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Comment by vermontdevil | Hacker News Reader

* I’m definitely sorry that happened to her, and I’m glad police were trying to solve it,” McCoy said. “But it just seems like a really broad net for them to cast. What’s the cost-benefit? How many innocent people do we have to harass?”*

I understand he doesn’t have the resources to fight the constitutionality of the whole process. This quote is why ACLU, EFF, and others need to work together to take it up further. Stop the police from continuing the habit of just sweeping people’s data and worry about the details later.

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There is no constitutional issue in this case. This person gave their information to Google and Google was asked for the information. There is no 4th Amendment protection for information a person gives to someone else. The ACLU, EFF, and others have nothing to take further.

Legislation requiring mandatory ability of carriers to track mobile phones by location was passed in 1999 in the US[1], almost a decade before the 'modern smartphone' existed. The broader issues still apply whether or not someone opted in to google location services or not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_9-1-1#The_911_Act

The third party doctrine is badly outdated in the modern world where third parties hold immense volumes of information about our locations and interactions. Since it was a court ruling that brought the doctrine into being, the passage of legislation or further court rulings can overturn it or reduce the scope. There is absolutely work for groups like the ACLU and EFF to do here.

Here in Canada several of our wireless providers banded together to fight an incredibly broad request for information about everyone hitting particular cell towers during a robbery. The crown tried to simply drop the request when challenged, but thankfully the judge didn't let them off so easily. The court issued some rather strict requirements for similar requests.

https://blog.privacylawyer.ca/2016/01/ontario-court-provides...

Judicial oversight requirements should be strict, but it should absolutely be a police investigation tool. Calling it "dragnet" to imply dystopian surveillance is silly. Oversight is the crux of the issue, not the tool itself.

Geofence requests also require two warrants. The first warrant retrieves a list of locatuons for pseudonymous phones in a bounded area during a bounded time. The second request reveals the identity of select phones. Each time you need to convince a judge to grant the warrant. Acording to this article, it looks like the suspect has an opportunity to contest the second request.

This isn't covert mass surveillance. We already allow law enforcement to search more private spaces with a warrant, so this doesn't seem like a stretch.

The problem with this geofencing approach is that it gives too much and too little information at the same time. A list with contact details of many people but no way to find the perpetrator.

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