Hacker News Reader

Comment by ikeboy | Hacker News Reader

Iirc comey said in one interview that they wanted to know which path they went on during missing minutes on the day of the shooting when the phone was with them, and hoped the phone had location data.

Edit: see http://nytimes.com/2016/03/02/technology/apple-and-fbi-face-...

View on HN

That data is easily available via tower pings without needing to unlock the phone. Who sets up their phone to record constant GPS coordinates?

Do towers record past telemetry data? Assuming they do, the granularity of knowing that a particular tower handled a phone ping is comparatively useless. A guessed location (stored on the iPhone) based off of cell tower triangulation and the occasional GPS calculation is far more valuable.

I do agree that we should consider the FBI's statement with skepticism.

> Do towers record past telemetry data?

Yes. Did everyone forget about COTRAVELER?

http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/national/how-the-nsa-i...

> the granularity of knowing that a particular tower handled a phone ping is comparatively useless.

No, it's not. A simple correlation with other phones tells you who is traveling together (co-travelers). This only requires knowing which phones are near each tower, at a fairly low temporal granularity.

I'm sure there are additional ways to analyze that data, too. The travel and relationship map that COTRAVELER discovers is merely the project we know about.

People that use Google Latitude. Read: not terrorists.

apple, iphone saves timestamped gps coordinates every time it discovers available wifi network

Which iOS? Link available?

are you living under a rock for the last 10 years?

here, first google result for the "ios location data": http://bgr.com/2015/04/01/iphone-location-tracking-map/

Where does this show that "the iPhone tracks my location every time it discovers a wifi network"? Sure I can have given permission for tracking to an app but if I haven't where does the iPhone/iOS store my location data? ps: downvotes?

I was expecting you to link a 10 yr old article to prove your point.

Well put

Tower pings aren't terribly accurate.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com