The Most Revolutionary Crime Fighting Tool Since The Dawn of Man.
*As always I write from my perspective based on research and opinions. If this feels a little conflicted it is. I both appreciate and loathe the tool’s use in regards to the example I outline. Not everything is black and white. Well except the riots on Jan 6th, they were over 95% white. Enjoy.*
The most important crime-fighting tool in the history of law enforcement has been implemented in the last 10 years. Yet the police and media never say a word about it out loud.
Like many things that become life-changing, the tool was originally created for another use. Like Lysol (originally a vaginal douche), Viagra (originally developed to treat hypertension) and Coke Cola (marketed as a replacement for Morphine for addicts) the R&D that went into this game-changer never thought for a second how Johnny Law would adapt it.
For the time, fingerprints were a huge deal. Fingerprint’s viability in court, even though they were largely inaccurate, was game-changing. Then DNA evolved into a staple of determining guilt. 99% certainty is pretty strong when either determining guilt or innocence. However, if you don’t get a swob of some bad guys saliva when he drools yelling for the 7/11 counter person to “give him the cash” or some hair from the door he bumped his head on when his 6"9' frame banged against the doorway as he ran out, it’s worthless.
Even if you did get a rock-solid sample, what if he’s not in the FBI database, has no priors, wore a mask (the mask thing feels like it will be a pain for law enforcement at some point doesn’t it?) how in the hell can you ever get a sniff at catching the guy?
His phone.
So you worry Facebook isn’t securely keeping your info or Google is increasing ad sales because they know you love Bonzai trees, and those are problems. However, the applied integration of cellular service and law enforcement makes those luxury problems by comparison. The realities of your smartphone and as importantly the data being so accessible to Police and FEDS has altered our world forever.
An example..
On January 7th, 2021 a story broke about how a “friend from high school” turned in the Qanon Shamon. The next day, the a-hole who posted a pic with his feet up on Pelosi’s desk holding her mail was caught. The day after that a newly elected lawmaker from West Virginia was perp-walked out of his house while his grandmother yelled, “he’s a good man”.
Three days, three very high profile, visible members of the ‘Crazy Conference’ at the capitol were arrested. Do you really think those three were random? That through sheer luck those three were first to board the ‘justice train’?
Yes, they are idiots and jail should be their destiny. The guy who bragged about storming the capitol on a dating site and got turned in is legendarily dense, but the FBI had every person in that building identified Jan 6th. They knew every player, had profiles, and (because these people are idiots) their social media evidence. They also had a strategy to keep us safe from ‘The Great White Wave’ going forward. They didn’t need the tips other than window dressing and to build a case here and there. But it was all possible because of one simple tactic.
The FBI had the names, addresses, and videos of every person there. As well as their current locations and every other detail they could ever imagine. And they had it in real-time. The FBI was going to send a message. And the message was, “this isn’t going to happen again”.
*The following is my (personal) SPECULATION. From this point I have NO inside information from anyone at any law enforcement agency either local or Federal to substantiate these assertions*
While everyone was watching it happen, the FBI was in contact with Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile/Sprint. The call went something like this.
FBI — Would you mind giving us a list of every telephone, owner and all their info within a 1 mile radius of 38.8899° N, 77.0091° W, right now?
PHONE CO.’s Here ya go.
It was that easy. If you blinked you missed it. Just like the feds missed your rights as they gathered all of your personal data.
After the gathering was done I imagine they broke into subgroups based on the part of the country the phone was billed to, last known residence, and proceeded to go 1 by 1 until they felt they had a strong list of the gang members in question.
LEAD INVESTIGATOR READS THE NAMES
“John Smith”
Another agent — DC Police -
Diff Agent — On duty until 6pm — probably clear
Lead Agent — “Bob Smyth”
Agent — Welder from Anaheim California.
Agent in charge — Someone get his travel itinerary, alert SoCal Bureau and check his visibility on social media additional evidence. If his social is wiped, get on the phone with Facebook and Google to recreate it.
And that’s how January 6th went down at the Bureau. Over and over until they identified everyone with a phone on the list. AT which point I assume a more senior group strategized how to handle for maximum effect.
Think about it. What are the options?
#1 — They arrest everyone the next day in a show of massive force.
Result: Demonstrations by white people, Trumpers claiming persecution, Fox news goes 24/7 ‘White Lives Matters’ and Qanon blames the Deep State for the Stalin-like Orwellian crackdown.
#2 — You drag it out.
You dominate the news cycle. Make every Facebook warrior, racists, conspiracy theorists, and their families stay up at night wondering if cousin Billy (who says he got too drunk at the rally and passed out on the subway to the event, but who knows) is going to get a visit from the FED’s at 4:45 am.
The one thing you could almost be certain of was that particular group was NOT going to flee the USA to escape prosecution even if they knew the clock was ticking. Hell, half that group thought they would get a medal like Rush Limbaugh did from Trump for being a “patriot” or some such insanity.
Now, I know what you are saying, “You have to get warrants to get that data from the phone companies, they don’t just give it up when asked”.
Really?
From PRO-PUBLICA
June 27, 2014
Many cell phone carriers provide authorities with a phone’s location and may charge a fee for doing so. Cell towers track where your phone isat any moment; so can the GPS features in some smartphones. In response to an inquiry by Sen. Edward J. Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, Sprint reported that it provided location data to U.S. law enforcement67,000 times in 2012. AT&T reported receiving 77,800 requests for location data in 2012. (AT&T also said that it charges $100 to start tracking a phone and $25 a day to keep tracking it.) Other carriers, including T-Mobile, U.S. Cellularand Verizon, didn’t specify the number of location data requests they had received or the number of times they’ve provided it. Internet service providers can also provide location data that tracks users via their computer’s IP address — a unique number assigned to each computer.
Sprint recently had a 50 person department dedicated to giving your information up to law enforcement. That means they had to budget, hire and allocate space somewhere for the sole purpose of brown-nosing law enforcement.
You do have some rights, they can’t wiretap your phone without a warrant. So get a real phone with a wire they can’t tap. Your cell phone on the other hand, they get pretty much whatever they want, whenever they want. Stuff you may not know about you, they know.
If you think anti-trust cases by the DOJ or dragging Sundar into Washington to repeatedly to be asked “What is a tweet”, is going to get Google to show some spin and protect your privacy as well as your constitutional rights, you’d be laughably wrong.
Even the bastion of personal privacy (god they have good marketing) Apple, famously after issuing a statement, telling the FEDS they would NOT open the locked Iphone of a suspected terrorist, all while quietly telling the FBI, “don’t worry about opening the phone, we’ll just send you the data as soon as it backs up to Icloud”. Is no better. Google may be working on a Chinese version of their globally dominant search engine that the People’s Party can both edit and monitor, but Apple has had a backdoor to every phone sold in China for years that the government has full access to.
You think Tim Cook just told Ping how Apple does business when they were told to adjust the products and services to suit the Chinese government? In the 4th quarter of 2019 Apple made over $11billion in China. I’m sure the only thing Tim “Privacy is a basic human right” Cook said to his contact in China when told he would be doing this was, “would it be helpful if we created an app to make your accessing the data easier?”
Let’s just say the governments around the world have been “fine-tuning” this deal for at least 15 years.
Back to our buddy who robbed the 7/11. …
Even though 1 call to Verizon would bring him to justice in a matter of seconds, he gets away. “How” do you ask? The local beat cop has a brother who died in Iraq, and he is a non-card-carrying OATH KEEPER who hates Muslims. So he sorta lets the ball drop.
The problem is the owners of the 7/11 are Hindi.
Justice is a fickle bitch.
