zlacker

>>fortra+(OP)
Something I was wondering about in this case ... They tracked the killer through his use of burner phones 10 years ago.

And I obviously know phones continuously ping cell towers.

So that means somewhere out there, there's a database of all cell phones and their locations for all time, with fine-grained resolution? They don't ever delete it, at least not in the last 10 years?

Or it's 1 database per cell provider ? I guess phones ping towers that are not owned by the company that provided the phone

I'd be curious if anyone has a link to a good summary of how this works, and the location tracking implications. Do they have to do a subpoena, or is it just a big database everyone's doing joins against? What's the resolution of the data?

I knew that people obviously get caught due to cell phone tracking -- it comes up in every one of these cases, like the Idaho killer recently. But I'm slightly surprised they reached back 10 years and did it

>>chubot+sg
I've been running WiGLE on my phones since 2013 or so and I have 2.1 million observations recorded, notably I don't run this 24/7. I'm just one guy with a phone and I wager I could sus out some interesting patterns from my neighborhood and city. I fully plan to as well, it's one of those back burner projects I keep plotting on. That said it really opened my eyes after they added Bluetooth support sometime ago. I can tell when particular nextdoor neighbors are home just by seeing their Galaxy Watch or earbuds in my network list. I can't even imagine what clever people could do with a continuous stream of wireless observations from thousands of points all recorded 24/7. It makes me feel naked in a way but I trust no one will bother to look my way and I go on with my life but I am at least aware of it. I wonder if normal people would care that corporations and the government can see their travels, patterns and habits and what can be potentially be surmised by such data.