Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

This is all under a warrant. Of course police can and do get location records from cell companies with a warrant, and it doesn&#x27;t seem like a huge stretch for a warrant to require the cell company to &quot;ping&quot; to get the most quality location data.<p>The problem here is the judges granting the warrants.<p>Judges in Virginia are chosen by legislatures [1], which means they&#x27;re accountable to political establishment who in turn have good political cover from being responsible for judicial actions.<p>Judicial oversight and judicial elections are needed.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ballotpedia.org&#x2F;Judicial_selection_in_Virginia" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ballotpedia.org&#x2F;Judicial_selection_in_Virginia</a>

T-Mobile is charging police $900&#x2F;customer&#x2F;month to track us? I want a rebate on my cellphone plan.

Trying to steer this thread back on topic. This article is incorrect. Cellular services aren&#x27;t polling GPS data from the device, they&#x27;re using imei and subscriber identification triangulation from the towers which the FBI and law enforcement overlay on google maps.<p>It works with big providers albeit I feel like this parlour trick becomes tougher if your target is using a resell carrier like mint or cricket.

Does anybody have info on how this works on a technical level? I.e., is it an actual report of the phone’s GPS position, or is it tower-side triangulation? If the former, do all devices support it?

Simple improvement: ban carriers from charging for this surveillance. Could even introduce it as a pro-cop anti-corporate measure, which should take care of the political fringes. That removes the incentive to make it easy.<p>Next, some manner of heightened threshold for more than N consecutive tracking requests or M requests in a twelve-month period. Maybe probable cause? This will be harder, politically, particularly in a law &amp; order cycle. (Maybe it could be accomplished through rulemaking at the FCC.)

Not surprising, since the entire telecommunications industry continues to work hand in hand with all the alphabet agencies to gobble up as much data on everyone that they can. Laws and rights to the government are but mere suggestions.

This guy’s friend died of an overdose and that was enough justification to track him?<p>That seems like way too low of a bar.

&gt; <i>we will use all lawful tools at our disposal</i><p>Interpreted precisely, this sentence doesn&#x27;t rule out the possibility that they use unlawful tools too.

Ok, ok, I get it. Next time I&#x27;ll go commit a crime, I&#x27;ll leave a cellphone at home. Or will give it to my accomplice to taxi it around at a significant distance from a location where I&#x27;ll engage in some heinous activity.

Chesterfield County, Va. can be generally understood as one of the most, if not the most, pro-cop (densely populated) counties in the whole country. You don’t want to be arrested there<p>Edit: not sure the reason for the downvotes, this fact is useful context and first-hand

I&#x27;m assuming the police is primarily using GPS to prove guilt, but are there any recorded cases of someone using GPS to &quot;prove&quot; their innocence, as an alibi?

Why are drug dealers still using an easily trackable phone number for communication? Why not a 3rd party messaging and voice app like Matrix&#x2F;Element? Am I incorrect in assuming that local police would not be able to easily track it?

<i>&quot;We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time.&quot;</i><p>Oooh, wait until they hear about CCPA... (but anyway, I&#x27;m sure the &#x27;secret GPS pings&#x27; are just plain-old stealth SMS, and we&#x27;re all better off not reading TFA in any case)

You probably want this phone which will merely alert you of such cellular activities not commonly detected by most commercial cellphones.<p>It is only an alerting mechanism, nothing avoidance there (as far as I can read of their marketing papers go).<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.armadillophone.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.armadillophone.com&#x2F;</a>

I agree that laws and procedures should be tighter, but I don&#x27;t expect any change. I don&#x27;t even know the number attached to my SIM card. I bought it anonymously for $16 a month. I rarely turn off airplane mode. I pay $1 a month per number at VoIP.ms. Privacy and security is cheaper for me.

Could the wireless carriers track phones even if they were carrier unlocked or factory unlocked?

People brought phones to Jan 6th protest, thats how many of the 800 people have been found and imprisoned. Should be a lesson to future political protestors.

A lot of shady stuff happens in Virginia law enforcement. It&#x27;s a huge racket and sadly the taxpayers fund their shenanigans.

&gt;routinely<p>This is frightening.

SCOTUS ruled in 2020 government agents can be sued for violating constitutional rights: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.supremecourt.gov&#x2F;opinions&#x2F;20pdf&#x2F;19-71_qol1.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.supremecourt.gov&#x2F;opinions&#x2F;20pdf&#x2F;19-71_qol1.pdf</a>

Sounds like they&#x27;re doing it with court-issued warrants with probable cause, so it&#x27;s not as horrifying as the title makes it sound. It&#x27;s &quot;secret&quot; to the suspect but it&#x27;s not like the police department has taken it onto themselves to start a new cellphone tracking program.