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
There’s an LE chart floating around out there, slightly different than this[1] that shows how long carriers keep records.

AT&T in particular keeps records forever. I suspect all the other carriers do as well despite their claims.

1. https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_nbcnews-ux...

>>runjak+Ng
Can confirm AT&T retention. In the late 90's they were already approaching trillions with-a-T metadatums.

Federal LE, telecoms, and "the intelligence community" have always worked closely together.