Via email from Matt: Washington State Patrol using phone data to combat speeding (see also Washington State Patrol uses cellphone data to curb speeding | king5.com).
The Washington State Patrol has a new tool to help slow down speeding drivers, and your cellphone may have helped.
Cellphone data from more than 1 million cellphone users in Washington in 2023 helped the state identify where to look for dangerous drivers.
”This is so exciting to be using data that we haven’t had access to before,” said Washington Traffic Safety Commission acting Director Shelly Baldwin, “This is predictive as opposed to reflective.”
…
Over the next six weeks, the Washington State Patrol will be looking for speeders in four locations where speeding regularly occurs, according to the cellphone data: Interstate 5 from Joint Base Lewis-McChord to Fife, from Fife to Auburn on I-5, north and south of Everett on I-5, and a 14-mile stretch of Interstate 90 east and west of downtown Spokane.
At first glance you might think your phone is being used to hand out tickets. But reading a little close you will see the phone data is from 2023 and the enforcement is over the next few weeks, and the data probably was not personal identifiable. That makes it a little less objectionable. But I thought cell phone providers did not give out cell phone data to law enforcement without a warrant (or perhaps in extremely rare cases where life was in immediate danger).
Still… Be exceptionally careful when driving in these areas. No speeding, talking on your phone, or texting while driving.
Given Musk/Trump’s delight at the thought of consolidating all citizen data in Palentir’s central database, I assume they’ll be totally on board with absorbing this as well, fully de-anonymized. They want the panopticon, and will probably get it. Gun rights aren’t gonna mean much when you can be jailed for crimes the data model says you will probably commit in the future.
I think the rule is they can collect metadata without a warrant, as long as it isn’t personally identifiable.
The thing that got me about this is that they say they had to use this data to identify where the speeding occurs. Do they not drive the roads they’re tasked with patrolling?
Anyone who drives a road regularly knows where everyone speeds, where everyone drives stupid to merge or make an exit, where the cops tend to hang out so everyone slows down.
All they’d need to do to figure it out is drive the road with their personal (non-police) cars every once in a while.
The other thing that gets me is speeding tickets are not really for safety, they’re just for revenue generation. People drive flat out dangerously every day and get away with it.
Two people have died in four crashes on the section of road between the closest stop light and my house in the past few years. Mainly drunks and people trying to race. It’s a residential area with a speed limit of 35 and people come screaming by at close to twice that every.freaking.day. Last Thanksgiving a drunk lost control. went all the way across our neighbor’s front yard, took out their finished front porch, and was sideways when he hit the trees between our houses. He was ejected through the passenger side window and ended up in my sideyard. We caught the whole thing on our security cams. He was doing at least 70 when he lost control and probably 50 by the time he hit the trees. He spent a few days in the Hospital, but he lived. If it weren’t for those trees (dogwoods that the crash killed and had to be removed) his truck would have been inside my garage.
But the police are concerned about handing out tickets to people running late for work for going 12mph over the speed limit.
Wow! That is quite the story. I have never lived anywhere that had those type of things happen.
Telcos have a long bad history of giving customer data to government agencies via back door arrangements, all the way back to the 1920s or thereabouts. You can find the details in “The Puzzle Palace”.
Funny how they are each on approaches to military installations.
One of many reasons to not have a cell phone on you at all times, and to keep it turned off most of the time it is with you.