Key Words: Useful Things
October 7, 2021
In the middle of nowhere in the American southwest, lunch time conversation turned to surveillance. I mentioned a couple of characteristics of modern smartphones, butjec people put down their sandwiches. I changed the subject. Later, when a wispy LTE signal permitted, I read “Google Is Giving Data to Police Based on Search Keywords, Court Docs Show.” This is an example of information which I don’t think should be made public.
The write up states:
Court documents showed that Google provided the IP addresses of people who searched for the arson victim’s address, which investigators tied to a phone number belonging to Williams. Police then used the phone number records to pinpoint the location of Williams’ device near the arson, according to court documents.
I want to point out that any string could contain actionable information; to wit:
- The name or abbreviation of a chemical substance
- An address of an entity
- A slang term for a controlled substance
- A specific geographic area or a latitude and longitude designation on a Google map.
With data federation and cross correlation, some specialized software systems can knit together disparate items of information in a useful manner.
The data and the analytic tools are essential for some government activities. Careless release of such sensitive information has unanticipated downstream consequences. Old fashioned secrecy has some upsides in my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, October 7, 2021
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