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Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones
- dukeofdoom 4y agoPeople brought phones to Jan 6th protest, thats how many of the 800 people have been found and imprisoned. Should be a lesson to future political protestors.
- mdoms 4y agoSounds like they're doing it with court-issued warrants with probable cause, so it's not as horrifying as the title makes it sound. It's "secret" to the suspect but it's not like the police department has taken it onto themselves to start a new cellphone tracking program.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> with probable cause It appears to be a lower standard; reasonable suspicion, perhaps.
- mdoms 4y agoHow does that appear? The article says, > Officers simply have to attest in an affidavit that they have probable cause that the tracking data is “relevant to a crime that is being committed or has been committed.” The term "reasonable suspicion" doesn't appear in the article at all.
- adgjlsfhk1 4y ago2 big problems: "relavent to a crime" is a very low standard.
- JumpCrisscross 4y agoNot a lawyer. Probable cause for a search warrant, to my understanding, means probable cause the target committed or abetted a crime. The target must be a suspect. Probable cause for believing the target has information “relevant to a crime” sounds like something else, perhaps even lower than reasonable suspicion.
- cryptonector 4y agoIn this case not even. In this case the police indicated that surveilling the subject would help them find the dealer, but they did not indicate that they suspected the subject of being the dealer or even knowing the dealer. Or at least that was my takeaway from one reading, and I'm not going back for a second. Even if I failed at reading comprehension and recall, the important thing is not what happened in this case, but what happens generally, and I bet judges and magistrates routinely issue these warrants with weak or no probable cause.
- TheWill 4y agoNot surprising, since the entire telecommunications industry continues to work hand in hand with all the alphabet agencies to gobble up as much data on everyone that they can. Laws and rights to the government are but mere suggestions.
- duxup 4y agoThis guy’s friend died of an overdose and that was enough justification to track him? That seems like way too low of a bar.
- sneak 4y agoAs someone who has read a fair number of granted search warrants, I can attest to the fact that 100% had obvious technical, logical, or factual errors (under penalty of perjury) that were granted by the judge anyway. The bar/basis to successfully receive a search warrant is hilaribad. It's pretty close to a rubber stamp. The courts just believe whatever crap the cops spew out.
- Rufhfhs3747rhe7 4y agoWhy are drug dealers still using an easily trackable phone number for communication? Why not a 3rd party messaging and voice app like Matrix/Element? Am I incorrect in assuming that local police would not be able to easily track it?
- orthoxerox 4y agoMost criminals aren't very smart.
- dredmorbius 4y agoMost criminals who are caught aren't very smart. Sampling bias in the extreme.
- lucb1e 4y agoA common response to why criminals sometimes do stupid things, but I haven't actually ever seen this substantiated.
- throwaway48375 4y agoYou are going to miss out on potential sales asking people to download and figure out some weird app and honestly the likelihood of getting caught is pretty low. I know people who have been selling drugs without even so much as changing numbers for many years. Also even using these apps you are still on the cell network and there are methods for determining your phone number / IMSI. You wouldn't be immune to this type of tracking.
- Andrew_nenakhov 4y agoOk, ok, I get it. Next time I'll go commit a crime, I'll leave a cellphone at home. Or will give it to my accomplice to taxi it around at a significant distance from a location where I'll engage in some heinous activity.
- actionablefiber 4y agoT-Mobile is charging police $900/customer/month to track us? I want a rebate on my cellphone plan.
- radicaldreamer 4y agoIt’s public money, so they’re already grifting all of us.
- ClumsyPilot 4y agoGood point - they are double-dipping
- colpabar 4y agoAgreed. I think we need to put as much blame on the carriers providing these capabilities to anyone, let alone the police. That the police are publicly funded and are buying this data with my money is also a huge issue to me, but if I had to pick one thing to change, I’d make selling this data illegal. That way, no one could have it.
- sixothree 4y agoI assume they target these people because they can seize assets. And drug dealers often deal in cash. Why else would they be so absolutely inept solving or prventing most crimes (looking at just about any metric available), yet still be laser focused on these certain crimes.
- kingcharles 4y agoAsset forfeitures can be beneficial to police departments, but not usually of much concern to individual police officers, except in ad hoc situations where they can easily pocket cash they take during a search (happens very frequently from my experience). And to add to that, a lot of jurisdictions have cracked down massively on forfeitures (technical term: civil in rem forfeiture) because of how badly abused the system has been in the past by prosecutors and police departments.
- mdb31 4y ago"We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time." Oooh, wait until they hear about CCPA... (but anyway, I'm sure the 'secret GPS pings' are just plain-old stealth SMS, and we're all better off not reading TFA in any case)
- buildbot 4y agoNo, it looks like a 2 years location dragnet warrant issued against someone for merely being around someone experiencing an overdose. IMO, this should be completely unconstitutional.
- lmkg 4y ago> Oooh, wait until they hear about CCPA... Actually Virginia has its own data privacy law now, modelled on CCPA.
- flotzam 4y agohttps://web.archive.org/web/20220416175850/https://www.insidenova.com/headlines/virginia-police-routinely-use-secret-gps-pings-to-track-people-s-cell-phones/article_e9c5e028-bbd4-11ec-8934-ab3eea0e9aa5.html https://web.archive.org/web/20220416175850/https://www.insid... > I'm sure the 'secret GPS pings' are just plain-old stealth SMS Worse: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28991641 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28991641 (depending on the carrier) And look who takes the cake again this time: "Sprint offered the cheapest prices to report locations back to law enforcement, charging a flat fee of $100 per month."
- no_no_no_no 4y ago
- hammock 4y agoChesterfield County, Va. can be generally understood as one of the most, if not the most, pro-cop (densely populated) counties in the whole country. You don’t want to be arrested there Edit: not sure the reason for the downvotes, this fact is useful context and first-hand
- eganist 4y agoVirginia as a whole has some pretty absurdly pro police laws, at least re: driving. The lesser of either 20 over the speed limit or any speed over ~80~ 85 miles an hour (thanks jmisavage) in Virginia is a misdemeanor, and at least one auto journalist has been jailed in Virginia. https://jalopnik.com/never-speed-in-virginia-lessons-from-my-three-days-in-1613604053 https://jalopnik.com/never-speed-in-virginia-lessons-from-my... It's also the only state to prohibit radar detectors.
- cryptonector 4y agoI thought Connecticut also prohibited radar detectors.
- Wistar 4y agoApparently not. "• Under federal law, the use of radar or laser speed detectors is illegal in all commercial vehicles over 10,000 pounds. • Radar detectors are illegal to use in any vehicle in the District of Columbia. • Radar detectors are illegal to use in any vehicle in the state of Virginia. • Radar detectors are illegal to use in any vehicle while on any military installation." https://k40.com/are-radar-detectors-illegal/ https://k40.com/are-radar-detectors-illegal/
- ZoomerCretin 4y agoConsidering the effects of driving at these speeds, I'd say the legal absurdity is the other 49 states not having similar punishments for people who drive at these incredibly dangerous speeds. An enormous amount of people die or acquire permanent, life-altering disabilities at the hands of people who were speeding and crashed.
- StopDarkPattern 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mohamez 4y ago>routinely This is frightening.
- woem 4y agoCould the wireless carriers track phones even if they were carrier unlocked or factory unlocked?
- kube-system 4y agoYes, this functionality is required by law and is done at the chipset firmware level these days. And even before phones supported this, it was done by triangulation at the carriers towers.
- orangepurple 4y agoThe cellular modem usually has GPS and SMS capabilities integrated in one hardware package. Also, separately, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS#Silent_SMS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS#Silent_SMS
- callalex 4y agoHow would those two things be related at all?
- 542458 4y agoDoes anybody have info on how this works on a technical level? I.e., is it an actual report of the phone’s GPS position, or is it tower-side triangulation? If the former, do all devices support it?
- kube-system 4y agoBoth, depending on what features are supported by the handset and/or network. Earlier phases of e911 compliance did it with triangulation, and later phases do it with GPS location. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_9-1-1#Wireless_location https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_9-1-1#Wireless_locati...
- 542458 4y agoHunh. Does this definitely use the e911 system for tracking? If so, there’s sort of a well-poisoning thing going on here. Most people would like 911 be able to figure out where they’re calling from in an emergency, but if this is going to be abused for surveillance purposes people are going to want to disable the phone-side portion of it - which prevents it from helping in an emergency. On that note, can this even be disabled on iOS/android? I didn’t see anything obvious in iOS settings (not that I’m itching to disable it - just curious if I even can!). In any case, I would like my device to report whenever the network does something unusual, like request my location or put in a no-ring call. I wonder if you can make a pinephone or Android do that.
- kube-system 4y agoAs I understand it is mostly handled by the chipset firmware these days, and no options are available to disable it because it is a legal requirement. But even if you were able to disable the functionality, the carriers towers can triangulate you.
- car_analogy 4y agoIt's revolting that we've allowed functionality to betray its owner to be legally mandated into "our" devices. It's no surprise that they keep this so very discreet. Edit: I am specifically referring to the e911 ability to without owner interaction or knowledge send GPS coordinates, not to network-side triangulation, or even to sending GPS coordinates when the owner initiates a 911 call.
- blt 4y ago> we will use all lawful tools at our disposal Interpreted precisely, this sentence doesn't rule out the possibility that they use unlawful tools too.
- kube-system 4y agoIt also doesn’t rule out that their favorite flavor of ice cream is chocolate. But it also is just a statement about something else.
- istjohn 4y agoCorrect. A little parallel construction[1], and no one will ever know. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
- JumpCrisscross 4y agoSimple improvement: ban carriers from charging for this surveillance. Could even introduce it as a pro-cop anti-corporate measure, which should take care of the political fringes. That removes the incentive to make it easy. Next, some manner of heightened threshold for more than N consecutive tracking requests or M requests in a twelve-month period. Maybe probable cause? This will be harder, politically, particularly in a law & order cycle. (Maybe it could be accomplished through rulemaking at the FCC.)
- advisedwang 4y ago> Simple improvement: ban carriers from charging for this surveillance. Could even introduce it as a pro-cop anti-corporate measure, which should take care of the political fringes. That removes the incentive to make it easy. I like the idea of motivating cell companies to be less of a pushover, but reducing cost does _directly_ reduce the disincentive to the police to make these requests. > Next, some manner of heightened threshold for more than N consecutive tracking requests or M requests in a twelve-month period. Maybe probable cause? These requests already have a warrant, so meet probable cause.
- advisedwang 4y agoThis is all under a warrant. Of course police can and do get location records from cell companies with a warrant, and it doesn't seem like a huge stretch for a warrant to require the cell company to "ping" to get the most quality location data. The problem here is the judges granting the warrants. Judges in Virginia are chosen by legislatures [1], which means they're accountable to political establishment who in turn have good political cover from being responsible for judicial actions. Judicial oversight and judicial elections are needed. [1] https://ballotpedia.org/Judicial_selection_in_Virginia https://ballotpedia.org/Judicial_selection_in_Virginia
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> judicial elections are needed These aren’t a panacea. I’ve helped get judges elected in Manhattan. The primaries swung by tens of votes in some cases, usually no more than a few hundred. A few clubs, or one large tenant association, could decide the vote. (Counterfactual: judicial elections attract disproportionately-informed voters if they happen off cycle and without party affiliations, which in the context of primaries, applies.)
- hailwren 4y agoJudicial elections also directly introduce lobbying into the judicial branch. Successful judges now have to pay for their campaigns and more money tends to equal more success in elections.
- kingcharles 4y agoHow judges get picked is a huge issue that most of the population have no education in. Having them selected by the populace leads simply to judges that enormously punitive. The population as a whole believes that criminals should be destroyed/deleted from society, and the judges that can deliver that are the ones that get elected. This generally means very-police-friendly judges that will issue warrants without any cause, and will deny any attempts to later fight the illegality. These judges then move up to the appeals courts and support the same policies by the friends they left behind in the lower courts.
- Sohurt00 4y agoSCOTUS ruled in 2020 government agents can be sued for violating constitutional rights: https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/19-71_qol1.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/20pdf/19-71_qol1.pdf
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> SCOTUS ruled in 2020 government agents can be sued for violating constitutional rights This…has always been the case? It’s a raison d’être for SCOTUS.
- ldiracdelta 4y agoLook up "Qualified immunity" and "civil asset forfeiture"
- JumpCrisscross 4y agoSorry, misread “agents” as “agencies.”
- cryptonector 4y ago> Held: RFRA’s express remedies provision permits litigants, when appro- priate, to obtain money damages against federal officials in their indi- vidual capacities. Pp. 3–9. RFRA is an Act of Congress. Looking just the quote above, what SCOTUS found isn't a constitutional right but a statutory right, which means the statue can be amended or repealed, for example, and also that the statutory right is limited to whatever the statute says (or SCOTUS read in it). Without reading the rest of the opinion or the Act itself, I am probably justified in imagining that the right doesn't extend to violations of any constitutional rights so much as to violations of constitutional rights relevant to "religious freedom", which is mainly 1st Amendment rights, and maybe some others. I wonder, for example, whether RFRA would protect one's right to refuse a mandatory vaccine for religious reasons -- it might, though I don't have time to go read it (and related case-law) and find out (plus IANAL).
- usrn 4y ago
- steve76 4y ago[dead]
- IAmGraydon 4y ago
- DevX101 4y agoI'm assuming the police is primarily using GPS to prove guilt, but are there any recorded cases of someone using GPS to "prove" their innocence, as an alibi?
- sneak 4y agoIn a lot of cases by the time you learn you are being accused, the data is no longer retained/available from the carriers.
- kingcharles 4y agoI don't know. I did a subpoena to Verizon once for a guy accused of murder who I knew was innocent. There's a long story about how the guy didn't want to admit to police he wasn't at the scene of the crime because it would have to out him as having a gay lover, which he was worried about. He'd been in jail for 6 years at this point. I said we should subpoena his cell tower records to prove he was away from the scene, and we did, but Verizon came back and said they deleted them after 5 years. tl;dr: they do delete them, but Verizon said it has a 5 year retention
- lucb1e 4y agoAs part of a GDPR data access request, my mobile ISP denied having access to data such as which cell towers I am or have been connected to. Wasn't sure what to make of that. They are a virtual provider but, like, surely if the police comes knocking they suddenly find a way to that data... or does the police not knock at theirs but at the network operator's? Is the virtual operator then not the data controller, should I send access requests to suppliers? But then the data controller is not required to give a list of suppliers, just a list of 'categories' of third parties they share my data with... so that doesn't really add up. I know a thing or two about GDPR but it's still complex enough that I don't know what my rights / their obligations are in this case. The best I could figure, my virtual operator was lying to me about not having my location data 24/7 recorded, but I'd be interested if anyone can tell me more.
- kingcharles 4y agoThat's a good question. There are plenty of people who have proved the GPS is wrong. For instance, I am on 24/7 GPS/cell tower surveillance because I am poor. The police regularly (3 times this week) come to my home, pull me out onto the street, cuff me up and arrest me because they believe (from the GPS data) that I am not in my home. Then they will have me stand on the street corner in handcuffs until the GPS matches what they see with their eyes. Those of us who are under constant surveillance for our poverty have taken to installing cameras that record onto the cloud so that we can later prove in court we were where we said we were (not where the GPS thinks we are): https://news.wttw.com/2022/03/16/designed-reduce-cook-county-jail-population-some-say-electronic-monitoring-system-may https://news.wttw.com/2022/03/16/designed-reduce-cook-county...
- nimbius 4y agoTrying to steer this thread back on topic. This article is incorrect. Cellular services aren't polling GPS data from the device, they're using imei and subscriber identification triangulation from the towers which the FBI and law enforcement overlay on google maps. It works with big providers albeit I feel like this parlour trick becomes tougher if your target is using a resell carrier like mint or cricket.
- hocuspocus 4y agoDevices can and will report AGPS positions to carriers, it's part of several 3GPP protocols. Other people in comments have mentioned location sharing with emergency services, but it's also used for network quality telemetry. It's implemented at the baseband firmware level and there's nothing you can do about it.
- Maxious 4y agoAs sibling comment has pointed out the protocol for a cellular service to request GPS data directly RRLP, is part of the LCS (LoCation Services) section of 3gpp. And if you run your own cellular service using OpenBSC you can try it out... > RRLP is not just a theoretical feature specified in the GSM/3GPP specs. It is implemented by numerous high-end smartphones. There is no authentication of the network. There is no notification of the user. There is no way for the user to disable this [mis]feature. > Impact: Public debate about this feature is needed. Operators probably need to consider working on some terms about how they use this feature in their privacy policy. https://web.archive.org/web/20160106074623/http://openbsc.osmocom.org/trac/raw-attachment/wiki/FieldTests/HAR2009/har2009-gsm-report.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20160106074623/http://openbsc.os...
- kornhole 4y agoI agree that laws and procedures should be tighter, but I don't expect any change. I don't even know the number attached to my SIM card. I bought it anonymously for $16 a month. I rarely turn off airplane mode. I pay $1 a month per number at VoIP.ms. Privacy and security is cheaper for me.
- egberts1 4y agoYou probably want this phone which will merely alert you of such cellular activities not commonly detected by most commercial cellphones. It is only an alerting mechanism, nothing avoidance there (as far as I can read of their marketing papers go). https://www.armadillophone.com/ https://www.armadillophone.com/
- therealbilly 4y agoA lot of shady stuff happens in Virginia law enforcement. It's a huge racket and sadly the taxpayers fund their shenanigans.