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When we think of mobile phone metadata & geolocation, we usually think of the wireless carriers themselves (pen registers, call detail records, tower dumps, etc). But Google has much of the same data, and law enforcement has taken note.
Some terrific reporting by @jenvalentino .
Some terrific reporting by @jenvalentino .
@jenvalentino If an investigator wants "all devices near a particular location at a particular time", she must obtain tower dumps from every carrier serving the location. But a "geofence" request to Google is one-stop-shopping for almost everyone with an Android handset.
@jenvalentino The data Google holds is also much richer and more revealing than telco records, since it's linked to account information and behavior at the application layer.
This data generally has much less legal protection than wiretaps of voice content (for which warrants much meet a very high standard). But Internet metadata is increasingly indistinguishable from content. A plug for our 2016 paper, "It's Too Complicated". jolt.law.harvard.edu/assets/article…
