I've brought this up before in other threads, but it's worth creating another thread. This post isn't a discussion about January 6th, specifically, more a commentary on how the government is making use of cell phone tracking and service provider GPS data.
Here is an interesting article from Wired.com, It's not behind a paywall.
Here is my summary of the pertinent info:
Google identified 5,653 devices within the warrant requested geofencing data, from users who had their phones on, and were within warrant request location and time period.
Google further identified 70 more users that fell within the warrant scope, These users had their phones in Airplane Mode, during the event, but still left GPS tracking service ON. These user's location data was stored within their phone as routinely part of the Google location service, and then later synced to the Google services, when their phones were taken out of Airplane Mode. Presumably after they had left the Capitol area.
The FBI had also asked google to track devices which were at the capitol from 12 pm to 12:15 pm on January 6, and from 9 pm to 9:15 pm, under the assumption that these devices would have belonged to congressional members, capitol staffers or security force members. Using this data, over 200 devices were excluded from the list of suspects. This brought the list down to, 5518 potential suspects of the investigation.
The FBI then requested the subscriber information, including phone numbers, Google accounts, and email addresses, for devices that appeared to have been entirely within the geofence, as well as those which had about a 70 percent probability within the geofence.
The FBI also focused on anyone within the 5518 who deleted their location data after the event. Of which they apparently discovered 37 individuals who attempted to do so. I'm assuming they deleted the data from their phone, but were unable to delete the data which had already been collected by the Google location services, and now stored on their servers.
This query yielded 1535 devices which fell within those last two subgroups, and this group became the main focus of their investigations.
Here is an interesting article from Wired.com, It's not behind a paywall.
Here is my summary of the pertinent info:
Google identified 5,653 devices within the warrant requested geofencing data, from users who had their phones on, and were within warrant request location and time period.
Google further identified 70 more users that fell within the warrant scope, These users had their phones in Airplane Mode, during the event, but still left GPS tracking service ON. These user's location data was stored within their phone as routinely part of the Google location service, and then later synced to the Google services, when their phones were taken out of Airplane Mode. Presumably after they had left the Capitol area.
The FBI had also asked google to track devices which were at the capitol from 12 pm to 12:15 pm on January 6, and from 9 pm to 9:15 pm, under the assumption that these devices would have belonged to congressional members, capitol staffers or security force members. Using this data, over 200 devices were excluded from the list of suspects. This brought the list down to, 5518 potential suspects of the investigation.
The FBI then requested the subscriber information, including phone numbers, Google accounts, and email addresses, for devices that appeared to have been entirely within the geofence, as well as those which had about a 70 percent probability within the geofence.
The FBI also focused on anyone within the 5518 who deleted their location data after the event. Of which they apparently discovered 37 individuals who attempted to do so. I'm assuming they deleted the data from their phone, but were unable to delete the data which had already been collected by the Google location services, and now stored on their servers.
This query yielded 1535 devices which fell within those last two subgroups, and this group became the main focus of their investigations.