<story><title>Google Gives Feds 1,500 Phone Locations in Unprecedented ‘Geofence’ Search</title><url>https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2019/12/11/google-gives-feds-1500-leads-to-arsonist-smartphones-in-unprecedented-geofence-search/#7e36570827dc</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tomcooks</author><text>Unlike company, law is equal to everyone.&lt;p&gt;I respect the law, and the lawmakers should work for me. The ROI calculations are to be budgeted and accounted for, otherwise why am I being taxed?</text></item><item><author>blacksmith_tb</author><text>Isn&amp;#x27;t that just a cost&amp;#x2F;benefit calculation? How many projects have you worked on where someone suggested spending X hours on something only to have it shot down for minimal ROI? Obviously it matters more to you personally, and you&amp;#x27;d like to have a sense that &amp;quot;justice is done&amp;quot; but really it&amp;#x27;s just an insurance claim. Of course it&amp;#x27;s also frustrating if the thief has only gotten some random junk out of your car - if it wouldn&amp;#x27;t lead to endless extortion I personally would be happy to hand him or her $10 to not break my window, even if there&amp;#x27;s no deductible, just to spare me dealing with it.</text></item><item><author>appleshore</author><text>Conversely, if someone smashes into my parked car and flees, most major cities won’t investigate. Whereas they could use stop light cameras and a few hours of work to potentially identify the suspect.&lt;p&gt;Likewise, if live in SF and someone breaks in your car, the police won’t investigate it unless you’re A-Rod.</text></item><item><author>asperous</author><text>Emotionally, when I hear things like this I think unconsciously I secretly want companies not to give data over ever. And really the companies shouldn&amp;#x27;t collect it (hackers also exist)..&lt;p&gt;However rationally I think there is a balance. Investigators need to do their jobs and chase every lead they can to catch criminals. I wonder if google could have complied with a query that simply grabbed the users in the areas during the 3 time periods combined.&lt;p&gt;Maybe we just need laws that limit how much data can be returned per warrant, to encourage more limited warrants.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bilbo0s</author><text>&amp;gt;&lt;i&gt;law is equal to everyone&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I understand the goal of this sentiment, but this is not how most societies work. Equality under the law is the proper ideal, but it&amp;#x27;s not at all how things work. There are a lot of reasons for that, from bias to lack of resources. But whatever the particular reason may be, most people only notice and complain about inequality when they are its losing side.&lt;p&gt;Make no mistake about it though, from the police at the bottom of the stack, all the way up to how the judges rule on cases at the top of the stack, the legal system has never been equitable.</text></comment>
<story><title>Google Gives Feds 1,500 Phone Locations in Unprecedented ‘Geofence’ Search</title><url>https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2019/12/11/google-gives-feds-1500-leads-to-arsonist-smartphones-in-unprecedented-geofence-search/#7e36570827dc</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tomcooks</author><text>Unlike company, law is equal to everyone.&lt;p&gt;I respect the law, and the lawmakers should work for me. The ROI calculations are to be budgeted and accounted for, otherwise why am I being taxed?</text></item><item><author>blacksmith_tb</author><text>Isn&amp;#x27;t that just a cost&amp;#x2F;benefit calculation? How many projects have you worked on where someone suggested spending X hours on something only to have it shot down for minimal ROI? Obviously it matters more to you personally, and you&amp;#x27;d like to have a sense that &amp;quot;justice is done&amp;quot; but really it&amp;#x27;s just an insurance claim. Of course it&amp;#x27;s also frustrating if the thief has only gotten some random junk out of your car - if it wouldn&amp;#x27;t lead to endless extortion I personally would be happy to hand him or her $10 to not break my window, even if there&amp;#x27;s no deductible, just to spare me dealing with it.</text></item><item><author>appleshore</author><text>Conversely, if someone smashes into my parked car and flees, most major cities won’t investigate. Whereas they could use stop light cameras and a few hours of work to potentially identify the suspect.&lt;p&gt;Likewise, if live in SF and someone breaks in your car, the police won’t investigate it unless you’re A-Rod.</text></item><item><author>asperous</author><text>Emotionally, when I hear things like this I think unconsciously I secretly want companies not to give data over ever. And really the companies shouldn&amp;#x27;t collect it (hackers also exist)..&lt;p&gt;However rationally I think there is a balance. Investigators need to do their jobs and chase every lead they can to catch criminals. I wonder if google could have complied with a query that simply grabbed the users in the areas during the 3 time periods combined.&lt;p&gt;Maybe we just need laws that limit how much data can be returned per warrant, to encourage more limited warrants.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>derefr</author><text>Laws and budgets are set on different time-scales; there is never 100% alignment between the cost of enforcing the law and the availability of the budget required.&lt;p&gt;In fact, most of the time, there&amp;#x27;s very little alignment, because there&amp;#x27;s no incentive to have those things be aligned. Sometimes even disincentive: there are laws on the books nobody wants enforced, and a culture in policing of enforcing the letter of the law, not the spirit—but one can always choose to not enforce a law one doesn&amp;#x27;t agree with by just making an informal agreement that certain crimes (of basically equal severity) take enforcement priority, such that those crimes nobody sees as crimes just get &amp;quot;de-prioritized&amp;quot; to the point that they&amp;#x27;re never enforced at all.</text></comment>