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Thursday, September 23, 2021

I spy with your little eye...

It was a routine bike ride around the neighborhood that landed Zachary McCoy in the crosshairs of the Gainesville, Florida, police department. 

In January 2020, an alarming email from Google landed in McCoy’s inbox. Police were requesting his user data, the company told him, and McCoy had seven days to go to court and block its release. 

McCoy later found out the request was part of an investigation into the burglary of a nearby home the year before. The evidence that cast him as a suspect was his location during his bike ride – information the police obtained from Google through what is called a geofence warrant. For simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time, McCoy was being investigated and, as a result, his Google data was at risk of being handed over to the police.

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U.S.A. -(AmmoLand.com)- Last year, the Brennan Center for Justice requested under California’s freedom of information law, that the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) provide records relating to the Department’s “social media monitoring” activities. The request was based on the lack of public “information about the capabilities and limitations of the LAPD’s social media monitoring operations” and its use, including use beyond actual criminal investigations. The request letter noted that as of 2014, the LAPD had approximately 40 employees whose job it was to analyze social media, monitor individuals and groups, and collect online information about them and their activities.

10 comments:

  1. We're losing our country drip by drip right in front of our eyes. What will be the catalyst that fires off the CW?
    I have no answers except that I can feel it coming.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Cops always look for data. I know the ones in our town had issues with a guy robbing c-stores wearing a green bandanna. They suspected a local restaurant chain employee so they got his phone data that put him in Indiana at the same time a c-store there was robbed. Using that they tossed his ride and found enough to put him away.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Getting to the point I am getting an old wall phone and leaving it there... how in the hell did we survive before fricken' cell phones came out?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I got to that point ten years ago now. People thought I was losing it then not so much now.

      Delete
    2. You would be better off not using one at all. Unhooking from society completely. This is about my only vice, and if it gets much worse and SHTF gets closer, it won't take much for me to ditch it as well. Just sayin.

      Delete
  4. "How GPS can track you, even when you turn it off"
    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/13/gps-can-spy-on-you-even-when-you-turn-it-off.html

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If it's off and can still track you, it will always come up with the same location if you live it in a friggin drawer somewhere.

      Delete
  5. I don't carry a pocket snitch anymore but I'm also a little more tech-aware than most. Can't afford a VPN yet or I would grab Nord.

    Slowly transitioning my email away from Gmail to my own domain. It's not perfect, but still better than letting the evil company mine it.

    -Arc

    ReplyDelete
  6. Was at my alma mater for Dad's day recently with my daughter. Went to a store, bought her a nice little sun dress. Drove off and got a text message thanking me for visiting the store. I told my daughter unbelievable, I knew they had technology but damn they got my number without calling them.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Guess I'm screwed. I set my phone on google maps when I'm out on my bicycle, my town has a lot of streets going at odd angles and curves and I get confused about how to get from one place to the next. If you were to track some of my rides you would see a lot of odd stops at yard sales, construction sites, talking with people about their dogs, yard art etc.

    ReplyDelete

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