Or who's cell phone shut off 1 or 2 cells over then turned back on 1 or 2 cells over in the time frame of the crime. This is the kind of FBI sleuthing I'd support, assuming they got a warrant.

Until they make THAT (switching off your phone for 1 or 2 cells and turning back on 1 or 2 cells over) a crime. And start compelling cellphone companies to provide them with the records of everyone who does that. And start targeting those people. Like structuring [0].

[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/us/law-lets-irs-seize-acco...

A warrant to query everyone's geotagged cell phone records? That's a long way from traditional warrants to obtain a suspect's call log or to tap a suspect's phone...

I don't have a link handy or even recall what the situation was, but I recall reading of at least instance where law enforcement acquired cell site "dumps" of every connected phone. What I mentioned isn't too far off from that.

You might be referring to this story from Lebanon.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/the-hezbollah-con...

Why would you shut off your phone? Just leave it behind.

Anyone doing a operation like theorized here would probably know to use burners.

A tracking device is a tracking device. Burners tend to be anomalies when it comes to activation/deactivation locations/times, payment methods, contacts communicated with and the locations/times that they're used.

If they're smart they'd want to minimize the electronic trail they'd leave behind and ditch the phone completely.

I'd love to be the lucky person who fits the profile of being in the right place at the wrong time.

My immediate thoughts were that these incidents were committed by anti-technology folks, looking to disrupt the tech focused population. In my mind, these folks don't even own cell phones.

I believe it was my 2010 article that was the first to highlight law enforcement obtaining cell site dumps:

http://www.cnet.com/news/feds-push-for-tracking-cell-phones/ "When the FBI was stymied by a band of armed robbers known as the "Scarecrow Bandits" that had robbed more than 20 Texas banks, it came up with a novel method of locating the thieves. FBI agents obtained logs from mobile phone companies corresponding to what their cellular towers had recorded at the time of a dozen different bank robberies in the Dallas area. The voluminous records showed that two phones had made calls around the time of all 12 heists..."

I'd be surprised if the FBI didn't do the same thing today, as a very bare minimum.

No, even in my very small country with generally pretty tech-impaired police department, this was common before 2010. There was a big issue I think around 2006 because the police requested the list of IMEIs present near a particular rural transmitter to help investigate a murder, their court order was rejected as the transmitter was serving a huge area and it was deemed too large a privacy violation for too many people.

I'm sure it was done many times before that, and I'm also sure we were not the first.

It wasn't by a long shot. This very practice was a major plot point of season two of The Wire, which was aired in 2003.

Logs which showed which towers a specific cellphone was connected to was important evidence in the 1999 murder case covered by the SERIAL podcast.

It very well may have been. I can remember reading that article.

If this was a professional "hit", then it would be incredibly dumb to even carry a cellphone with you on such op. If you need real-time communication, just get VHF/UHF radio; Baofengs are pretty cheap these days.

Even better than cell records would be this: http://www.radiolab.org/story/eye-sky/

And I think I'd actually be ok with this method if our military/police/political leaders had a better track record of respecting rules for using the data.

This has probably already been done. Criminals these days know not to carry cell phones.

Do they? In Toronto, we just had an alleged hitman do the deed with a disguise and stolen getaway vehicle use the same vehicle to scope out the scene the day before in broad daylight without a disguise...

Link? I found this http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2013/07/13/slaying_of_hit... .. your thoughts? Are the mafia still active overtly in Canada?

There have been a few high profile mob killings in Toronto in the past few years. Most notably was John Raposo[0], who was gunned down in broad daylight in little italy during a world cup game.[0]

Talk about brazen...

[0] http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/man-slain-in-little-it...

Here's the best one I could find: http://www.cp24.com/news/watch-new-video-of-woodbridge-murde...