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from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept
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Filed Under: daily deal
✓ 1 FOG DATA SCIENCE/Data Brokers
(INSERT
Aug 31, 2022 · Fog Data Science is a company that purchases raw geolocation data originally collected by applications people use every day on their ...
Aug 31, 2022 · A data broker has been selling raw location data about individual people to federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, EFF has learned.)
Yet Another Data Broker Found To Give Massive Amounts Of Location Info To Law Enforcement
from the we-can-remember-where-you-were-wholesale dept
"The Supreme Court may have extended constitutional protection to
historical cell site location info, but that’s not going to stop our
public servants — and the private companies that serve them — from
finding ways to elude the ramifications of the Carpenter decision.
Over the past couple of years, court documents and public records
have exposed this law enforcement-adjacent business. (These brokers also
sell data to private companies, but seem to prefer their government contracts.)
Bypassing even questionable geofence warrants (ones that perform
searches of areas for devices of interest, rather than targeting any
specific suspect), government agencies are buying direct access to location data pulled from dozens of apps that collect this information while in use.
The EFF has obtained several documents detailing the offerings of Fog Data Science, yet another entrant in the data broker sweepstakes. Pulling information gleaned from over 100 public records requests,
the EFF notes the company has (or has had) contracts with at least 18
law enforcement agencies, including some at the federal level.
Here’s what the company does:
The company, Fog Data Science, has claimed in marketing materials that
it has “billions” of data points about “over 250 million” devices and
that its data can be used to learn about where its subjects work, live,
and associate. Fog sells access to this data via a web application,
called Fog Reveal, that lets customers point and click to access detailed histories of regular people’s lives. This panoptic surveillance apparatus is offered to state highway patrols, local police departments, and county sheriffs across the country for less than $10,000 per year.
And it appears the company (and some of its law enforcement
customers) believe obtaining location data through Fog (which the
company advertises as being capable of long-term tracking) does not
implicate the Fourth Amendment. One of its communications with the California Highway Patrol contains this statement from a Fog representative — one which states it has spoken to other law enforcement customers who believe the Carpenter decision has nothing to do with this particular location data source.
We haven’t done any work on Carpenter. We have had several
clients view our solution through the lens of Carpenter, most recently
was from a meeting I had with NJ State Police and NJ AG’s Office. The
attorneys in the meeting felt that since we are providing non PII
[personally identifying info] data, held by third parties, Carpenter
doesn’t apply. As you know, in the Carpenter case, the FBI had his cell
number and requested specific records pertaining to him. With our data,
we have no way of linking signals back to a specific device or owner.
That legal theory can be described most charitably as “untested.”
Maybe courts will find that layering third parties (the app sources and
the data broker hawking the data) makes it too far removed from the
source to make Carpenter applicable. Or maybe some courts will find it’s ultimately close enough to the CSLI-enabled tracking in the Carpenter
case (since investigators will use this data to identify suspects and
then can go back to the brokers to gather more data on the targeted
device/device owner) that warrants are required.
Either way, it shows law enforcement is looking for solutions that
don’t require judicial oversight, and Fog Data Science is more than
willing to be that solution. . .
That’s not to say that if Fog sucks at its job, that makes it ok. It
doesn’t. App users may opt into sharing data with apps, but they’re
rarely aware app developers are sending this information on to data
brokers, who are now basically forcing app users one step removed from
the data broker to share their location data with government agencies.
The first breakdown in responsibility comes from app developers who
sell this information to data brokers. The second breakdown comes from
Fog’s government customers, who haven’t been exactly open or honest
about their frequent use of third-party brokers to obtain bulk data they
can’t legally acquire from cell service providers without a warrant.
There’s much, much more in the EFF’s discussion of its findings from
its public records haul, including suspected links to Venntel, another data broker
with plenty of powerful government clients. And it shows packaging and
analyzing app data to track people is still a growth business, one that
won’t see any slowdown until it’s either reined in by privacy
legislation or courtroom precedent."
Filed Under: 4th amendment, data brokers, data sharing, law enforcement
Companies: fog data science
READ MORE
✓ 2
Court: Yeah, No One’s Going To Feel They’re Free To Go When Cops Are Firing Bullets Through Their Front Door
from the each-bullet-means-you're-even-freer-to-go dept
"Consent can mean a lot of things when you’re accosted by cops. Law
enforcement officers tend to feel it’s always voluntary, even when
you’re sitting in an interrogation room for what the “good cop” refers
to as a “friendly chat” meant to “clear everything up.”
Whenever a seizure is challenged, if cops didn’t have the requisite
reasonable suspicion or probable cause to support the stop, they and
their lawyers will almost always claim the stop was consensual and the
person now suing or trying to suppress evidence was free to go.
I’ve witnessed a lot of really terrible government arguments while covering terrible police work for Techdirt. But this one
[PDF], handled by the Sixth Circuit Appeals Court (following an appeal
by the state), has to be the argument furthest disconnected from reality
I’ve seen yet. (h/t FourthAmendment.com)
The timeline leading the Fourth Amendment violation is pretty clear.
There are recordings of the incident, which alone makes it an anomaly.
From those recordings and testimony of all involved, the Sixth Circuit
reconstructs the late evening welfare check that devolved into (police)
violence.
. . .
The evidence is this: no firearm was found on the property after the
officers entered the residence. Also of note: while Mark Campbell was
charged with two counts of aggravated assault on the officers, those
charges were dismissed.
The couple sued, alleging Fourth Amendment violations stemming from
the incident. And they won at the lower level, prompting the
government’s appeal, much of which hinged on the government’s assertion
that the whole thing was a consensual interaction that was only
complicated by Mark’s statements and actions.
Oh hell no, says the Sixth Circuit, summing up the whole debacle in
one devastating sentence. Whatever might apply to Mark and his “I’ve got
one too” statement alluding to a gun did not apply to the other person
in the house, who was definitely held against her will by law
enforcement until the situation was resolved.
In view of all the circumstances here, a reasonable person would
not believe that he or she was free to leave a house while an officer
repeatedly fired at the front door.
It’s sad that it takes a court — and not just the first level of the
judicial system — to state the obvious. No person would feel free to
leave when several officers are present in the front yard. And they
definitely would not feel free to end the interaction after an officer
fires eight bullets through their front door.
Really just extremely obvious stuff. And yet, the court has to
explain this to the willfully obtuse law enforcement officers who
continued to claim no one was seized despite the officers in the yard
and the bullets flying into the house. Whatever Mark Campbell did
(including returning to the porch after the hail of gunfire) has no
bearing on rights violation perpetrated on his wife.
It also makes no difference whether Fox knew Sherrie was also
inside the home. We have explained that when an officer seizes one
person by shooting at a car, for example, the officer seizes everyone in
the car, even if the officer is unaware of the presence of passengers.
As for the claim the gunfire was justified because of Mark Campell’s
statement about (alleged) gun possession, the Appeals Court says this
cannot be resolved at this level. Mere gun possession is not a
justification for police violence. Officers must clearly show their
safety (or the safety of others) was at risk. Furthermore, despite
Campbell’s statement (and officers’ testimony), no gun was recovered
from the home.
This all seems amazingly clear. And yet, there’s a dissenting opinion
— one that claims officers did not perform an unlawful seizure of
Campbell’s wife, despite repeatedly firing through the front door of the
house. Many arguments are raised by the dissent, but they all ignore
the crucial central fact: no reasonable person would assume they were
free to terminate an interaction with law enforcement that involved an
officer firing their gun into the residence. Precedent isn’t the issue.
It’s the reasonableness. And the officers’ arguments are anything but
reasonable. Qualified immunity denied."
READ MORE
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