The 5G fight: why US phone firms are at loggerheads with FAA over airline safety

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Wed. Jan 5, 2022 | By Carly Olson – The Guardian |

The telecom companies have agreed to push back the rollout of their 5G services over concerns it will affect airplane security

Late Monday, Verizon and AT&T agreed to a two-week delay rolling out their new 5G technology.

The technology was slated to launch on Wednesday, but in response to fears that the 5G service will impair airline safety – and amid threats from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to ground or divert flights at a time when the travel industry is already playing catch-up from recent weather and Covid-related flight disruptions – the telecom companies agreed to a pause.

Here’s what you need to know about the controversy:

What is 5G?
5G is the newest generation of cellular network, following 4G, which was introduced in late 2009 and is used on most US cellphones today. Nearly every 10 years since 1980, a new generation network has arrived, offering faster speeds and expanded capabilities. At the simplest level, 1G allowed for phone calls, 2G brought messaging, and 3G provided internet access. Today, on 4G, users can download apps, stream video, and more, with relative ease and speed.

The fifth generation is expected to offer new levels of speed – making it possible, for example, to download a movie to one’s phone in seconds – and allow more devices to be connected to a network at once. The latter is increasingly important in our crowded cellular landscape. (Ever been in a concert or stadium unable to send messages?)

“Those types of data rates could enable virtual reality applications or autonomous driving cars,” Harish Krishnaswamy, an associate professor of electrical engineering at Columbia University, told Live Science.

Why is the US airline industry concerned about 5G?

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Cellphone data, YouTube history collected in search for Mengqi Ji. What was shown Thursday at trial

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Mengqi Ji went missing in October 2019. Her remains were found in March in Rock Bridge Memorial State Park.

Her husband, Joseph Elledge, is accused of killing her.

The second detective connected to the investigation, John Voss, took the witness stand Thursday afternoon.

What Elledge’s cellphone data indicated

Voss testified to downloading cellphone data from Ji’s phone twice and Elledge’s phone three times.

Data was analyzed by FBI Special Agent Mike Easter with that agency’s Cellular Analysis Survey Team. He looks at historical cell site data to determine a phone’s location and by extension, the phone’s owner, such as Elledge.

 

Read the full article HERE

Former Homicide Detective Testifies in Ongoing Murder Trial, Explains Analysis of Accused’s Phone Records

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OAKLAND, CA — Andres Bejarano, a former Berkeley homicide detective, testified in the ongoing murder trial of Will Watson, 29, Monday at the Rene C. Davidson Courthouse / Alameda County Superior Court.

In 2016, Watson allegedly shot and killed 19-year-old Gregory Ignacio, Jr., in Berkeley. His charges include murder, great bodily injury and the use and discharge of a firearm while committing a felony, according to his arrest record.

Bejarano, who is now a patrol sergeant for Alameda County Sheriff’s Department, testified about his analysis of Watson’s call detail record data. The court approved Bejarano as an expert witness, given his training and experience with CellHawk, a program software used to interpret and analyze the data.

Bejarano explained that a call detail record is a historical record of the device’s use that gives information such as length of phone calls and the device’s approximate location when connected to a cell tower while calling or texting.

 

Read the full article HERE

Murder defendant challenges police use of ‘tower dump’

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Wed. Dec 8,2021 | By Shira Schoenberg – CW |

The Impact of Carpenter v. United States in the Lower Courts and the Emerging Carpenter Test

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Sat. Nov. 6, 2021 | By Matthew Tokson – lawfare |

The Supreme Court’s 2018 decision in Carpenter v. United States was widely considered to be a sea change in Fourth Amendment law. Carpenter held that individuals can retain Fourth Amendment rights in information they disclose to a third party, at least in some situations. Specifically, cell phone users retained Fourth Amendment rights in their cell phone location data, even though that data was disclosed to their cell phone companies.

This is a potentially revolutionary holding in the internet era, when virtually every form of sensitive digital information is exposed to a third-party service provider at some point. Carpenter raises the possibility that the Fourth Amendment may effectively protect sensitive digital data. But Carpenter is a notoriously vague opinion, and scholars have reached conflicting conclusions about its meaning and impact. What does Carpenter mean, and what will it mean in the future?

In a recent article forthcoming in the Harvard Law Review, I attempt to shed some light on Carpenter and its jurisprudential impact. I coded and analyzed all 857 federal and state judgments applying Carpenter through March 31, 2021. In doing so, I was able to identify the factors that drive modern Fourth Amendment search decisions and describe a nascent Carpenter test now emerging in the lower courts. I also examined overall compliance with Carpenter, finding that courts have largely embraced it, with almost no overt criticism and relatively little indirect noncompliance. And I encountered a shockingly high rate of cases resolved based on the “good faith exception” to the exclusionary rule, which permits the government to use unconstitutionally obtained evidence to convict defendants if such evidence was collected in reliance on prior law. These findings can help resolve some of the mysteries of Carpenter, illuminating both the present state of the law and the paths along which it will likely continue to develop…

Read more here