[kyrra]

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...

[dvtrn]

Reading that article reminds me of a rather prophetically-accurate movie starring Will Smith and Gene Hackman "Emeny of the State"[0]. Granted, for a film that came out in 1998 it probably wasn't too hard to guess where things were headed w/rt surveillance compared to how seemingly prescient writings from the likes of Orwell and Bradbury were for their respective times.

What stands out to me about the movie (because I went and fished out my DVD and decided to watch it this fine afternoon) was just how detailed David Marconi was in his depiction of brotherly tracking and surveillance.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemy_of_the_State_(film)

Edit: attribution for the plot goes to writer David Marconi, I've fixed this for any fellow movie geeks who also care about such things ;)

[vermontdevil]

Hackman was also in another movie about spying and paranoia - The Conversation. Great movie. I know it’s not about nation states spying but wanted to add that here

[jhayward]

Hackman played the same character in both movies. His character in enemy of the state has some deliberate references (the raincoat, the workshop, the opening sequence).

[dvtrn]

Oh? Thanks for the recommendation, I'm a big fan of Hackman's acting and spy movies especially-lately, so I'll definitely be looking this up. Cheers

[sys_64738]

It's a great movie. Harrison Ford plays a secretary if I recall correctly.

[fzzzy]

The Conversation is an absolute classic.

[akira2501]

I hate to be this off topic, but also 'Heist' is a great movie which features a lot of social engineering and exploitation tactics to drive the plot.

[bookofjoe]

There are 2 films with this title, from 2001 and 2015. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heist_(2001_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heist_(2015_film) Both have stellar casts.

[hopler]

2001 had a much higher acclaimed script and was more appreciated by viewers

[paxswill]

Funnily enough, it also has Harrison Ford in it as well (one of the earlier films he was in).

[type0]

Yeah, he's great there, almost uncanny how different and cold he is in that role.

[braythwayt]

Francis Ford Coppola said that “The Conversation” was his favourite Francis Ford Coppola movie.

Watching “Enemy of the State,” it is quite clear that Hackman’s character is a nod at The Conversation’s Harry Caul. He plays an ex-spook who is extremely paranoid about surveillance, which is the exact state Caul gets into at the end of The Conversation!

[bookofjoe]

Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

[bookofjoe]

"Eye in the Sky" (2015) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye_in_the_Sky_(2015_film) explores this theme as well. A very good film starring Helen Mirren that seems to have slipped under the radar.

[kirubakaran]

Too bad Gene Hackman became an actor, instead of a CRISPR scientist

[duxup]

I remembered watching that and thinking that it was apt.... but there's no damn way anyone gets access to all those different systems managed by different groups seamlessly. The bureaucracy involved would be immense, the various systems that can't talk to each other efficiently endless. I imagined all the overhead that would go into that and it hurt my brain ;)

[joshka]

A fun thought exercise to break the "can't do it" perspective. Imagine someone says they'll give you 10 million dollars to get it done, could you do it then?

[duxup]

I think the challenge is you don't know where the "runner" you're tracking is going and the variety of surveillance systems they tap into is a pretty big unknown.

[webreac]

The inefficiency of administration is the last protection of our privacy ?

[duxup]

I worry what happens when / if that isn't the case anymore.

Just with data we're crossing what seems like a lot of "too late" moments.

[hopler]

The modern solution is that they give a contractor like Palantir access to all the gov databases, and the contractor builds a unified UI.

[mirimir]

Well, there's DEA's Special Operations Division (SOD). As I recall, they've done ~real-time busts of drug shipments. That is, from a cellular intercept in California to pulling over a semi on I95 for a broken taillight.

[ImaCake]

>prescient writings from the likes of Orwell

While I agree some autocracies resemble Orwell's 1984, I hardly think western states fit the description. The powers undermining Western Democracies are a complex mix of corporate/state sponsored media, surveillance capitalism, and other more mundane forms of corruption and collusion. The fact that I can state these things without fear speaks volumes about the opposition to autocratic and anti-liberal forces. Bradbury's distraction based autocracy is a lot more interesting because it beats you over the head with a different type of control that in smaller doses could be used to disuade or control in a less Autocratic society.

[ignoramous]

The problem is compounded by the fact that 4G and beyond have location triangulation specific features specially built in to them. The tech is only going to improve as today it isn't as accurate as GPS.

I found that this Wikipedia article is a great little read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_tracking

[bookofjoe]

Just read that 5G is going to be exponentially more precise at location tracking than 4G because there will be many, many more base stations with comparatively short range.

[gist]

> Even without Google or Apple, they police have the cell service providers

Important to keep in mind that additional information provides corroboration at least in the mind of the jury and also detracts from issues regarding the information.

This is illustrated by one of those Datelines' (or 48 Hours don't remember) that I saw recently. They exhumed a body to determine if the deceased was buried with contact lenses on. They then had some expert do tests with pigs to determine that it was really a contact lens and not something else. It was very clear right off that it was (anyone who has worn contacts would know this and additionally they even were marked with numbers on the lens). But the expert still went to this long and drawn out trouble (buried dead pig's eyes with lense on) that they clearly didn't have to do. Reason? You spend more time in front of the jury with a long story and it detracts from the problems with the story to begin with (someone iirc said 'she never goes to bed with contact lenses').

Similar and unrelated is restaurant food. Put a lot of vegtables on the plate and a fancy sauce swirl to detract from the small piece of meat or fish you have given the diner.

[caymanjim]

They need to bend over backwards with evidence because terrible shows like CSI and NCIS have convinced jurors that crime labs can perform magic and that they should acquit despite a preponderance of evidence unless there's a giant stack of lab reports and a manic pixie dream nerd testifying.

[LuciferAdvocate]

They should. Preponderance of evidence is for civil charges, criminal charges require proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

[hopler]

The standard in criminal law is "beyond a reasonable doubt", which is a higher standard than "preponderance if evidence" which only satisfies civil claims.

[hopler]

Vegetables are good food. Swirls looks nice. These are things people enjoy, not distractions.

[gist]

I did not say 'only reason'. Of course there could be other benefits. And I am guessing we are not talking about the same restaurant experiences either.

[maimeowmeow]

veggies are real cheap compared to meats. 1 pound of meat or seafood is 4-30 dollars wholesale versus 1-5 dollars a pound for veggies, so after markup, what are most dishes going to contain? Fillers: carbs and veggies.

[JohnFen]

> veggies are real cheap compared to meats.

That depends a lot on where you live, and what quality of veggies and meat you're talking about.

What's cheap is cereals.

[bestnameever]

They mention that in the article but they state that the data from Google is much more precise, which makes sense.

>"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."

[zelon88]

But a Google or Apple smartphone can potentially contain the contact information about third parties who don't own Apple or Google smartphones themselves.

Take a young person with an iPhone. Their 95 year old grandparents might not have a single piece of technology from 1990 onwards but because their grandson has their phone number, address, and birthday in his iPhone those people could potentially be vulnerable to tracking/snooping/violations of privacy.

[crankylinuxuser]

You'd be surprised how cheap a mask, crowbar, and a rental van is.

Never underestimate this https://xkcd.com/538/ attack.

[mirimir]

Sometimes you don't even need the wrench.

OK, so the feds were closing in on DPR. They knew that he had everything on his laptop, and that it was full-disk encrypted. One faction wanted to catch him in his room at home, by somehow doing a SWAT from a helicopter.

But cooler heads prevailed. They just tailed him for a few days. So he sits down in the public library, and starts working. Two agents pretend to be a couple having a screaming match. While he's distracted, another agent grabs his laptop.

Game over, and life in prison.

[UweSchmidt]

Next level analysis could take into account which/whose phones are (untypically) switched off when the bombs went off. Next next level would take into account phones that are "left at home" - where the phone is not in use and not moving around according to usual movement patterns.

I would guess that there is already substantial research done on exactly this, and that it is possible to detect many deviations of normal behaviour.

[incompatible]

What are the typical movement patterns for a phone at home? Mine is usually sitting on a particular spot on my desk.

[spurgu]

In that case you should be safe to go out and do some mischief! Or... image recognition in CCTV's might recognize your face and couple it with the fact that you're not carrying your mobile.

[JohnFen]

Face recognition (even by humans), particularly with CCTV data, has a very high rate of false positives. You might be able to make the case that the fact that your phone wasn't there is evidence that the image isn't really you.

[spurgu]

Except that footage of someone recognized as you walking out of your own apartment might be hard to refute.

Plus I only see face recognition (and CCTV quality) getting better over time. Unfortunately.

[incompatible]

I don't usually carry it when I go out, actually. I may be unusual.

[ddalex]

Absence of a signal is a signal in itself.

[kingosticks]

They used to do that in the TV series 24.

[Jerry2]

Since you work at Google, do you have any knowledge about Sensorvault? Where does the data come from?

[kyrra]

I have zero knowledge about this thing, I know as much as you do. I can talk all day about the payments ecosystem though. :)

Google does publish a bit how they handle data requests.

https://support.google.com/transparencyreport/answer/7381738...

There was an article a couple months ago about reverse location search warrants.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/slate.com/technology/2019/02/re...

[Jerry2]

Thank you! That was helpful.