Podchaser Logo
Home
A Look at How the FBI Has Used Geofence Warrants to Pinpoint Jan. 6 Suspects

A Look at How the FBI Has Used Geofence Warrants to Pinpoint Jan. 6 Suspects

Released Monday, 5th December 2022
Good episode? Give it some love!
A Look at How the FBI Has Used Geofence Warrants to Pinpoint Jan. 6 Suspects

A Look at How the FBI Has Used Geofence Warrants to Pinpoint Jan. 6 Suspects

A Look at How the FBI Has Used Geofence Warrants to Pinpoint Jan. 6 Suspects

A Look at How the FBI Has Used Geofence Warrants to Pinpoint Jan. 6 Suspects

Monday, 5th December 2022
Good episode? Give it some love!
Rate Episode

Episode Transcript

Transcripts are displayed as originally observed. Some content, including advertisements may have changed.

Use Ctrl + F to search

0:00

It's Monday, December five. I'm

0:02

Oscar Ramiers in Los Angeles and this

0:04

is the Daily Dive. It's

0:10

the FBI's biggest investigation ever,

0:12

looking into who's in the Washington on January

0:15

six and who stormed the capital. It

0:17

has also included the biggest ever requests of

0:19

phone data from geo fence warrants.

0:22

Google has provided data from over five thousand

0:24

devices as the FBI has tried to narrow

0:26

their search to pinpoint suspects. Google

0:29

also has a three step process for these types of

0:31

warrants to help protect as much privacy as

0:33

possible and only provide info on

0:35

those most likely to have committed crime. We

0:38

are only learning more about this now as lawyers

0:40

for one suspect are looking to throw out

0:42

the geo fence evidence in court. Mark

0:44

Harris, contributor to Wired, joins

0:47

us for What to Know Next. If

0:49

you weather the pandemic storm and stuck with your employer

0:51

over the last couple of years, then you very

0:53

well could be under paid. The

0:55

tight labor market has led to a lot of movement

0:58

and forced employers to try and learn new candidates

1:00

with bigger paychecks and more work benefits.

1:03

That has led to a divide with current employees, as

1:05

salaries for new hires are on average seven

1:08

percent higher than existing workers. Aki

1:11

Eto, senior correspondent at Business

1:13

Insider, joins us for more. It's

1:16

news without the noise. Let's die in The

1:20

Capital Police, the d

1:22

C Metropolitan Police, other

1:25

law enforcement agencies were attacked and assaulted

1:28

before our very eyes, speared,

1:30

sprayed, stomped on, brutalized

1:34

lives were lost. Joining us now is Mark Harris,

1:37

contributor to Wired. Thanks

1:39

for joining us, Mark, I'm

1:41

glad to be here. Well, we're getting some

1:44

new news in what's going on with all

1:46

the January six insurrection stuff. Uh,

1:49

the latest news we're hearing is that the leader of

1:51

the oath Keeper, Stuart Rhodes, was found guilty

1:53

of seditious conspiracy for his part on

1:56

January six. Um. So, a

1:59

lot of movements going on. There are a lot of other

2:01

people awaiting trials and whatnot.

2:03

But Mark, you took a look into the

2:06

FBI's geo fence

2:08

dragnet on January six. They

2:10

asked Google for information for

2:13

for all the phones all the people that

2:15

were there, uh in and

2:17

around the Capital on January six, just

2:19

so they can help narrow down who might

2:21

have been there. This is the biggest ever investigation

2:24

for the FBI, and it's the biggest

2:26

ever haul of phones

2:29

from these controversial gel fence

2:31

warrants as they're called. So Mark, tell

2:33

us a little bit about it, because it gets super interesting.

2:37

Yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, do your fence warrants

2:39

have been around for a while and there it's

2:41

where law enforcement can ask

2:44

a technology company just given

2:46

the identifying info for

2:49

phones that it was in a certain area. And you can

2:51

imagine. We've had ones in the bank robbery. You

2:53

know, someone walks into a bank robbery, you get all

2:55

the phones that were in the bank at the time.

2:57

You can easily exclude the tellers and the customers,

3:00

and then anyone's left over, you know, could

3:02

be could be the criminal. So

3:04

we've had them for a few years, but this is

3:06

by far the biggest um G

3:09

offense warrant that's ever the most

3:11

productive. It's given the most um

3:13

it's given the most results, and that's obviously because there are

3:15

lots of people at the Capitol that day. So

3:17

what the d o J and the Department of Justice in

3:19

the SBNI asked for was a

3:22

four They set up a defense of a four acre

3:24

area that was the Capitol building itself

3:27

and the immediate surroundings that were

3:29

beyond the barriers where people shouldn't

3:31

have been. And so the idea was that anyone

3:33

who was in this area is kind of at

3:35

the very least is committing some sort

3:37

of trespassing because they were in an area they shouldn't

3:40

be. And so, you know, they served

3:42

this warrant on Google. I don't know what they expected, but what

3:44

they got back was five

3:46

thousand, seven hundred and twenty three devices

3:49

in that area at the time of the riot.

3:52

Right, so they specified at the time of the riot. They didn't get

3:54

some you know, tourists you know, at

3:56

other times a day or whatever. And

3:58

so that's a huge number of people. Um.

4:00

And what's really interesting is just the scale

4:02

of it UM and that kind of it's also

4:04

interesting to see the process by which

4:07

the FBI narrated down they haven't filed charges

4:09

against three

4:11

people, what they have done, They don't charge

4:13

them about thousand people, And

4:15

so they go to this three step process

4:18

um to narrow down the initial production

4:20

of those enormous thousands of devices down

4:22

to a more manageable number. Yeah, and

4:24

they do this in all fence cases. Yeah,

4:27

exactly, real quick before we get into that, because

4:29

Google's response to this was, hey, look, you

4:31

know, if we were going to cooperate with the government

4:33

when they ask for stuff, but we do have a

4:35

rigorous process in place for geo

4:37

fence warrants. Oftentimes we push

4:40

back. We're trying to narrow the scope

4:42

of what they're asking for to provide

4:44

as much privacy for our our customers

4:46

as much as we can. So, yes,

4:49

now detail that three step process, because

4:51

what they did is they started off with this huge

4:53

pool of phones. Then they whittle it down, whittle

4:55

it down, whittle it down, and

4:57

this is this is the very interesting part. Yeah,

5:01

it's a really interesting part. Um. So Google

5:03

always insists on the three step process. While they have the

5:05

big old drag net where they just get everything in there.

5:08

Number two, they then try and exclude any

5:11

numbers that

5:13

that they know not to be people

5:15

of interest, and that would be in the bank robbery case, that would

5:18

be the tellers and the customers who were standing

5:20

around. They know they have their identities, it's not

5:22

one of them. And then the third one would

5:24

be particular device

5:26

I das that had an interesting track,

5:29

maybe the the the device,

5:31

um, you know, it was just in and out quickly, or

5:33

maybe it was there for a while. There was something about those

5:35

particular you know spots, you

5:38

know, dots on a map, the blue dots on a map

5:40

that intrigues them. So that would be the three step

5:42

process, and they would only get the email

5:45

and account recovery telephone

5:47

number for the for the third group, the smallest

5:49

group, And so we went through a similar process

5:51

here. They originally asked the five thousand,

5:54

seven twenty three, so they got those.

5:56

Then they took away any

5:58

phones that were also in the capitol

6:01

in the morning or in the evening when

6:04

the rioters weren't there, so that in the morning before the right

6:06

happened and in the evening after it was all cleared

6:08

out. So it took away those because they've presumed they would

6:10

be like capitol police or congressional

6:13

staffers. And I've only got them

6:15

down to five thousand eighteen,

6:17

so there are still a lot of devices

6:19

in there. And then what

6:22

the and then what the

6:24

FBI said, right in order to be really

6:26

safe that we're only getting people that were actually participating

6:29

in the right and not just milling around near the barriers,

6:31

we want to get only those people whose

6:34

little blue dot was entirely within the g

6:36

CENT And you know, when you're using your phone, you're looking at your maps

6:38

and you have that blue circle around you. Sometimes there's

6:40

a tiny dot when you're in

6:42

lots of great GPS reception

6:45

and lots of Wi Fi and cell phone tiles around.

6:47

That means the blue dot gets small because it knows where

6:49

you are. And sometimes that dot is that circle

6:51

is really big, perhaps when you're out of the countryside

6:54

and you don't and you haven't you know, you've only got

6:56

one GPS satellite um and so your

6:58

location isn't that accurate. Well, the FBI

7:00

said, let's let's only half the ones to the whole

7:02

circle is inside the GFN So we're pretty

7:04

sure, We're not we're not positive, We're pretty

7:07

sure it's about a likelihood that

7:09

that dot was actually inside the

7:11

gf ns at the time, and that got

7:13

the numbers right now, and that got them down to like um

7:16

under just on devices that

7:18

were in pretty much definitely

7:21

in the And one of the other interesting

7:23

things that they can tell and they have the information

7:25

about, is that they

7:27

noticed that a lot of these phones had their

7:29

airplane mode turned off. Presumably

7:32

somebody said, well, I'm going to turn it off that way they can't

7:34

track me. But what the location

7:36

history does on these phones and all that

7:39

it tracks you either way, And

7:41

that prompted FBI officials to

7:43

even put more scrutiny on some of

7:46

these people that we're trying to delete

7:48

their location history in the days after. Who

7:50

had their airplane airplane mode on

7:53

during the the insurrection, the capital

7:55

riots. So that was another interesting

7:57

factor that they looked at. You know, maybe people

7:59

try to hide their tracks. Yeah.

8:03

Right, there's two separate things. The one is people

8:05

who put there who well we know, we

8:07

don't know they had them in their phone in airplane mode. What

8:09

we do know is that Google didn't

8:11

have their location data live when

8:13

it was happening. They only had it later. So that's

8:16

probably that it had it they were in airplane

8:18

mode. It could have just been they didn't get self service for

8:20

some reason. That's less likely because obviously

8:22

it's pretty well served by cell phone towns,

8:24

but there are lots of people there may be overloaded anyway.

8:27

There are like seventy devices that they only got

8:29

the data on a few days later. Um,

8:32

presumably when people pop their phone back out of

8:34

airplane mode, so those were all in the mix.

8:36

And then yeah, you're right, the FBI also

8:38

said, we'll look as well as these fifty dred

8:40

that were definitely inside the building. Out of that

8:43

pool of five thousand, tell

8:45

us anyone who tried to delete their

8:47

location history, which is a bit different from just going into

8:49

airplane made. They're actively going in saying

8:52

WHOA to delete everything I did in the last week,

8:54

And the FBI asked for those people in particular,

8:57

and so that that gave them an extra thirty

8:59

seven people who had or thirty seven devices

9:01

that had been had their thirty seven

9:03

accounts that are tried to delete their data.

9:06

So yeah, the truth is the FBI

9:08

thought pretty carefully about who they were trying

9:10

to target um and put

9:12

some of these limits on it, and they ended up in

9:15

the end, they ended up getting the

9:17

recovery email and telephone number for one

9:20

thousand, five thirty five devices,

9:23

and a lot of times, a lot of times, these geo

9:25

fence warrants are very kept

9:28

secretive. I mean, even this process for

9:30

January six right now is still being kept secret.

9:33

But the reason why we're learning a lot about

9:35

this because there's actually a court case concerning

9:37

one man who is kind of bringing this up

9:39

in as part as their defense, saying, you

9:42

know, they shouldn't be using this stuff. I have an expectation

9:45

of privacy. So this is how we're learning

9:47

about this, Uh, this particular thing,

9:50

this the moves by the FBI on this one.

9:54

Yeah, that's right. I mean, all your defence

9:56

warrants are normally stealed, and that seems

9:58

means they're not available for public viewing because

10:00

obviously they don't want to give away who they're looking

10:02

at before they get there, before

10:05

they make charges. And so

10:07

I mean, the other interesting thing about this, this three

10:09

step process that Google came up with, it

10:11

was Google's inventions. There's no court that said

10:14

you have to do this three step process. There's no one overseeing

10:16

that. There's no defense attorneys at that point

10:18

of course, because um, they don't know who

10:20

they're looking for, right, it's quite an early day.

10:23

So it is quite an opaque process. And

10:25

Google's kind of set the standard

10:28

for it because it's the one that law enforcement

10:30

goes through most commonly because Google

10:32

apps are on all our phones, you know, Apple,

10:34

Android, you know, regardless

10:37

it's on you know, it's the most popular

10:39

one, and the location history is extremely you

10:41

know, widely used, but yes,

10:43

it's still very secret. And so the only way

10:45

we found about this was when

10:47

that when the individual tried

10:50

to get the dear offense data thrown

10:52

out, his lawyer included a lot of

10:54

information from the original sealed

10:56

search warrant. And so this is how we get we you know,

10:58

we we knew it was a big one and that the FBI

11:01

had talked about hundreds and even thousands of devices,

11:03

but we didn't know exactly how big, and we didn't know the

11:05

process. So it's really interesting to

11:07

get a peek into, um, you

11:09

know, how the FBI operates and how

11:11

Google responds to that, and you know

11:13

how this whole process comes because even

11:17

in that one thousand, five hundred devices,

11:19

you know, even with their efforts of trying to exclude

11:21

people who were in the capital before and afterwards,

11:23

but you know, they weren't trying to exclude say

11:26

like photojournalists who were there, you know,

11:28

pretty much at the same time as the rioters, and obviously

11:30

their data would have got kept swept

11:33

up in this hall, as well as paramedics who are

11:35

responding, and you can imagine many types

11:37

of people or you know, several other

11:39

types of people who who may have got caught up

11:41

and had their data handed over to the FBI that

11:43

actually had no reason to be handed over.

11:46

And that was the real key part of the

11:48

motion that this suspect is

11:50

is trying to get past,

11:52

you know, to try and exclude this data. He's saying, look,

11:55

way too many other people are getting caught up in this. It's

11:58

not constitutional. It goes against the four Amendments.

12:01

The constitutional unfair.

12:03

So, I mean, it's totally interesting

12:05

that suspect is David Ryan. The court is supposed

12:07

to be ruling on whether to throw that stuff

12:09

out in December, and then his trial

12:12

is scheduled for late January.

12:15

This is going to call into question a lot of that stuff and

12:17

there's gonna be a lot more conversation

12:19

about all of this geo fence warrant.

12:22

It's a super interesting look. Mark

12:24

Harris, contributor to Wired. Thank

12:26

you very much for joining us. Thanks,

12:29

it was a pleasure to toky. You

12:38

would think that, you know, kind of in a perfect world,

12:41

it would be the opposite. The veteran employees

12:43

would get paid a little bit more because they've already

12:45

proven themselves because they already know their

12:47

organizations. Well, you know, they should

12:49

be rewarded for their loyalty. But

12:51

what's happening right now in this current

12:53

economy is the exact opposite. Joining

12:56

US town is Aki Itto, Senior

12:58

correspondent at Business since Eier. Thanks

13:00

for joining US Hockey. Thanks for having me on. Well,

13:03

here's an interesting question. You wrote up an article

13:06

about how much could you be paying for

13:08

your loyalty at work? We've been hearing

13:10

a lot of the stories people leaving

13:12

their current jobs for something better, hopefully

13:15

higher paying or with a better work life balance.

13:17

You know a lot of people really want to do that work

13:19

from home thing. But we also heard stories

13:21

about how much power

13:24

the employee had. You know, employers

13:26

were you know, desperate for workers,

13:28

and they were doing everything they could, you know, offering a lot

13:30

of benefits and perks, offering a lot higher

13:33

salaries. And so this

13:35

question comes up now now that the dust is settled

13:37

a little bit, Now you know what happens to the

13:39

people that stayed at their jobs throughout all of

13:41

this compared to the people that

13:44

were moving all these jobs. And we're seeing

13:46

in a couple of places that you know, the newer

13:48

employees are being hired in with a higher

13:51

salary, leaving the people that stayed at

13:53

the job kind of falling behind. So

13:55

ACKI tell us a little bit more about it and what we're seeing

13:58

with this. Over the past year, the

14:00

jump market has just been so incredibly

14:02

hot that employers have had to

14:05

just throw these huge salaries

14:07

at new candidates just to get them

14:09

to come work for them. And

14:11

that's distorted, you know, the salaries

14:14

across organizations because these

14:16

new hires are getting paid so much

14:18

more than what existing

14:20

employees are getting paid. You would

14:22

think that, you know, kind of in a perfect world,

14:25

it would be the opposite. The veteran employees

14:27

would get paid a little bit more because they've already

14:29

proven themselves, because they already know their

14:31

organizations well, you know, they should

14:33

be rewarded for their loyalty. But

14:35

what's happening right now in this current

14:37

economy is the exact opposite.

14:40

Yeah, And you know, you look to industries like a tech

14:43

and finance, right there's always a lot of money flowing

14:45

around through there. But they do have some estimates

14:47

on how much some of these new hires are making.

14:50

There's a conversation data provider they're called labor

14:52

i Q. They estimate that salaries for

14:54

new hires are seven percent higher

14:56

on average than the media and paid for people

14:58

that have stuck around in some of these jobs

15:00

in some of these industries. That's a big pay

15:02

disparity, it is, and that's across

15:05

the entire economy, across all

15:07

occupations. When you look at

15:09

some of the really in demand jobs

15:11

and tech or in finance, these gaps

15:14

can be much larger. For example,

15:16

one job we looked at in the story was

15:19

the job of I T managers. The gap

15:21

between new hires and existing employees

15:23

and that occupation is twenty percent.

15:26

So you know, that's a difference of tens

15:28

of thousands of dollars and some of these

15:30

jobs, which means that you know, if you

15:32

haven't switched jobs in the Great Resignation,

15:35

you're probably leaving a lot of money on the table.

15:38

There's some names that they put to this phenomenon

15:40

that's happening. So we're talking about the job switchers

15:42

and the job stayers, and in one part

15:45

they call it salary compression. This

15:47

is when the gap starts to narrow on

15:50

this but it can move all the way to

15:52

a salary inversion where the new hires

15:54

are making more money than the veteran

15:56

workers. The broad term that

15:58

compensation professionals use is salary

16:01

compression, which is a little bit confusing

16:03

in this context because we're talking about

16:05

a gap that's opening up, a gap that's becoming

16:07

bigger and bigger. But kind of when

16:09

you go back to what we talked about before, what you

16:12

think should happen in an ideal economy,

16:14

veteran employees should get paid

16:16

more than the new hires. When that gap

16:19

starts to get smaller, you call that traditionally

16:22

salary compression. And in a really

16:24

extreme scenario like what we're seeing right

16:26

now, where the new hires are getting paid more

16:28

than existing employees, that's

16:30

called salary inversion. Is

16:33

this greater push, this kind of movement for

16:35

pay transparency. You know, there was this

16:37

a great story about someone leaving

16:39

their job. She she went on Twitter and said, Hey, if

16:42

anybody's applying for my job, just know that this

16:44

is how much I got paid. You should ask for more and

16:46

for whatever perk. And you know, it blew up at that

16:49

point. But this is what's happening

16:51

right now. People talk, people are getting

16:53

the hint of who's making what, and

16:55

how much and for the employer. I

16:58

like the way you wrote it up to. I mean, there's a very very

17:00

simple option you just pay everybody

17:02

more. But it's also an expensive

17:04

thing and that's tough for a lot of businesses

17:06

to do. I mean, the pay transparracy

17:09

thing is huge because, I mean it's

17:11

not just people randomly posting their

17:13

salaries on Twitter. It's also you

17:15

know, some governments are starting to force

17:17

employers to post pay ranges

17:19

in the job openings. These job openings

17:22

are public to everybody, including

17:24

to the people in companies

17:26

that already have that job. So

17:28

you know, you could just look at that job opening be

17:31

like, hey, this ranges you know above

17:33

what I'm getting paid. That gives

17:35

the employee, you know, some leverage to

17:37

negotiate for higher pay. And so

17:39

when disparities exist, but you have that

17:41

kind of transparency, employers

17:43

are forced to close that gap.

17:46

So so this move towards greater pay transparency

17:48

is really huge. And for some of the companies

17:51

that are noticing this, they're seeing it, right, they

17:53

are making some changes pay scale,

17:55

which deals with you know, compensation data,

17:58

right, they provide some of that data to their employees

18:00

and everything like that. They're raising wages

18:02

on some things. Microsoft is a big company

18:04

that took a look at this and said, hey, we need to

18:06

adjust how much we're paying people. So they're

18:08

increasing salaries for you know, higher,

18:11

higher performers. A lot of other companies are maybe giving

18:14

some bonuses or something, just so that those

18:16

existing employees, those people that stayed

18:18

with them aren't getting disgruntled,

18:20

you know, aren't feeling like they've just been left out in the lurch.

18:23

Yeah. I mean, for the last year, the big

18:25

focus really has been on you

18:28

know, trying to find new workers,

18:30

right, it's been on talent acquisition, and

18:32

I really think increasingly the conversation

18:35

is going to move to talent retention about

18:37

keeping existing employees. You

18:39

know, raising everybody's pay is expensive,

18:42

but perhaps it's less expensive

18:44

than losing your most talented employees

18:47

and you know, having to spend the next six months

18:49

trying to look for somebody who you can

18:51

hire, who you're gonna have to pay a big salary because

18:53

they're a new hire anyway. Yeah, and

18:55

yeah, I know some employers are going to just go with

18:57

the let's stay quiet and see if anybody

19:00

notices. But you know, on the flip side of things

19:02

right. Being overpaid does have its

19:04

risks. Once things do settle

19:06

down and once workflow gets back to normal,

19:09

you know, things happen. Sometimes they're the first people

19:11

to get cut at that point. So a very

19:13

interesting look, something I had been very curious

19:15

about, and it's starting to play out definitely

19:17

now. Aki Eto, Senior

19:20

correspondent at Business Insider, Thank

19:22

you very much for joining us. Thanks so much

19:24

for having me. That's

19:32

it for today. Join us on social media

19:34

at Daily Dive Pod on both Twitter and

19:37

Instagram. Gave us a comment, give

19:39

us a rating, and tell us the stories that you're interested

19:41

in. Follow us and I heard radio

19:43

or subscribe wherever you get your podcast. This

19:46

episode of The Daily Dive is produced by Victor Wright

19:49

and engineered by Tony Sarantino. I'm

19:52

Oscar Ramirez and this was

19:54

her Daily Dive

Unlock more with Podchaser Pro

  • Audience Insights
  • Contact Information
  • Demographics
  • Charts
  • Sponsor History
  • and More!
Pro Features