Saturday Morning

The NY Times runs a shocking story on the cell phone geo-location data gathered and sold by private companies.

The private companies gather their data from smartphone apps that have activated location sharing (eg, that is how your smartphone can tell you the weather where you are without any need for the user to update or refresh the screen.)

A key wrinkle - these companies have data on millions of people and it is available to anyone the collectors consider to be credible. This is quite different from the police getting a warrant to look at records from a cell phone company.

The data is nominally 'anonymized' but the Times reports it is a trivial exercise to figure out a user's name - a typical phone will have a pretty obvious home at night and place of employment during the day.

As a bit of a warning to anyone The Resistance might feel a need to target, the Times includes this:

One search turned up more than a dozen people visiting the Playboy Mansion, some overnight. Without much effort we spotted visitors to the estates of Johnny Depp, Tiger Woods and Arnold Schwarzenegger, connecting the devices’ owners to the residences indefinitely.

...

The data set is large enough that it surely points to scandal and crime but our purpose wasn’t to dig up dirt. We wanted to document the risk of underregulated surveillance.

Uh huh. What I'm reading is, they want use this dataset to *launch* an inquiry - maybe no intrepid reporter is running down those Playboy Mansion visitors hoping to find a Republican congressman or judge. But if the Times had unconfirmed rumors that a congressman (Republican, of course) was spotted at the Mansion, would they turn to this dataset for confirmation? Hmm... You can only imagine how low my confidence is as the Times weighs privacy rights against the public need to know.

Comments

[Tom R]

Henry @ 11:50

https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/419769-mueller-requests-no-prison-time-for-flynn-citing-his-substantial

Its been a over a full year since Mueller recommended no jail time for Flynn with a maximum fine of $9500.

Flynn and his lawyers met with Mueller to testify against his Turkish partner 19 times. Lets go with 8 hours spent per session and that gives you 152 hours spent providing testimony. 4600 billable hours @ $1000 per hour still triggers my Bullshit Detector.

Flynn plead guilty after less than 24 hours in DEC 2017. In DEC 2018 he learns Mueller is recommending no jail time and a fine of no more than $9500. Here we are another year later and Flynn refuses to change his plea to innocent and is still agreeing to pushing back his sentencing date. What kind of fool agrees to allow the DOJ to keep extending his sentencing date and keeps driving up his legal bills when at most he would get fined $9500. I find it incredulous that so many people here refuse to acknowledge there is something obviously fishy going on. What that is I don't know but it doesn't pass the smell test.

[Narciso]

Top three levels if the bureau need to be indicted jailed and disbarred and fed to feral cats

[Manuel Transmission]

Billing: Mel and I zeroed in on a hotshot IP lawyer in DC a couple yrs ago. One letter was gonna cost me $15K. After a lot of tears, he cut it to a bit over $10K. One letter.

[henry]

You trust Mueller? And the Judge? The deal isn't done on a verbal say so.

[Tom R]

Man Tran,

What's the going rate for the most expensive lawyer in DC negotiating a guilty plea bargain in less than 24 hours?

[henry]

MT, that is what I am used to.

[Tom R]

Henry @ 12:16

Perhaps Clarice can provide some guidance but I am fairly certain if a prosecutor tells the defense team they are recommending no jail time and they show up for sentencing and recommend jail time, that would be considered prosecutorial misconduct.

[henry]

We know misconduct never happens with team Mueller. /sarc

[clarice]

Judges can and do ignore prosecutions' sentencing recommendations. I must say, Tom R, I am amazed at the time you've spent on Flynn's legal expenses. why in heaven's name would he misrepresent these. You may not understand the high cost of white collar criminal defense teams, but I live here, and I'm telling you, it's not extraordinary.

[Tom R]

Change of subject.

The Truth about Epstein and the Mossad or is this triggering my confirmation bias?

https://medium.com/@dylanhoward/epstein-admitted-to-me-he-was-a-spy-ex-business-partner-of-sex-criminal-claims-prince-andrew-is-c1152667bb86

[jimmyk]

If I ran the Metropolitan Opera, I'd seriously consider cancelling all those full-page ads that regularly run in the NYT.

James D, the funny thing is that the writer also cites "Madame Butterfly" as racist, yet any sane person would see that the American (Pinkerton) is really the villain of the story for his shabby treatment of Cio-Cio San.

On the other hand, I'm still pissed at the Met for its shabby treatment of Vittorio Grigolo, so the hell with them (though I still have my subscription :)).

[JM Hanes]

TomR:

I agree that there's something hinky about the whole Flynn story, but I certainly don't think it's part of some pre-planned exploit in which Mueller et al are really the good guys. Flynn is not the only one being bankrupted by legal fees, of course. I don't really know enough about fee structures to argue about whether the sums we hear are accurate, but I think you seriously underestimate the time involved.

"Lets go with 8 hours spent per session"

No way. It's way more than just the time the lawye(s)r spends sitting at the table with you. There's time working on your testimony, going through documents, producing documents, conferencing, gaming thinngs out, communicating with the feds, both orally and in writing, all of which involve not only the lawyer, but also all of his ancillary staff including other lawyers, secretaries, investigators messenger services, right down to toner/ink and paper for the copy machine. Now, it's entirely possible that Flynn was getting ripped off or overcharged, but there is really no such thing as simple as 8 hours @ $X/hour legal work at that level of play.

[JM Hanes]

Ah, I see clarice has already weighed in, and TomR has changed the subject. Let's hope that we've now dealt with the subject of Flynn's legal fees for the last time! At this point, everybody who wants to weigh in on the question has surely done so at least once.

[JM Hanes]

Not only has the subject changed, we've got a new thread to celebrate the occasion.

[Tom R]

why in heaven's name would he misrepresent these.

There are reasons if you accept the possibility Flynn is part of a sting operation against the Deep State/Swamp.

I understand full well the high cost of white collar criminal defense teams. My issue is that his original defense team spent zero to little time actually defending him. What were they spending their time on to bill enough hours to account for $4.6 million in legal fees?

If you refuse to believe in the possibility there was no "4D sting operation", it makes zero sense to me that Flynn would allow himself to incur $4.6 million in legal fees when he plead guilty over 2 years ago has known for a full year Mueller was recommending no jail time and the maximum fine was $9500.

[Manuel Transmission]

I vaguely recall an old lawyer joke about someone giving a Memorial speech at a lawyer’s funeral. “John as only 57 yrs old, but 78 in billable hours.”

[Melinda]

MT-

More on the X17 particle..

https://twitter.com/CERN/status/1209012766482325509

[Captain Hate]

Nothing puts me in the Christmas mood like this

http://acecomments.mu.nu/?post=384929

[JimNorCal]

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[JimNorCal]

TomR: "... it makes zero sense to me that Flynn would allow himself to incur $4.6 million in legal fees when he plead guilty over 2 years ago ..."

1) Possibly Gen Flynn is part of a hidden sting
2) Maybe the legal costs, while startling, are documented as much as these things typically are. Maybe it's a legitimate bill.
3) Maybe there is some other explanation we are not aware of.

Fine. It makes zero sense to you. How can we obtain more information to explain things? And if we can't get more information, why not enter it into a list of Things That Need Explanation and move along to other topics? Because endless theorizing when there is insufficient information eventually becomes a pointless exercise. Am I wrong?

[JimNorCal]

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[JimNorCal]

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