Google Gives Feds 1,500 Phone Locations in Unprecedented ‘Geofence’ Search

Re:Google Gives Feds 1,500 Phone Locations in Unprecedented ... by Retric on Thursday December 12, 2019 @10:41PM (#21778990)

Personally, I would vastly prefer cops focused on minor property crimes. That’s not to say the need a statewide manhunt, but something approaching 1:1 of property damage vs police respond quickly adds up to several hours of investigation.

Generally, a tiny fraction of the population commits the vast majority of such crimes. People will do 500$ worth of damage to make 30$, work out what it takes to make useful amounts of money and these people end up destroying a lot of property. So, the ROI calculation needs to account for windows not smashed.

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Re:Google Gives Feds 1,500 Phone Locations in Unprecedented ... by droithomme on Friday December 13, 2019 @09:52AM (#21782053)

> People will do 500$ worth of damage to make 30$

A good example is copper wire thieves. They pull up to a house and access the electrical panel in the garage which they turn off. Using a winch, they pull out all the copper wire in the house that's directly connected to the box (there's also many branch lines left behind). They then sell the wire as scrap for $20 or so and presumably use the money to buy drugs.

Fixing this damage can run $30,000 to $100,000. The whole house can have to be torn apart from the inside to reinstall all the electrical.

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