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A comment on Google Gives Feds 1,500 Phone Locations in Unprecedented ‘Geofence’ Search. Parent comment

Re:Google Gives Feds 1,500 Phone Locations in Unprecedented ... by mind-blight on Thursday December 12, 2019 @06:01PM (#21777559)
I think the devil is in the details with this type of data hand off. If there's no PII in the first batch of phones, just location and a unique ID, it doesn't seem intrusive compared to the benefit. Law enforcement would need to make a second request to de-identify a few specific numbers. If PII is handed over during the first request, then it's a lot more intrusive
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Re:Google Gives Feds 1,500 Phone Locations in Unprecedented ... by 867-5309 on Thursday December 12, 2019 @07:20PM (#21777985)
the unique id is probably the phone number or the device id
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Re:Google Gives Feds 1,500 Phone Locations in Unprecedented ... by mind-blight on Thursday December 12, 2019 @07:26PM (#21778019)
Phone number is definitely PII and can easily be used to de-identify. Mac address is better, but still not great. A Google or dump specific id would be best
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Re:Google Gives Feds 1,500 Phone Locations in Unprecedented ... by 867-5309 on Friday December 13, 2019 @04:14AM (#21780204)
I'm not sure if MAC addresses are used in cell network negotiation, and they are easily spoofed, but the cellular network provider could certainly link an IP address to a device id. then again, most criminal "burner" phones are not internet enabled anyway
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Re:Google Gives Feds 1,500 Phone Locations in Unprecedented ... by burpsnard on Friday December 13, 2019 @10:22AM (#21782321)
IMSI, IMEI, MSISDN, etc.

Systems to associate 'burner' phones to individuals, with patterns of metadata, have been commonplace for decades

https://github.com/kimgr/asn1ate/blob/master/testdata/public...

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Re:Google Gives Feds 1,500 Phone Locations in Unprecedented ... by 867-5309 on Friday December 13, 2019 @05:59PM (#21786396)
yes those can be used as device ids and in network negotiation. harder to spoof as they're a lower abstraction layer than MAC addresses
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Re:Google Gives Feds 1,500 Phone Locations in Unprecedented ... by AlexCoventry on Friday December 13, 2019 @01:59AM (#21779669)
I read in an earlier NYT article about geo-fencing that the initial response involves unidentifiable tags.
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Re:Google Gives Feds 1,500 Phone Locations in Unprecedented ... by komali2 on Thursday December 12, 2019 @07:30PM (#21778050)
Why phone number? My phone number has no association with my google account lol. I swap sims and phone numbers on a whim. My email address is the most constant thing about me.
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Re:Google Gives Feds 1,500 Phone Locations in Unprecedented ... by 867-5309 on Friday December 13, 2019 @04:08AM (#21780174)
it's not about linking you to a specific google account, it's about personally identifying you with a unique phone number at any given time
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