doubtful. they were issuing subpoenas to the cell companies for their records of the tower registrations for a certain time frame when crimes were being committed. It doesn't take much to identify the owner of a smartphone via that and then correlate that with driver's license photo ids and correlate that with surveillance camera footage to bring a case. that had nothing to do with peaceful protester tracking but bog standard criminal investigation.
Either way, I don't think that matters. My point is that tech companies store data that can be used to identify everyone present at a specific location and timeframe, and that data is easily available to the government. There's no "may" about it.
> investigators obtained GPS and other cell phone records from Google via a search warrant
Search warrants are and remain the correct tool for the government to get this data. What this article is worrying about is the fact that sometimes the government simply purchases this data without any sign off from a judge. That's where constitutional protections are eroded.
Your outrage is misplaced until such time when the government can buy this data from Google without a search warrant.
I'm aware of the distinction. I guess I wasn't clear in my original comment because this keeps coming up: My point is merely that there is absolutely no doubt that once acquired, the data gives the government this capability. The article implies that this is uncertain, and it is not.
> Your outrage is misplaced until such time when the government can buy this data from Google without a search warrant.
Whatever outrage you read into my comments, I assure you it's not there. If you're looking for a fight, look elsewhere.
Also, the OP article is about the government doing exactly that. So if I was outraged, it would be well placed, according to you.
Are you sure about that? See Section 2.2 of the report, "Examples of CAI Contracts" that says "The IC currently acquires a large amount of CAI" and goes on to list specific data brokers contracted by specific government agencies. What am I missing?
The data brokers it contracts are pretty harmless, like getting business data from Dun & Bradstreet or getting military information from Janes Online. These data brokers aggregate publicly available information that you or I could find for free by accessing the right web pages. The only potential 4th Amendment violation, the one the article pretends is happening on a mass scale, is from purchase of mobile location data. The document says that the provider doesn't remove US data, so the government does that itself because accessing that data without due process would be a 4th Amendment violation. Due process was also followed when the government obtained location information from Google.
> DIA currently provides funding to another agency that purchases commercially available geolocation metadata aggregated from smartphones. The data DIA receives is global in scope and is not identified as “U.S. location data” or “foreign location data” by the vendor at the time it is provisioned to DIA. DIA processes the location data as it arrives to identify U.S. location data points that it segregates in a separate database. DIA personnel can only query the U.S. location database when authorized through a specific process requiring approval from the Office of General Counsel (OGC), Office of Oversight and Compliance (OOC), and DIA senior leadership. Permission to query the U.S. device location data has been granted five times in the past two-and-a-half years for authorized purposes.
It's worth noting that they do collect the data up front, and only querying it is restricted. But I suppose having to follow due process for that part is better than nothing.
How do they handle the Fourth Amendment rights of US citizens abroad, like me? My understanding is that those rights must be respected even abroad by US governmental entities when they know or reasonably should know that data they might search or seize belongs to a US citizen.
And if this data includes sufficient identifying info, they should be able to identify me as a US citizen. Even phone number would be enough, since I think that and my US social security number are together in various public data breach datasets.
(Yes, my US phone number should be generating foreign location data. I have two eSIMs simultaneously active, one US and one foreign. For odd reasons I don’t think I have proper roaming working for the US number where I am now, but it does work via Wi-Fi calling which does share the country info with the carrier - and I have had international roaming working at other times.)
Why should my SSN indicate citizenship, some might wonder? SSA certainly knows I was granted my SSN years ago as a newborn citizen, and the Department of State knows I hold a current US passport and have never relinquished my US citizenship.
sure... I don't disagree with you there. they did need to get a subpoena for that information using all the other evidence that was publicly out there on facebook that the affidavit said. they were using an android device that tracks you if you let it and stores that information on google's servers if you let it. you don't have to have that feature on and just having the phone on you is sufficient to be triangulated by the cell towers. I don't see how this is incompatible with modern society. google didn't just give up the data without going through the judge granting a subpoena. even if they didn't have that cell phone record it's just one piece of evidence of many that would still likely get a conviction.
it didn't start at gps data from google... it went from public posts on facebook to the email and phone number account associated with that to the google account associated with that to the gps data associated with the google account. if you show me them using a reach around route to get that gps data and persecute peaceful protestors that haven't been suspected of criminal activity then i do agree it's troubling. if you want me to agree that the government is not within their rights seek evidence via normal, judge approved, subpoenas to investigate/prosecute people storming the capital and doing legitimate crimes then i disagree. you need probable cause and that bar should be fairly high.
In the J6 case they used a subpoena, yes. The OP article says that they're now going around the legal process by simply buying the data.
But my point is that the article implies that there's some uncertainty as to whether this data can be used to identify everyone present at a place and time, and there isn't. It has been done before.
They used a bunch of different tricks to ID some of the people there (and they've still not arrested most of them). The lesson here isn't that they aren't collecting data effectively, or that they aren't able to learn whatever they want, but rather that the data isn't really intended or used for protecting America from attacks or threats or terrorism. It's certainly being used, but not to protect us.
The irony is they could have just bought the cellphone data. That's literally for sale. Maybe there was some legal reason they couldn't use it directly but it's already out there.
