That GPS stuff is sure handy, eh?

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: dewayne () warpspeed com (Dewayne Hendricks)
Date: July 16, 2010 11:30:33 AM EDT
To: Dewayne-Net Technology List <xyzzy () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Re: That GPS stuff is sure handy, eh?

[Note:  This comment comes from friend David Reed.  DLH]

Subject: Re: That GPS stuff is sure handy, eh?
Date: Thu, 15 Jul 2010 10:19:00 -0400
To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
From: "David P. Reed" <dpreed () reed com>

Regarding warrants and cell tower records:

Two quick comments.

1) I served for 6 months on a Massachusetts Grand Jury.  This 
little-understood system is partly designed as a check on prosecutorial 
power, and in Massachusetts it is taken quite seriously by the 
prosecutors.  Every felony indictment brought must be presented to a 
grand jury for discussion and a vote on whether it should be pursued (no 
ham sandwich jokes, please, we did turn down a number of prosecutions).

For this purpose, I thought it worth sharing that we reviewed requests 
for warrants looking at cellular call records as a routine matter of 
course, and probable cause for each search was indeed required by our 
deliberations.  So the system can work, at least in Massachusetts. Is it 
always used in MA?  Don't know, but see the next point.

2) In a home near the center of my town, a fellow bludgeoned an 90-year 
old to death, and then ran when confronted.   This resulted in a massive 
man-hunt, including locking students inside schools rather than 
releasing them at the end of the day, and a robocall alert to everyone 
in my town.  This was pretty scary, and by the end of the process, 
police had arrested several suspicious people, including a fellow who 
had behaved very strangely in a nearby store.  However, within an hour 
or two, based on identification of the man (a workman), and quick work 
by the police and the cellular operator, his location was determined by 
his cellphone, which was still turned on, though he had made no calls 
with it, and he was found hiding in a nearby wooded area, where he was 
captured.  I don't know if a warrant was obtained.  I suspect a judge 
would have issued that warrant, given the evidence, but perhaps it was not.

These experiences have left me with practical knowledge of the 
usefulness of cellphone location for societal benefit, and also 
knowledge that good procedural safeguards can be worked out that fit 
emergency circumstances.  I'm also very skeptical of those who would 
leave humans "out of the loop" and create purely technical solutions 
(either way - to automatically provide data to all police inquiries, or 
to bar any access to evidence whatever, no matter what the process).
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