from Hacker News

Tracking Phones, Google Is a Dragnet for the Police

by rasmi on 4/13/19, 3:45 PM with 203 comments

• by sbov on 4/13/19, 8:54 PM

  I turned off almost all tracking in Android a while ago, but never scanned the data it collected. I recently looked at what data was associated with my Google account, and there I saw: every voice command I ever issued my phone, and when I used what app. I could see at 9:30am I opened my camera app. I can see I viewed a notification at 9:45am. And so on. I deleted it all, but my guess is it probably still lives somewhere in Google.

  I knew they tracked search. I knew they would use my voice usage to make it better. I didn't realize how pathological they were in tracking literally everything I did with my phone and tying it to my account, down to what apps I opened and when. It's creepy as hell.

  It really made me want to just exit this whole smartphone shitfest, because I have to assume they're still tracking all this data, just not making it visible. Maybe Apple is better, maybe not. The problem is I can't know for sure, and if they lie - what could I do about it anyways?

• by kyrra on 4/13/19, 5:03 PM

  Even without Google or Apple, they police have the cell service providers. In the case of the Austin bomber from a year ago[0], police got cell tower records from the multiple bombings and figured out who was at all the locations. Cell phones are little trackers unless you turn them off or don't carry one.

  [0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna85...

• by DontGiveTwoFlux on 4/13/19, 4:28 PM

  The article describes a case where an innocent man had to spend a week in jail. Eventually, he was released and the presumed actual perpetrator was caught. The lead seemed to come from the location data, so it wasn’t useless at least.

  But the so called justice system says that it got it right here. The innocent man lost his job when he couldn’t work for a week. Depending on his situation he could miss rent and be evicted too.

  Why do we have a system that says justice was served? It’s cruel and unfair.

  This dragnet police tactic will scoop up more bystanders and probably convict more than a few innocents as well. I like the timeline feature- it has been genuinely helpful for remembering when I did things months ago. The tie in with photos is also a fun way to remember trips. It’s sad that the cost of these features is to roll the dice on getting arrested because a crime was committed nearby.

• by caymanjim on 4/13/19, 10:01 PM

  This isn't the best case to use as an example of police overreach and information dragnets. Yes, they arrested the wrong guy and held him for a week, but the right guy was using the wrong guy's car. I realize they initially identified him--at least in part--via the Google-provided information, but the reason they held him for a week is because it was his car that was used to commit the crime. At that point, it was absolutely reasonable and correct to assume that he was the perpetrator. If that hadn't been the case, they probably would have questioned him and never even arrested him.

  I'm not defending Google's information collection or the use of dragnets in general, but this is absolutely the wrong case to use as an example of how things can go wrong. Things did not go wrong here. This was good police work, and ultimately the arrest was not off-base, and led directly to the real perpetrator.

  Find a better example if you want to drum up fear about information abuse.

• by Jerry2 on 4/13/19, 6:38 PM

  >Though Google’s data cache is enormous, it doesn’t sweep up every phone, said Mr. Edens, the California intelligence analyst. And even if a location is recorded every few minutes, that may not coincide with a shooting or an assault.

  >But despite the drawbacks, detectives noted how precise the data was and how it was collected even when people weren’t making calls or using apps — both improvements over tracking that relies on cell towers.

  So if you use Android, there's absolutely no way to turn this type of tracking off? What exactly are they using? Anyone know? This doesn't seem like the IEMI cell tower tracking that carriers do.

  And according to this sentence:

  >Apple said it did not have the ability to perform those searches.

  It appears that if you use iPhone and don't use Google's apps (Google Maps is the main culprit here?), Apple doesn't have a way of identifying your data and your data won't appear in Google's Sensorvault.. which appears to be massive:

  >Sensorvault, according to Google employees, includes detailed location records involving at least hundreds of millions of devices worldwide and dating back nearly a decade.

• by AlphaWeaver on 4/13/19, 7:17 PM

  One thing I haven't seen anyone comment on yet was the article's illustration of the technology...

  I think it did a good job of hypothetically showing how phone data could be collected in a geofence and explaining the process of narrowing it down and picking a potential subject. Regardless of the merit of this approach, I think NYT did a great job here of illustrating the process in a way that non-technical people could understand.

• by fharper1961 on 4/13/19, 5:53 PM

  Location data can also be used to help prove your innocence.

  It sucks that this innocent person ended up suffering. Hopefully law enforcement will become better at figuring out false positives before arresting someone.

  I do like that the gov. doesn't have direct access. Seems to me like the more independent parties required to access the data, the lower the chances of abuse.

• by Crontab on 4/13/19, 6:51 PM

  Orwell never guessed that the government could outsource our dystopian nightmare to corporations.

• by danso on 4/13/19, 11:43 PM

  Great to see a big follow up on the story which was first reported by a local news outlet in North Carolina: https://www.wral.com/Raleigh-police-search-google-location-h...

  I remember it being reported the same time as the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke out (literally the same week IIRC) and getting almost no notice, despite being, in my mind, a story with far greater implications about our privacy.

• by tgsovlerkhgsel on 4/13/19, 7:49 PM

  The interesting thing is that from the article, it seems to me like the only data these searches are using is location history, so if that one is off, you should be unaffected.

• by caprese on 4/14/19, 2:57 AM

  > Months after his release, Mr. Molina was having trouble getting back on his feet. After being arrested at work, a Macy’s warehouse, he lost his job. His car was impounded for investigation and then repossessed.

  /Facepalm

  But before I go further on the social commentary, can we confirm that the arrest at work was the reason he lost his job, the week of being in jail being the reason he lost his job, performance due to the arrest being the reason?

• by teamspirit on 4/13/19, 8:14 PM

  I find it interesting in the bombing warrant they describe Google as "an email provider". Then follow it with, "The information to be searched...consists of Google location data...". It's not like they looked at the suspects emails. The fact that the police must have thought, "what is Google? Well, I have a gmail account, they're an email provider!".

• by warp_factor on 4/14/19, 6:35 AM

  Something I never managed to fully confirm or deny:

  I manually disabled all the data collection on my Google account (search and location history). Is Google still tracking my location? Would I still appear in that database? I'm pretty much Google-free at this point except for some spam emails and the need for a google account for Android Play.

• by sys_64738 on 4/13/19, 8:23 PM

  This is for Google Android phone only? Or Apple too? What if the real perp has an iPhone but Apple doesn't provide that info. Meanwhile an innocent who has an Android phone happens to fit the profile 'enough' for the cops to collar him. Sounds pretty much like a lawsuit in waiting...

• by mirimir on 4/14/19, 2:37 AM

  So if someone steals your phone, they can "place" you at a crime scene. Or even if they get physical access long enough to clone the SIM. People already do that to clone phones, to get free calls.

• by eplanit on 4/13/19, 8:31 PM

  Wow, we're edging closer: this + AI Crime Prediction[1] + Profiling[2], and we're basically at Minority Report.

  [1] https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-29047-3_...

  [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09507...

• by wyldfire on 4/13/19, 6:09 PM

  I'm about to go commit a crime. How do I turn off this feature?

• by skookumchuck on 4/13/19, 6:45 PM

  Why would google keep this data indefinitely? It should be routinely deleted after a month or so.

• by kevingadd on 4/13/19, 6:32 PM

  Ensnaring the innocent is a feature. Cops are happy to have opportunities to prosecute people for other stuff later on, or have someone take a guilty plea even if they didn't do it. It looks good for them. Not to mention fines for missing court dates (to keep your job, or because you don't have transportation).