Bank robber says it’s illegal for police to catch him using Google location data.

On May 20, a gunman walked into a bank in Midlothian, Virginia, forced a worker to open a safe and fled with $195,000.

Security footage showed the man holding a cellphone to his ear just before the robbery, a detail that led police to attempt a surveillance technique that is growing in popularity among American law enforcement agencies.



When authorities had not identified the suspect a few weeks after the robbery, an officer got a warrant for Google’s location data from all the cellphones that had been in the area of the Call Federal Credit Union bank during the heist.

Starting from a list of 19 accounts, investigators narrowed their search to a 24-year-old Richmond man named Okello Chatrie, whom they eventually charged with armed robbery.

The demand for Google data, known as a geofence warrant, is a way for law enforcement authorities to take advantage of the company’s collection of massive amounts of information on its customers.



The orders allow police to track just about anyone using an Android device or a company app, such as Google maps or Gmail, to a particular place over a particular time period.

As more police use such warrants, the method is raising concerns among privacy advocates, who say the government is gathering information from people in violation of the Fourth Amendment, which guards against unreasonable searches.

That is what Chatrie’s lawyers are now arguing, in what may be the first case in which a defendant is fighting the use of a geofence warrant to charge him with a crime.

“It is the digital equivalent of searching every home in the neighborhood of a reported burglary, or searching the bags of every person walking along Broadway because of a theft in Times Square,” Chatrie’s lawyers said in an October court filing. “Without the name or number of a single suspect, and without ever demonstrating any likelihood that Google even has data connected to a crime, law enforcement invades the privacy of tens or hundreds or thousands of individuals, just because they were in the area.”

Prosecutors say that the search was legal because Chatrie had opted into Google’s location services, allowing his Android phone and the company’s apps to track his movements. And they say police avoided collecting personal information from people unconnected to the robbery.

“The geofence warrant allowed them to solve the crime and protect the public by examining a remarkably limited and focused set of records from Google,” prosecutors wrote in a response, filed Tuesday.

Chatrie pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial.

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Undecided

How can you steal that huge sum of money? And the police caught you, instead of defending yourself that you didnt do it.. your problem is how they caught you??

First of all, you need to be incarcerated.. before we talk about the modalities of the operation.

Using google to track person, this Oyinbo ppl don go far aswear

harkandey:
Using google to track person, this Oyinbo ppl don go far aswear

Google that can turn on your location remotely even if it is turned off by you to get your location

In this tech world..nothing like privacy anymore

I wondered what the thief and the lawyer are saying..did he steal the money..is he right thief,is he the one the CCTV footage..then case closed..how we try get should not be his problem..Dem get am..as you're not concerned as you got your money..

“It is the digital equivalent of searching every home in the neighborhood of a reported burglary, or searching the bags of every person walking along Broadway because of a theft in Times Square,” Chatrie’s lawyers said in an October court filing.

Chai, Naija police see una life, if na Naija this thing happen, 6 months after the robbery the police go still dey position danfo to raid people day and night.

seankafor:
In this tech world..nothing like privacy anymore

There was a Yahoo News article published today, in which travelers were warned NEVER to utilize any "free" USB phone charger jack that is made available in hotels or other public locations, because those USB "charging connections" can be used by fraudsters to access smart phones containing banking details, in order to swiftly empty bank accounts, steal identities, and even LOCK such compromised smartphones with a new password unknown to the legitimate phone owner. Moral of that story : Avoid ALL phone banking, and go old-school by visiting the bank premises.

A day or so earlier, Yahoo News published another article warning that many rental apartments and hotels illegally FILM and record unsuspecting tenants, in both bedrooms and toilet areas. Those spy cameras can be very tiny and hard to detect without specialized equipment that is available online.