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After Google made “geofence” data warrants on its users technically infeasible, feds are still making similar demands on telecoms giants, even if the location data is, by law enforcement’s own admission, often inaccurate.
AT&T is one of a handful of American cellphone providers complying with controversial geofence warrants. The Department of Justice has been forcing telecoms providers like AT&T and T-Mobile to provide phone information on all customers who were in the vicinity of a crime, aThat’s despite federal agents’ admissions that cell providers’ location data is often inaccurate, leading privacy advocates to claim that the warrants are “certain” to sweep up innocent people in major crime investigations. Previously, law enforcement had sent thousands of similar “geofence” orders to Google, asking it to share account information for any phones within a certain geographic area at a certain time. These warrants have been used to identify suspects in various crimes, from the January 6 Capitol Hill riots to wallet theft. But in December,“This is overly broad and has the potential to implicate a significant number of people.” Local and federal police have also been using a lesser-known geofence warrant they call a “timing advance true call area search,” according to four warrant applications reviewed by. In those investigations, the government asked telecoms companies to search through records of phones connecting to cell towers near various crime scenes — two murders, a case of racist harassment and a robbery. The companies were then asked to determine which phones were close to the illegal activity by estimating the distance and direction of the signal from a device to a cell tower.the government asked cell providers to hand over lists of all phones connected to the nearest tower to a crime scene, typically so investigators could determine if a suspect’s phone number was on the list. These “true call” warrants, which have not been previously reported, combine tower dumps with geofence orders. However, some law enforcement officers are aware that location data from the telecoms companies is often inaccurate — especially when compared to Google’s location data. In a recently unsealed warrant from Wisconsin, a Wauwatosa Police Department officer noted that location data from AT&T, T-Mobile and UScellular could be off by anywhere between “a few square blocks to several square miles.” Google location data, by comparison, is rarely off by more than a few feet. As a result, the court granted the cops permission to search a wider area for devices than they would’ve needed with a more precise method. “The estimated latitude and longitudes of a device on the AT&T network can be sourced from multiple inputs that may vary largely in their accuracy. Due to these estimations, a larger search area is being requested,” the officer wrote., the telecoms companies provided data. It’s unclear whether or not the information helped identify suspects. The Department of Justice declined to comment. AT&T spokesperson Dan Feldstein said, “For location information, we require the highest level of legal demand – a probable-cause warrant signed by a judge – except in emergency situations.” UScellular spokesperson Katie Frey said the company “provides timely and accurate responses to all lawful requests from law enforcement and processes all court orders, search warrants, subpoenas and exigent requests confidentially and in compliance with applicable laws and company policies.” T-Mobile didn’t respond to a request for comment. Jennifer Lynch, general counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, noted that in the Wisconsin case, where police were investigating two crimes they believed to be linked, the police could have limited their request to only those devices present at both crimes. Instead, the warrants sought data on all phones at both locations. “This is overly broad and has the potential to implicate a significant number of people,” Lynch told. “It also gives law enforcement unbridled discretion to determine who to target for further investigation – something courts were very concerned about with respect to geofence warrants.” Brett Max Kaufman, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, said it’s likely law enforcement will increasingly use such warrants now that Google geofences are no longer possible. “If there were problems with the Google approach, I think it's going to be very unsurprising to see a lot of mistakes and a lot of innocent people rounded up when you move to a data store like cell site location information,” he added.
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