Security News > 2020 > January > To catch a thief, go to Google with a geofence warrant – and it will give you all the details

To find out who they are, local authorities plan to ask Google.

Citing past experience, Gibson speculates that the robbery suspects may have used their mobile phones while doing reconnaissance for their rendezvous point and that the getaway driver may have done so while killing time in the CRV. So the Milwaukee County District Attorney's Office has requested that Google provide the location data history, sourced from GPS, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi signals, from every device in a small geofenced area - the 25 meters around the spot occupied by Honda CRV. The authorities want Google to provide an anonymized list of every device reporting its location back to the Chocolate Factory from 0645 to 1115 on the morning of the failed robbery.

Investigators will then review the list to determine the devices they want Google to identify through personal information.

This appears to be an example of the sort of geofence warrant described by the New York Times last year in which authorities ask for information about every network-connected device within a given set of map coordinates rather than for details about a specific suspect's devices.

Google reportedly has a database called Sensorvault in which it stores location data for millions of devices going back almost a decade.

News URL

https://go.theregister.co.uk/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2020/01/18/google_geofence_warrant/