“Reverse location” search warrants identify all cellphones near a crime scene

Re:“Reverse location” search warrants identify all cellphone... by mcv on Tuesday February 19, 2019 @11:28AM (#19200097)

> The risk of a false positive is nonzero, but how does it balance against the value of a true-negative?

Do you mean a miss?

Misses are unavoidable. If the perpetrator didn't have their phone on them, this is not going to help a bit. However invasive your investigative powers are, there will always remain a chance of misses. The question is how much privacy and freedom of innocents you want to sacrifice for a small further decrease of miss chance.

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Re:“Reverse location” search warrants identify all cellphone... by fixermark on Tuesday February 19, 2019 @11:35AM (#19200170)

I don't mean a miss, I mean "This phone breezes through the dragnet but is clearly moving the wrong way to be associated with the crime in question, so we can discard this suspect."

That'll be great news for the suspect in question if it's the black guy the cops picked up using "traditional" policing methods because he looks like he was in the wrong neighborhood.

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