Posted on 03/07/2020 8:29:48 AM PST by BenLurkin
Googles legal investigations support team, writing to let him know that local police had demanded information related to his Google account. The company said it would release the data unless he went to court and tried to block it. He had just seven days.
He had an Android phone, which was linked to his Google account, and, like millions of other Americans, he used an assortment of Google products, including Gmail and YouTube. Now police seemingly wanted access to all of it.
In the notice from Google was a case number. McCoy searched for it on the Gainesville Police Departments website, and found a one-page investigation report on the burglary of an elderly womans home 10 months earlier. The crime had occurred less than a mile from the home that McCoy, who had recently earned an associate degree in computer programming, shared with two others.
Now McCoy was even more panicked and confused. He knew he had nothing to do with the break-in ─ hed never even been to the victims house ─ and didnt know anyone who might have. And he didnt have much time to prove it.
McCoy worried that going straight to police would lead to his arrest. So he went to his parents home in St. Augustine, where, over dinner, he told them what was happening. They agreed to dip into their savings to pay for a lawyer.
The lawyer, Caleb Kenyon, dug around and learned that the notice had been prompted by a geofence warrant, a police surveillance tool that casts a virtual dragnet over crime scenes, sweeping up Google location data drawn from users GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and cellular connections from everyone nearby.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
I grew up in a Southern California beach town. One day my friend and I got pulled into a laundromat and threatened by the owner for stealing sodas from his machine. This sleuth determine it was my friend because of the obvious shoe print markings.... VANS diamonds!!! If you were a kid in the 70s in a beach town and did not have a pair of VANS.... you probably did not exist.
There are a million ways to get caught up in an investigation: VANS shoe print, having same build or gait as perp, grainy video from neighbor camera.... police clear way more people than they charge.
To me this seems a little melodramatic. The police got a warrant, the guy says he rides his bike a lot, they see he did not stop or enter house from GPS. The same technology that traps you can set you free too: If there was ever a charge a judge would throw it out. How did he he enter a home and steal jewelry when he was traveling 10+MPH.
If your family member is a victim and they have no idea who the suspect is, would you expect the police to utilize technology...
To me tracking of words is much more dangerous than location... thought police are ideological and more dangerous than local police.
A cookie tin in the car can keep Big Brother uninformed.
While privacy and civil liberties advocates have been concerned that geofence warrants violate constitutional protections from unreasonable searches, law enforcement authorities say those worries are overblown
Am I the only one who sees the irony of a government that can't catch millions of illegal aliens with stolen Social Security numbers and massive income tax refunds?
They somehow cannot find millions of illegal aliens sending billions of dollars back to Mexico.
How you gonna text while drivin? /s
Thisguy challenged the legality of the blanket warrants they used to identify everyone who had passed a spot on the map and the DA panicked because he didn’t want a court precedent that the obviously illegal warrants were in fact illegal. Because using people’s tech to spy on them is very useful. So he said ‘oh we discovered some new stuff and you’re not a suspect, we’re dropping the case’. But the sad fact is that these warrants are very hard to challenge because they are blanketing everyone with nobody knowing they are being investigated.
Apple pledges to store your location data anonymized and not to sell it on or hand it out if someone asks for it. They require a warrant to release what information they have on you. Their EULA is correspondingly different. Remember, the government has gone after Apple several times for refusing to proceed without warrants or give them backdoors to invade people’s privacy.
I thought it turns off all your transceivers. I don’t use bluetooth either.
Only way to be safe is to power off your phone and remove the battery while youre driving, riding or walking.
And who is going to reimburse the poor bastard the money he had to pay a $200 an hour lawyer to protect his rights?
I’m of the opinion that anytime a person who was demonstrated innocent who had to spend money to defend themselves should be reimbursed by the litigating agency. It might make them a little less trigger happy.
The consequences of violating the rights of people should be painful to the authorities.
Orwell didnt foresee the Party would be able to track people wherever they went.
It turns off all the transmitters. Not the receivers. GPS is a passive reception technology and requires no transmitters.
Er, GPS requires no transmitters on the user side. Obviously it does require transmitters on the satellites in orbit. :P
The law isn’t whats on the books, the law is what is actually enforced. It has always been so.
I’m thinking unless you go full Amish, there’s no hiding these days.
The company isn't forcing anyone to sign that boilerplate. People are free to give up their rights. If you don't feel waiving your rights is worth the use of the product/service, don't buy the product/service.
If enough customers object, companies will no longer be able to get away with this.
Also google maps on IOS will do the same, if you allow it. There's quite a bit of phone software that will do that. Facebook, Instagram, games. Make sure you don't allow an app like that to run in the background or send notifications. FaceBook and Messenger shouldn't be allowed to use cellular data - your consent there is treated as a blanket permission to track you mercilessly. You can put a phone into an RF isolation bag but put it on airplane mode so it won't use up the battery frantically searching for RF connections...Also be wary of microphone, speaker, camera, and photo permissions - those devices and data can be used to locate you or communicate surreptitiously.
And of course having an FR login puts you on the radar of the fusion centers and anyone else sampling data at peering points, because FR doesn't use HTTPS everywhere.
I specifically said “out of the box factory-shipped condition” and noted that if you put third party apps on, those apps can track you but it’s on your own responsibility at that point.
As shipped, all Android phones phone home to Momma Google with all your personal, detailed, un-anonymised information and iOS devices don’t.
You can, but it takes thought and effort; it also requires people to research the state of the art. Some of the suggestions from FReepers I’ve seen in the past are quite laughable and I’m not talking about the ones made in jest.
For-later.
It’s an iPhone, so the battery doesn’t come out that easily.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.