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.

>>milsor+oj
> I can tell when particular nextdoor neighbors are home just by seeing their Galaxy Watch or earbuds in my network list.

I know when the mail arrives even though I can't see the mailbox from where I'm sitting. The number of recognizable bluetooth and wifi beacons is large enough that you can draw all kinds of very privacy invasive conclusions from them. Occupancy is one thing, but also patterns of behavior, and more. Very, very scary stuff and really easy to abuse.