0:04

Welcome to the Daily Dive Weekend Edition.

0:07

I'm Oscar Ramirez, and every week I explore

0:09

the top stories making waves in the news

0:11

and some that are just playing interesting. I'll

0:14

connect you with the journalists and the people who know the

0:16

story and bring you news without the noise

0:18

so you can make an informed decision. You

0:20

can catch a new episode of The Daily Dive every Monday

0:23

through Friday, and it's ready when you wake up.

0:26

On the weekend edition, I'll be bringing you some of the best

0:28

stories from the week. It's

0:32

the FBI's biggest investigation ever,

0:34

looking into who was in Washington on January

0:37

six and who stormed the Capitol. It

0:39

has also included the biggest ever request of

0:41

phone data from geo fence warrants.

0:43

Google has provided data from over five

0:45

thousand devices as the FBI has tried

0:48

to narrow their search to pinpoints suspects.

0:50

Google also has a three step process for these

0:52

types of warrants to help protect as much

0:54

privacy as possible and only to provide

0:57

info of those most likely to have committed crime.

0:59

We're only learning more about this now as

1:02

lawyers for one suspect are looking to throw

1:04

out the g offense evidence in court. For

1:06

more on what to know, we'll speak to Mark Harris,

1:09

contributor to wire to offense warrants

1:11

have been around for a while and there it's

1:13

where law enforcement can ask

1:15

a technology company just to give

1:17

then the identifying info

1:20

for phones that it was in a certain

1:22

area. And you can imagine, we've had ones in the bank

1:24

robbery. You know, someone walks into a bank robbery,

1:26

you get all the phones that were in the bank

1:28

at the time. You can easily exclude the tellers

1:31

and the customers, and then anyone's left over, you

1:33

know, could be could be the criminal. So

1:36

we've had them for a few years. But this is

1:38

by far the biggest um defense

1:41

warrant that's ever the most productive.

1:43

It's given the most um it's given

1:45

the most results, and that's obviously because there are lots of people

1:47

at the Capitol that day. So what the d

1:49

o J and the Department of Justice and the FB and

1:51

I asked for was a four They

1:54

set up a g offense of a four acre area

1:56

that was the Capitol building itself and

1:59

the immediate to roundings that were beyond

2:01

the barriers where people shouldn't have been. And

2:03

so the idea was that anyone who was in this area

2:06

is kind of at the very least is committing

2:09

some sort of trespassing because they're in an area they

2:11

shouldn't be. And so, you

2:13

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

2:15

but what they got back was five

2:18

thousand, seven hundred and twenty three devices

2:21

in that area at the time of the riot.

2:23

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

2:25

some you know, tourists you know, at other

2:27

times a day or whatever. And so

2:30

that's a huge number of people, um. And

2:32

what's really interesting is just the scale of

2:34

it, um and that kind of it's also

2:36

interesting to see the process by which

2:38

the FBI narrowed it down. They haven't filed charges

2:40

against five thousand, seven twenty three

2:43

people. What they have done, they fear't charging

2:45

them about thousand people, and so

2:47

they go through this three step process um

2:50

to narrow down the initial production of

2:52

those enormous thousands of devices down to

2:54

a more manageable number. And they

2:56

do this in all g offense cases. Yeah, exactly,

2:58

real quick before we get into that, because Google's

3:01

response to this was, hey, look, you know,

3:03

if we were going to cooperate with the government

3:05

when they ask for stuff, but we do have a

3:07

rigorous process in place for geo

3:09

fence warrants. Oftentimes we push

3:11

back. We're trying to narrow the scope

3:13

of what they're asking for to provide

3:16

as much privacy for our our customers

3:18

as much as we can. So, yes,

3:20

now detail that three step process, because

3:22

what they did is they started off with this huge

3:25

pool of phones. Then they whittle it down, whittle

3:27

it down, whittle it down. And

3:29

this is this is the very interesting part. Yeah,

3:32

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

3:35

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

3:37

big old drag net where you just get everything in there. Number

3:40

two they then try and exclude any

3:42

numbers that that

3:45

they know not to be people

3:47

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

3:49

be the tellers and the customers who were standing

3:51

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

3:53

one of them. And then the third one would

3:56

be um particular device

3:58

ideas that had an in track.

4:00

Maybe the the device

4:03

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

4:05

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

4:07

particular you know spots, you

4:09

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

4:11

that intrigued them. So that would be the three step

4:13

process, and they would only get the email

4:16

and account recovery telephone

4:19

number for the for the third group, the smallest

4:21

group, and so we went through a similar process

4:23

here. They originally asked the five thousand

4:25

seven D twenty three, so they got those.

4:28

Then they took away any

4:30

phones that were also in the capitol

4:32

in the morning or in the evening when

4:35

the rioters weren't there, So in the morning before the right

4:37

happened, and in the evening after it was all cleared

4:39

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

4:41

be like capitol police or congressional

4:44

staffers. And they've only gotten down

4:46

to five thousand, five and eighteen, so there

4:48

was still a lot of devices

4:51

in there. And then what

4:53

the and then what the

4:55

FBI said, right, in order to be really

4:58

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

5:00

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

5:03

we want to get only those people whose

5:05

little blue dot was entirely within the GFEN.

5:08

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

5:10

you have that blue circle around you. Sometimes it's

5:12

a tiny dot. When you're in

5:14

lots of great GPS reception

5:16

and lots of WiFi and cell phone tiles around.

5:18

That means the blue dot gets small because it knows where

5:20

you are. And sometimes that dot is that circle

5:23

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

5:25

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

5:27

GPS satellite um and so your

5:30

location isn't that accurate. Well, the FBI

5:32

said, let's let's only have the ones. The whole

5:34

circle is inside the g fense. So we're pretty

5:36

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

5:38

sure it's about a sevent likelihood that

5:40

that dot was actually inside the

5:43

g fens at the time. And that's got the

5:45

numbers right down. That got them down to like um

5:48

under just under fifteen hundred devices

5:50

that work that I thought were pretty much definitely

5:52

in the g fens. And one of the other interesting

5:54

things that they can tell and they have the information

5:57

about, is that they

5:59

noticed that a lot of these phones had their

6:01

airplane mode turned off. Presumably

6:03

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

6:05

track me, but what the location

6:08

history does on these phones and all that

6:10

it tracks you either way, And

6:13

that prompted FBI officials to

6:15

even put more scrutiny on some of

6:17

these people that we're trying to delete

6:19

their location history in the days after, who

6:22

had their airplane airplane mode on

6:24

during the the insurrection, the capital

6:27

riots. So that was another interesting

6:29

factor that they looked at, you know, maybe people

6:31

trying to hide their tracks. Yeah,

6:35

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

6:37

put there who well we know, we don't

6:39

know they had them in their phone in airplane mode. What we do

6:41

know is that Google didn't have their

6:43

location data live when it was happening.

6:46

They only had it later. So that's probably

6:48

that it had it they were in airplane mode. It

6:50

could have just been they didn't get self service for some reason.

6:52

That's less likely because obviously it's pretty well

6:54

served by cell phone town. But there were lots

6:56

of people there maybe overloaded anyway,

6:59

They were like set and T devices that they only got

7:01

the data on a few days later, um, presumably

7:04

when people pop their phone back out of airplane mode.

7:06

So those were all in the mix. And then yeah, you're

7:08

right. The FBI also said, will

7:10

look as well as these fift that were definitely

7:13

inside the building. Out of that pool of five

7:15

thousand, tell us anyone who

7:17

tried to delete their location

7:19

history, which is a bit different from just going into airplane made.

7:22

They're actively going in saying WHOA to delete

7:24

everything I did in the last week, And the

7:26

FBI asked for those people in particular, and

7:28

so that that gave them an extra thirty

7:31

seven people who had or thirty seven devices

7:33

that had been had their thirty seven

7:35

accounts that have tried to delete their data.

7:37

So yeah, the truth is the FBI

7:39

thought pretty carefully about who they were trying

7:42

to target um and put

7:44

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

7:46

the end, they ended up getting the

7:49

recovery email and telephone number for one

7:51

thousand, five d thirty five devices

7:54

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

7:57

fence warrants are are very

8:00

kept secretive. I mean even this process

8:02

for January six right now is still being kept

8:04

secret. But the reason why we're learning

8:06

a lot about this because there's actually a court

8:08

case concerning one man who is kind

8:10

of bringing this up in as part

8:12

as their defense saying, you know, they shouldn't

8:14

be using this stuff. I have an expectation of

8:17

privacy. So this is how we're learning

8:19

about this, Uh, this particular

8:21

thing, this the moves by the FBI

8:23

on this one. Yeah,

8:25

that's right. I mean, all your defense

8:27

warrants are normally stealed, and that seems

8:30

means they're not available for public viewing because

8:32

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

8:34

at before they get there, before

8:36

they make charges. And so

8:39

I mean, the other interesting thing about this, this

8:41

three step process that Google came up

8:43

with, it was Google's inventions. There's no court

8:45

that said you have to do this three step process. There's

8:47

no one overseeing that. There's no defense

8:49

attorneys at that point of course, because um,

8:51

they don't know who they're looking for, right, it's quite an

8:54

early days, so it is quite an opaque

8:56

process. M and Google's

8:58

kind of set the standard for it because it's the one

9:00

that law enforcement goes through most commonly because

9:03

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

9:06

Android, you know, regardless

9:08

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

9:10

one, and the location history is extremely you

9:13

know, widely used. But yes, it's

9:15

still very secret, and so the only way we found

9:17

about this was in when that when

9:20

the individual tried to get

9:22

the garfense data thrown out,

9:24

his lawyer included a lot of information from the

9:26

original sealed search warrant.

9:28

And so this is how we get we you know, we we knew it

9:31

was a big one and that the FBI had talked

9:33

about hundreds and even thousands of devices, but we

9:35

didn't know exactly how big, and we didn't know the process.

9:37

So it's really interesting to get a peek into,

9:40

um, you know, how the FBI operates

9:42

and how Google response to that, Mark

9:45

Harris, contributor to Wired, Thank

9:47

you very much for joining us. Thanks

9:50

it was a pleasure to talk with you. Finally

9:55

for this week. What do you do with an iconic

9:58

Los Angeles landmark that has become too old

10:00

to operate normally and too much of a treasure

10:02

to tear down? Ellie County would

10:04

like to turn the old General Hospital building into

10:06

affordable and homeless housing, but

10:09

to do that, there's a ton of work to be done.

10:11

The county has already committed two d and fifty

10:13

million dollars into removing hazardous

10:15

materials, upgrading electrical and water

10:18

systems, installing air conditioning,

10:20

fire sprinklers, and so much more. The

10:22

eventual goal is to have a healthy village

10:25

with as many as four hundred units with beds

10:27

for housing and medical and mental health

10:29

care. For more in the future of Eli's

10:31

General Hospital will speak to Doug Smith,

10:34

Senior writer at the l A Times. It is

10:36

a huge undertaking and since a

10:38

general hospital closed in

10:40

two thousand and eight for various reasons. It

10:43

was almost it was by then eighty

10:45

something years old, almost

10:47

ninety years old, and it didn't have the

10:50

systems that modern hospitals needed, didn't

10:52

have air conditioning, it didn't have the

10:54

electrical system, couldn't support

10:56

the modern medical technology.

10:58

And then after the Reach earthquake,

11:01

the seismic standards for hospitals

11:03

were upgraded and it didn't meet those standards.

11:06

So a new hospital was built right next

11:08

to it, and general hospital just kind of

11:10

closed. Some of the ground floors

11:12

were still used for wellness, community

11:15

and research training, but

11:17

most of its nineteen floors were just left

11:20

empty and they've deteriorated. The ceiling

11:22

pot tiles are falling and there's dust everywhere.

11:25

The electrical outlets are open, and

11:28

nobody can go there. So it's been very

11:30

hard to find out what to do with it because it's a

11:32

gigantic building. You know, when you walk

11:34

inside, you feel like you're entering an Egyptian

11:37

pyramid, it's that big. And

11:40

so it couldn't be reused as a

11:42

hospital there was had been replaced

11:44

and went to do with it. Well, the idea

11:46

of housing became more tenable

11:49

as a homeless crisis and what's really

11:51

an affordable housing crisis in Los Angeles

11:54

became more severe, and so

11:56

first Supervisor Gloria Molina

11:58

and then Supervisor this release started

12:01

to pursue the idea of using it for housing

12:03

in a health and community related context.

12:06

So the plans are finally now

12:08

taking shape. There will be RFP, a

12:11

request for Proposals will be developed

12:14

and offered in January for a developer

12:16

to come and figure out how to

12:18

convert basically operating

12:21

rooms, wards and laboratories

12:23

into housing. And

12:25

um, we don't know exactly how

12:28

that will play out, but it could be anywhere

12:30

from three fifty to seven hundred units

12:32

of housing, depending on whether how many

12:34

of them are single units or how many

12:36

of them are multi bedroom units for families.

12:39

Yeah, and that's part of it. The huge

12:41

undertaking of how to convert what was once

12:43

a hospital into a space for

12:45

housing, a space for all these other services

12:47

and whatnot. And so you

12:50

mentioned the article to the prep work, just

12:52

just the prep work is expected to start next

12:54

year, after the county committed

12:56

two fifty million dollars to take the first step,

12:58

But it was to some of that stuff you had mentioned, removing

13:01

as best those other hasidious materials,

13:04

installing air conditioning. I mean, you can't

13:06

have anything built now without air conditioning

13:08

and fire sprinklers. So all of that stuff

13:10

is barely going to get started. And then, as you mentioned,

13:12

then there's the proposals and all that to really figure

13:15

out exactly what's going to be going on there. Yeah, the

13:17

county's approach on this is that it is kind

13:19

of unusual. They decided to

13:21

first prepare the building just sort

13:23

of quite empty it out and create

13:25

an empty structure that

13:27

a developer, an imagine and developer

13:30

could look at and say, we could do this

13:32

with it. We could use the operating rooms for this

13:34

purpose and come up with the individual

13:37

plans. But even just that prep

13:39

work, and which also includes a significant

13:42

seismic upgrade, it's gonna cost two

13:44

hundred million. You know,

13:46

when you walk in, it seems like

13:48

an Egyptian pyramid or something that it is one of

13:50

the best city's best examples of Art Deco

13:53

architecture. Tell me a little bit about the

13:55

art there, because that's also some one

13:57

of the reasons why they haven't torn it all down too before

14:00

hand is they want to preserve some of that stuff. As

14:02

they mentioned, such been such a landmark for

14:04

Los Angeles. There's statutory

14:06

on the outside. It's all of medical theme.

14:08

The Hypocritus and the Galen

14:11

and the sort of the big figures in

14:14

the history of medicine are represented

14:16

in statues. And then there's a in

14:19

the entry. There is a

14:21

mural on the ceiling that you

14:23

know, it makes you feel like you're looking at the Sistine

14:25

Chapel. It's obviously not by

14:27

Michelangelo, but it but it just has that feeling

14:30

of awe that you're looking up at this vast

14:32

ceiling eural. As you walk into

14:34

the hospital what used to be the main floor

14:36

of the hospital. It's it's so huge

14:38

that there's a color stripe

14:41

in the middle of band. It's about five feet

14:43

wide. It has different colored stripes as

14:46

you walk through some of them go right, some of them

14:48

go left, And you're told at the beginning,

14:51

when they know where you need to go, you're told to

14:53

follow a certain color to get you there. It's

14:55

sort of how big and complex the building is.

14:58

You made mention in the article about you know, some

15:00

of the pretty nasty stuff there that

15:02

was done under an old eugenics law.

15:04

A lot of things for that happened to the Latino

15:07

community as well. You know, even when the

15:09

new hospital was built, you know a lot of people

15:11

were displaced because construction had to

15:13

be done. Tell me a little bit about some of that. Sure,

15:16

the hospital has been a huge

15:18

presence in Boil Heights since it was

15:20

built in nineteen in the late nineteen

15:23

twenties and open in nineteen three, and

15:25

it's it's always been a place

15:28

where people in that community could go and

15:30

if they had they couldn't afford that, they would get free

15:32

medical care. But it also had this

15:35

other element of its history. Racial

15:37

attitudes were sort of became

15:40

a part of its service, and

15:42

so sometimes Latino women came to

15:44

deliver babies, and there

15:46

was a doctor there who thought that they were

15:49

bringing too many babies into the world, weren't

15:51

educated didn't have a chance, and so they saralyzed

15:54

a couple of hundred women there with their

15:56

consent, but it wasn't clear if they

15:58

actually gave their consent knowingly. They signed

16:01

forms and there, you know, they were given a forms

16:03

had signed this and it was a consentence to

16:05

sterilize them, and this became a

16:07

practice in the hospital in the seventies and

16:09

sixties and seventies under California

16:11

had a eugenics law under which thousands

16:14

of women across the state were sterilized.

16:17

The state finally provided a fund

16:19

to compensate them, but it didn't apply to the women

16:22

who were sterilized at County General because

16:24

the hospital was locally funded. He

16:26

spoke to a number of people though you know,

16:28

this is some of the worst parts of

16:30

that history, but you spoke to a lot of people too

16:32

who where General Hospital was,

16:35

where they were born, where they

16:37

went and they had a broken arm where their family

16:39

members were saved from having you know, after

16:42

recovering and after having heart attacks

16:44

and whatnot. And it was just a central

16:46

place there where people got their healthcare

16:48

done. It was and we we spoke

16:51

to Monica Alcorraz, who has

16:53

been the president of the Highland

16:55

Park Neighborhood Council, and she was born

16:57

there and her siblings were born there, her mother

17:00

there when you had an heart attack. And so the hospital

17:02

is it's hard to believe. It's this gigantic

17:05

structure that you can see from

17:07

many parts of Los Angeles. It's sort of

17:09

present everywhere, but it's also an intimate

17:11

part of people's lives, including

17:14

my own. My own father went

17:16

there when he had a heart attack in and

17:18

they saved his life there. And in

17:20

all of this, what has been the community

17:23

reaction to at least some of this plan,

17:26

you know, changing it into homeless

17:28

and affordable housing, because that's a touchy

17:31

subject a lot of times when you're bringing

17:33

certain elements into the community.

17:35

All that, So what I know, there's a lot of homeless

17:38

encampments that have been seen around the area

17:40

as well. So how is the community reacted

17:42

to a lot of this? So Hilda solely did

17:45

a smart thing that Boil Heights and

17:47

Lincoln Heights on the North are communities

17:49

that are really guard their

17:52

heritage carefully, and you could

17:54

take a misstep and get the community against

17:56

you, as the owner of the former Series

17:59

building by proposing to

18:01

make it a home for ten thousand homeless people,

18:03

but homeless solely built, a community

18:05

organization that has been looking

18:08

at this for years and has

18:10

been involved in the planning of it. And

18:13

my colleague Andrew spoke to all

18:15

the major people in the community, and there's

18:17

generally support for this project. Also

18:19

because the project will not be just

18:22

the hospital, but it will be twelve acres to

18:24

the west that will be used for

18:26

housing for community spaces,

18:28

and there's a childcare center that's being

18:30

built that will open there in

18:32

December, and the restorative

18:35

Care village, which is a part of the larger

18:37

property. They've already completed

18:40

sixty four units of mental

18:42

health residential care and hundred

18:44

and twenty unit units of recuperative

18:47

care for people leaving the hospital who

18:49

aren't ready to go home, and and that there's

18:51

twice as much space in their recuperative care

18:54

village that's going to be developed for more services

18:56

like that, including workforce development.

18:59

So the community at this point

19:01

is very much behind the project. Of course, it's

19:03

one more big step when the developer

19:05

makes a proposal, and that could be a

19:08

moment when there could be tension. Well,

19:10

we'll see, we'll follow this story. It's going to take a long

19:12

time to get there. Obviously, there's a lot of work to

19:14

be done, but with so much space there,

19:17

you know, it could be a smart play to help

19:20

these vulnerable citizens there. So we'll see, we'll

19:22

see what all how it all pans out. Doug Smith,

19:24

Senior writer at The l A Times, thank you very

19:26

much for joining us. Thank you appreciate

19:28

it. That's

19:31

it for this weekend. Be sure to check

19:33

out The Daily Dive every Monday through Friday.

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