I've wondered if they can also find you by what wifi or Bluetooth devices are around. Odds are one or more humans nearby has their GPS on. Your device can snitch on what's around or those other devices snitch on you.
And at the end of the day if the location is a hundred meters off... it might still not matter because it's how you frame it with other evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.
Even the article mentions this.
> I have served on a jury where the prosecution obtained location data from cell towers. Since cell towers are sparse (especially before 5G), the accuracy is in the range of tens to hundreds of metres.
I've also personally witnessed murder cases locally where GPS location put a suspect to "100 meters away". The rest of the evidence still pushed the case forward to a guilty verdict, and the phone evidence was still pretty damning.
> And at the end of the day if the location is a hundred meters off... it might still not matter because it's how you frame it with other evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.
For example, if you drop a pin a hundred metres off from the incident, then when you're maybe several hundred metres off the column of smoke is probably a better indicator of locus than the wee dot on your screen.
Cell tower triangulation does not provide the same precision as GPS.
What makes you think cell tower triangulation is the only data point being exploited to minimize position error?
I've wondered if they can also find you by what wifi or Bluetooth devices are around. Odds are one or more humans nearby has their GPS on. Your device can snitch on what's around or those other devices snitch on you.
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What magical technology do you think would beat GPS?
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And at the end of the day if the location is a hundred meters off... it might still not matter because it's how you frame it with other evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.
Even the article mentions this.
> I have served on a jury where the prosecution obtained location data from cell towers. Since cell towers are sparse (especially before 5G), the accuracy is in the range of tens to hundreds of metres.
I've also personally witnessed murder cases locally where GPS location put a suspect to "100 meters away". The rest of the evidence still pushed the case forward to a guilty verdict, and the phone evidence was still pretty damning.
I did not argue for or against collection of GPS data.
> And at the end of the day if the location is a hundred meters off... it might still not matter because it's how you frame it with other evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.
For example, if you drop a pin a hundred metres off from the incident, then when you're maybe several hundred metres off the column of smoke is probably a better indicator of locus than the wee dot on your screen.