Why Google Will Stop Telling Law Enforcement Which Users Were Near a Crime (yahoo.com) 69
Earlier this week Google Maps stopped storing user location histories in the cloud. But why did Google make this move?
Bloomberg reports that it was "so that the company no longer has access to users' individual location histories, cutting off its ability to respond to law enforcement warrants that ask for data on everyone who was in the vicinity of a crime."
The company said Thursday that for users who have it enabled, location data will soon be saved directly on users' devices, blocking Google from being able to see it, and, by extension, blocking law enforcement from being able to demand that information from Google. "Your location information is personal," said Marlo McGriff, director of product for Google Maps, in the blog post. "We're committed to keeping it safe, private and in your control."
The change comes three months after a Bloomberg Businessweek investigation that found police across the US were increasingly using warrants to obtain location and search data from Google, even for nonviolent cases, and even for people who had nothing to do with the crime. "It's well past time," said Jennifer Lynch, the general counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that defends digital civil liberties. "We've been calling on Google to make these changes for years, and I think it's fantastic for Google users, because it means that they can take advantage of features like location history without having to fear that the police will get access to all of that data."
Google said it would roll out the changes gradually through the next year on its own Android and Apple Inc.'s iOS mobile operating systems, and that users will receive a notification when the update comes to their account. The company won't be able to respond to new geofence warrants once the update is complete, including for people who choose to save encrypted backups of their location data to the cloud.
The EFF general counsel also pointed out to Bloomberg that "nobody else has been storing and collecting data in the same way as Google." (Apple, for example, is technically unable to provide the same data to police.)
The change comes three months after a Bloomberg Businessweek investigation that found police across the US were increasingly using warrants to obtain location and search data from Google, even for nonviolent cases, and even for people who had nothing to do with the crime. "It's well past time," said Jennifer Lynch, the general counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that defends digital civil liberties. "We've been calling on Google to make these changes for years, and I think it's fantastic for Google users, because it means that they can take advantage of features like location history without having to fear that the police will get access to all of that data."
Google said it would roll out the changes gradually through the next year on its own Android and Apple Inc.'s iOS mobile operating systems, and that users will receive a notification when the update comes to their account. The company won't be able to respond to new geofence warrants once the update is complete, including for people who choose to save encrypted backups of their location data to the cloud.
The EFF general counsel also pointed out to Bloomberg that "nobody else has been storing and collecting data in the same way as Google." (Apple, for example, is technically unable to provide the same data to police.)
Re:Nothing but lip service (Score:4, Insightful)
Unlikely. Police" "We need to know everybody who was within a quarter mile of 123 Apple st. last Tuesday. Google: "No idea". Police: "Can't you just quietly send an update to grab the data for anyone who was there? Google: "And send that to who?". Police: "The whole world!". Google: "Not without kicking off a huge media blitz." Police: "Well, how many CAN you send it to without all of that?. Google: "No idea, could be 1, could be a couple thousand.". Google: "By the way, who would be paying for all that development time anyway?". Police: "Never mind.".
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> "Not without kicking off a huge media blitz."
Here's your huge media blitz. Completely ignored by the "independent mainstream media machine".
https://www.brennancenter.org/... [brennancenter.org]
"the court said that was a bridge too far. Noting that location information can be used to determine a person’s associations, habits and even beliefs, the court ruled, in Carpenter v. United States, that the government needs a warrant to compel companies to produce such sensitive data."
"It turns out that all the government r
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Re: Nothing but lip service (Score:2)
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These two things (fascism and socialism) are not related.
Actually, they are: Like Communism, Fascism is a particular subset of socialism. But it's gotten such a bad reputation that the rest of the socialists want to avoid the fallout and go so far as to claim it's their opposite.
The fascist approach is to pick a limited number of winners - sector labor unions or corporations - and heavily regulate them.
Re: Nothing but lip service (Score:3)
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Provable false.
US-ians hate the idea that something everybody wants can't be owned and used for profit-making. As much as they want government to save them, they're told the government isn't allowed to own anything with a civilian purpose.
US-ians, or at least, their elected leaders, love the idea that everything the government does, benefits capitalists. Which is why there is minimal welfare: As much as right-wing fundamentalists despise "free money" (to the working class), capitalism works better wi
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US-ians hate the idea that something everybody wants can't be owned and used for profit-making.
"US-ians" understand that if you can't own it, you can't keep others from taking it away from you/.
Re:Nothing but lip service (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Nothing but lip service (Score:4, Interesting)
Nah, they will just go back to getting it from the phone companies. Getting it from Google was just more convenient (one source vs multiple carriers) and more precise.
It's one of those cases where that difference really matters.
Cells tower location is very inaccurate, if you ask for all the cells in the vicinity of the crime you're probably getting hundreds or thousands of hits. If you have a specific suspect already it might be helpful for figuring out if they were near, but you can't really build a suspect list that way.
But with the actual GPS you can now get a very small list of people who were around the crime. If the detective asks Google and gets exactly one hit right there at the time of the crime, well that's instantly their prime suspect, or at that person "had to have seen something" and if not, well they're hiding something.
Sure the actual perpetrator might have been smart enough to have left their phone at home (or they didn't use Google Maps), and that person nearby may have missed what happened for a dozen reasons, but it's real easy for a detective in that scenario to jump to conclusions.
Ignoring the privacy aspect, if one just wants police to solve more crimes you'd think it would be a good idea, but it does create a fairly specific kind of wrongful arrest/conviction.
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Re: Nothing but lip service (Score:2)
Depends a lot on the area and terrain. Radio reflections in cities can be problematic from the positioning perspective. And it doesn't tell you which floor either.
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Horseshit, telco triangulation has never been that good.
"By using cell tower triangulation (3 towers), it is possible to determine a phone location to within an area of about ¾ square mile. In densely .."
It used to be within 1.5 miles. The triangulation gets even worse in rural areas.
You need to stop pulling things out of your ass.
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I'm not the person you responded to but..
5g dynamic beamforming changed all that. Part of the big draw with 5g was each tower direction finds the phone so it can send directional beams. Allowing telcos to re-use spectrum.
Having the direction to within +-5 degrees, as well as the signal strength, from multiple point sources.. significantly brings the area down.
Re: Nothing but lip service (Score:3)
Re: Nothing but lip service (Score:2)
broader location radius is a feature for them. easier to place whoever they already have in mind in the area of the crime, or easier to associate whoever they already have in mind to a full NSA anti terrorism stasis surveillance.
Re: Nothing but lip service (Score:3)
It's the same thing as requiring hotels to collect license plate numbers. In Patel vs city of Los Angeles, the LA municipal statue requiring such was deemed facially unconstitutional.
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In the US there would be no *legal* reason that Google would have to comply with that order.
A court can order to turn over any information you have in your possession, but there would have to be a statutory basis to order someone to start *collecting* information on someone else. And it's possible such a law might well run afoul of fourth amendment limitations. The court ordering Google to turn over data it already has on you passes muster because it's data you've already disclosed to another party.
Re: Nothing but lip service (Score:2)
And in the US you have the fifth amendment.
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Normally the fifth amendment doesn't protect you from turning over a document, unless the document *by its very existence* would implicate you in a crime. Google "Fifth amendment document production".
Likewise the fourth amendment doesn't protect you from the government demanding your information from third parties you've disclosed it to. Google "pen register fourth amendment" for details.
So: your constitutional privacy protections *against the government* for location information being held *by a service
shame (Score:2)
It's a shame - there was some utility in having a 'cloud' history of location.
They should have allowed people to keep it on the cloud, encrypted with their own keys.
Re: shame (Score:1)
Anyway, my location data with full timelines over a timeframe of about 8 years, was less than 50 MBs in a recent Google Takeout export. That's a handful of photos, so I don't think it would matter much either way.
Re:shame (Score:4)
If they have it -- even encrypted -- then authorities are going to demand that they decrypt it even though they can't. Rather than have that fight, they'd rather just say "we don't keep those records". Maybe it's not optimal for your use case that they no longer keep cloud copies, but it's a hell of a lot better than doing nothing.
Re: shame (Score:3)
How long do you think it will take for the three-letter agencies to convince elected officials that Google needs to feed a federal data center with the raw location data for all users? Maybe by April, when FISA is up for renewal?
And don't try to tell me the govt can't build a big enough datacenter to house all that data - remember what they built in Utah? [wikipedia.org]
I mean, seriously, that data has proven crucial in countless federal, state, and local investigations, it would be a shame to lose it all because a private
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I mean, seriously, that data has proven crucial in countless federal, state, and local investigations, it would be a shame to lose it all because a private entity chooses not to save it, right?
Don't worry for them, phone tower companies have it covered.
Clever criminals leave their phone home anyway.
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Really clever criminals put their phone in someone else's bag for a day.
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> encrypted with their own keys.
onlY CrImINAlS haVe SOMEThinG to hIde.
I'M NOT a CrImiNAl SO i havE NothiNG TO HIde.
p.s. ThE pFIZer TrIaL DAta is not HIDden, It is JuST LOckED AWay FOR 75 YEarS sO that'S differeNT.
Re: shame (Score:2)
Re: shame (Score:2)
Or ... (Score:2)
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Let me guess (Score:5, Funny)
Why Google Will Stop Telling Law Enforcement Which Users Were Near a Crime
'Cause one of their executives, or rich shareholder, etc... was near one? /cynical
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Cha-ching! (Score:2)
Present operation computed to be economically unfeasible. You are a true believer, blessings of the State, blessings of the masses. Work hard, increase production, prevent accidents, and be happy.
I don't believe them (Score:1)
There's great reasons for them to play along with the police state, and claim they're not.
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Like Google has been doing for a long time. Like Apple learned with their recent CP scanning dustup. The monetizable value is the public pretense of privacy, not the actual privacy.
Became too expensive (Score:4, Informative)
So responding to police requests became more expensive than the revenue they could derive by having the data to hand in a scannable form. This was a commercial decision that incidentally might have some privacy benefits, unless they have a way of monetising it on devices too.
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Correct. Liabilities of collecting the data are worse than the profits.
Re: Became too expensive (Score:2)
And the free market works for consumers again!
Re: Became too expensive (Score:2)
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Most Google users aren't aware how they're being monetised or to what degree. Google could have made this change without users being aware of it. Google decided to market the change to make people feel good about it and thus capitalise on it. I'm sure they'd prefer to have the data on their servers though if they could.
Re: Became too expensive (Score:2)
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Re: Became too expensive (Score:1)
Google simply cancelled that service (Score:1)
Killing services is a key part of their business model. Often they create services just so they can kill them.
It's Google. It's what they do.
Re: Google simply cancelled that service (Score:1)
What??
Creating services isn't free, and neither is shutting them down.
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Whoosh.
Right, sure, uh huh (Score:3)
"We're committed to keeping it safe, private and in your control." - of course, that's why it took all these years to make the change. Google is tired of dealing with warrants, nice dishonest spin though.
No.no.no.no.no. Lies (Score:3, Informative)
Do not believe ANY pinky promises by ANY internet company about how they don’t have access to customer data. Should the police get it? That’s a separate debate. But DO NOT let these companies claim they don’t have the data. That’s pure unadulterated grade A horse manure.
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It's about plausible deniability. Because someone can say "I don't want google to take this data" and google wont collect that data directly from whichever application.
Opting out is naturally NOT the default , so they're trying to get the best of both worlds: Spend less money on complying with police orders to collect data, but at the same time get enough location data they can still sell that information to advertisers.If the cost of complying with the police is significant enough, it might be worth sacri
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It's to be kept on the device. So, of course Google can pull it when they feel like it but they can avoid the hassle of storing it and servicing warrents. It's a twofer. Google wins both ways.
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Don't let your paranoia get the better of you. If they really could listen in in your phone covertly, it would require multiple zero day exploits, and ensure they got kicked out of the app stores.
Most likely, it's just grifters scamming gullible advertisers.
Putting on my tinfoil hat... (Score:1)
So let me see, hundreds and hundreds of people were swept up in J6 investigations based in large part (and in some cases exclusively) based on geolocation data, right?
So now, over the course of 2024 Google will stop geotracking over the course of the year, meaning in 2025, as Biden is *potentially* replaced as President, law enforcement will lack the ability to sweep up protesters and run them through the legal system?
WOW, what a coincidence!
OK, I'll take off my tinfoil hat now...
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Are location services on? (Score:2)
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This is about trust in law enforcement (Score:2)
but (Score:2)
but i have nothing to hide.
Only the "visible" requests (Score:2)
This has no effect on the NSA requests that come with a gag order, as defined in the "Patriot Act." Google CANNOT comment on any of those requests, so they are not included in their statement. The NSA has EVERYTHING. It's just a question of filtering it down to what interests them, like any whistle blowers or other "subversives." THIS IS NOT NEW.
Ah, the old days. When everyone embedded words like ASSASSINATION, OVERTHROW, TERRORISM in all their posts and messages, just to subvert the watchers. After 9