on when going about our lives! Like the person in the story here. I guess what we really need is stricter evidence requirements before messing up somebody's life; when phones can be accurate within a few meters, there's not really a basis to accuse someone who was passing through in the street in front of a house that was robbed. You'd need to put him closer to/inside of the house and for long enough to commit robbery.

[(Anonymous)]

if you're going to commit a crime, its best to leave your phone and location on and at home, so if they come looking for you, you can say "I was at home all evening, playing candy crush"

I think a warrant means they have to, whether that kind of broad warrant is constitutional will have to be verified in the upper courts though, until then, they'll continue to use them.

[cellio]

Good point. My phone gives the network false information about my location one day a week, and I'm not even trying to get away with anything. (According to the cell network and Google, I never leave my house on Shabbat.)

[squirrelitude]

You'd also want to occasionally and randomly turn your phone off or leave it at home for periods of time, which would make it even less suspicious that the phone was off at the time of the crime.

ETA: Or substitute "meeting with the journalist" or "protest" instead of "crime" :-)