AT&T, T-Mobile fight speed tests that could prove their coverage maps wrong

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By Jon Brodkin – 8/20/2020

Carriers oppose FCC drive-test mandate despite history of exaggerating coverage.

AT&T and T-Mobile are fighting a Federal Communications Commission plan to require drive tests that would verify whether the mobile carriers’ coverage claims are accurate.

The carriers’ objections came in response to the FCC seeking comment on a plan to improve the nation’s inadequate broadband maps. Besides submitting more accurate coverage maps, the FCC plan would require carriers to do a statistically significant amount of drive testing.

“In order to help verify the accuracy of mobile providers’ submitted coverage maps, we propose that carriers submit evidence of network performance based on a sample of on-the-ground tests that is statistically appropriate for the area tested,” the FCC proposal issued in July 2020 said.

This could prevent repeats of cases in which carriers exaggerated their coverage in FCC filings, which can result in government broadband funding not going to the areas where it is needed most. Small carriers that compete against the big three in rural areas previously had to conduct drive tests at their own expense in order to prove that the large carriers didn’t serve the areas they claimed to serve.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai did not punish Verizon, T-Mobile, and US Cellular after finding that the carriers exaggerated their 4G coverage in official filings. But Pai is moving ahead with plans to require more accurate maps as mandated by Congress.

AT&T and T-Mobile complain about testing cost

AT&T objected to the proposed drive-testing requirement in a filing to the FCC on Tuesday this week, saying that annual “drive testing is not the proper solution for verifying nationwide coverage maps” and that there is “potential difficulty in determining how to formulate a statistically valid sample for areas given the terrain variability nationwide.”

AT&T complained about costs while further explaining its position:

“With respect to cost, AT&T estimates that to drive test just 25 percent of the square kilometers of its nationwide 4G LTE coverage would cost approximately $45 million each year and that drive testing only 10 percent of its coverage would still cost as much as $18 million/year. Requiring that all carriers conduct such nationwide drive tests, especially on a regular basis, is simply too costly especially at a time when investment in 5G deployment is a top national priority. The [FCC order] proposes to use a statistically valid sample where carriers would be expected to conduct a certain amount of drive tests “that is statistically appropriate for the area tested.” However, there is no indication of how an “area” would be defined, which makes it difficult to assess the feasibility of developing a sample.”

Instead of drive testing, AT&T suggested that the FCC could “collect certain confidential tower site location information, which would be a better verification tool compared to drive testing.”

T-Mobile raised similar objections in a filing submitted Monday:

“[T]he Commission should not require providers to conduct regular on-the-ground testing. The Commission has considered and rejected similar requirements several times in the past, for the simple reason that on-the-ground testing at scale is “highly complex, time-consuming, and expensive.” Drive tests and similar procedures are extremely expensive and burdensome to conduct, especially at the scale needed for a statistically significant sample of a nationwide network. A blanket requirement to perform regular on-the-ground testing will force providers to spend millions of dollars each year on tests, resources that would be better spent investing in our network and deployment in rural America.”

Verizon had objected to the possibility of a nationwide drive-test requirement in a September 2019 filing, saying that “Verizon conducts drive tests in a more targeted manner to calibrate its propagation model and to confirm the accuracy of the model.” With the FCC deciding to require only a statistically significant sample, Verizon’s more recent filings either didn’t mention drive testing or merely sought clarification on the FCC drive-test plan.

Calif. agency pushes for drive testing

Extensive drive testing is supported by the California Public Utilities Commission, which told the FCC in February that “the data and mapping outputs of propagation-based models will not result in accurate representation of actual wireless coverage.” The CPUC said that, based on its experience, “drive tests are required to capture fully accurate data for mobile wireless service areas.”

In another filing in September 2019, the CPUC included a graphic showing how the agency’s own drive tests in California revealed that the map submitted by one unnamed national carrier dramatically overstated coverage:

“We have found such overstatement of [mobile] providers’ submitted coverage footprints to be the case for all providers in all years we conducted tests, not just for the anonymized single example shown above,” the CPUC told the FCC. “Inaccurate data resulting from propagation modeling will have serious impacts on infrastructure grant programs aimed at eliminating the digital divide. We have no reason to believe that the technical and statistical parameters for propagation modeling on which the [FCC] seeks comments will produce more accurate propagation results.”

A Vermont state official conducted speed tests while driving more than 6,000 miles in the fall of 2018, and found “wide disparities” between actual coverage and the coverage reported by carriers.

The FCC said its tentative plan for carrier-submitted speed tests would at a minimum require “that the speed tests include downlink, uplink, latency, and signal strength measurements and that they be performed using an end-user application that measures performance between the mobile device and specified test servers.” The FCC also proposed “that speed tests must be taken outdoors” and in a “combination of mobile and stationary tests to accurately verify the coverage speed maps.”

The FCC could change its plan after evaluating comments, and it said it would use input from the public to help develop a methodology that carriers would have to follow in testing. Among other things, the FCC’s request for comments said it is trying to determine how the tests should be distributed between urban and rural areas, how to “ensure that the speed test measurements represent the typical user case for the area covered,” and how to “prevent providers from performing their tests close to their towers where signal strength is greatest.” The FCC is also considering whether to “specify the types of equipment that providers can use, including the handsets and any other special equipment necessary for the testing.”

Last year, AT&T and other carriers tried to convince the FCC to avoid requiring 5G maps. But the FCC’s current plan proposes requiring submission of 5G maps in addition to maps of 3G and 4G networks.

See the original article (with map images) at arstechnica.com HERE.

‘Perfect storm’: Defund the police, COVID-19 lead to biggest police budget cuts in decade

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By Kevin Johnson and Kristine Phillips, USA TODAY | July 31, 2020 |

Facing the dual forces of the coronavirus pandemic and the national movement to “defund the police,” law enforcement agencies across the country are bracing for budget reductions not seen in more than a decade.

Nearly half of 258 agencies surveyed this month are reporting that funding has already been slashed or is expected to be reduced, according to a report slated for release this week by the Police Executive Research Forum, a non-partisan research organization.

Much of the funding is being pulled from equipment, hiring and training accounts, even as a number of cities also are tracking abrupt spikes in violent crime, the report concluded.

Few agencies, regardless of size, are being spared. Deep reductions have been ordered or proposed in Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, Baltimore County, Maryland, Tempe, Arizona, and Eureka, California.

Chuck Wexler, executive director of the D.C.-based think tank that authored the report, said police operations have not confronted such a threat since the financial crisis of 2008, when operations and force numbers were cut dramatically to account for the steep decline in available public funds.

“Unfortunately, the situation this time is only certain to get worse because of the pandemic’s resurgence and the convergence of the defund police movement,” Wexler said. “It’s a combustible mixture for police departments, because reform is often achieved by hiring a next generation of officers and acquiring new technology that can assist their work. The unintended consequence of these times is that those reforms will now be held back.”

But Scott Roberts, senior director for criminal justice campaigns for the civil rights advocacy group Color of Change, said law enforcement has been “the most out of touch” in recognizing a need for new policing policy.

“The lack of imagination in public safety has only led to continuing down the same path to investing in more law enforcement,” Roberts said. “This call for defunding police is not just about taking money from policing, it’s about making the investments we need to make in things like health care, including mental illness.”

The first shock waves rippled through law enforcement this month when New York municipal officials slashed $1 billion from the largest police force in the country with an operating budget of about $6 billion. The cut effectively canceled a 1,200-person police recruiting class, curtailed overtime spending and shifted school safety deployments and homeless outreach away from the NYPD.

In Minneapolis, where the de-fund movement began following the May 25 death of George Floyd at the hands of police, the fate of the local force remains in doubt. Los Angeles has cut its police budget by $150 million, while Seattle has proposed a 50% reduction to a department that has struggled to contain protests that erupted following Floyd’s death.

“There are a lot of pressures dragging down and threatening levels of public safety,” Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore said. “It’s really a perfect storm.”

‘A recruiting, retention crisis’

Even smaller cities facing less pressure from the social justice movement have not been able to escape an unfolding financial crisis driven by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In Steamboat Springs, a ski-resort town in northwest Colorado largely supported by tourism-driven sales tax dollars, the police department is cutting its budget by 28% or nearly $1.5 million. It means that vacant positions will go unfilled and civilian employees are taking a 10% pay cut, Police Chief Cory Christensen said.

The police department’s training and recruiting budgets already have been zeroed out.

“At a time when we’re talking police reform and how to make police departments better, one of the strategies is having training. But not having funding for that, we will fall behind in making sure we’re up to par with best practices,” Christensen said, adding that the department has yet to meet state-mandated training hours.

Christensen was able to hire a few officers in the last three years, but the police force has barely kept pace with the town’s growing population – up from 3,000 to 13,000 in the last two decades. The police department now has 44 employees, a slight increase over the past 20 years.

At the same time, calls for service are up 23% from last year, the busiest year in Christensen’s memory.

“I don’t know yet whether I’m going to have to lay off police officers,” he said. “I don’t have enough police officers as it is to do emergency calls,” he said. “Our cuts are going to mean we’re going to plow the streets less, water the grass less. We’re going to police with less. It’s a challenge.”

In Eureka, a Northern California town of nearly 27,000 where sales taxes are also the primary source of revenue, the pandemic is responsible for doubling an already projected deficit for the next budget year, Police Chief Steve Watson said.

The police department is cutting its budget by 8%, or nearly $1.2 million. That means losing six positions through a combination of early retirement incentives, resignations and allowing vacant positions to go unfilled, Watson said. The agency currently has about 50 employees, a staffing level that already struggles to keep up with the workload.

“We are already in a recruiting and retention crisis that’s been going on for years. I can foresee it’s going to get far worse,” Watson said…..

Continue reading at USAToday.com HERE.

EFF Files Amicus Brief Arguing Geofence Warrants Violate the Fourth Amendment

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By Jennifer Lynch | July 2, 2020 |

Should the police be able to force Google to turn over identifying information on every phone within a certain geographic area—potentially hundreds or thousands of devices—just because a crime occurred there? We don’t think so. As we argued in an amicus brief filed recently in People v. Dawes, a case in San Francisco Superior Court, this is a general search and violates the Fourth Amendment.

The court is scheduled to hear the defendant’s motion to quash and suppress evidence on July 7, 2020.

In 2018, police in San Francisco were trying to figure out who robbed a house in a residential neighborhood. They didn’t have a suspect. Instead of using traditional investigative techniques to find the culprit, they turned to a new surveillance tool that’s been gaining interest from police across the country—a “geofence warrant.”

Unlike traditional warrants for electronic records, a geofence warrant doesn’t start with a suspect or even an account; instead it directs Google to search a vast database of location history information to identify every device (for which Google has data) that happened to be in the area around the time of the crime, regardless of whether the device owner has any link at all to the crime under investigation. Because these investigations start with a location before they have a suspect, they are also frequently called “reverse location” searches.

Google has a particularly robust, detailed, and searchable collection of location data, and, to our knowledge, it is the only company that complies with these warrants. Much of what we know about the data Google provides to police and how it provides that data comes from a declaration and an amicus brief it filed in a Virginia case called United States v. Chatrie. According to Google, the data it provides to police comes from its database called “Sensorvault,” where it stores location data for one of its services called “Location History.” Google collects Location History data from different sources, including wifi connections, GPS and Bluetooth signals, and cellular networks. This makes it much more precise than cell site location information and allows Google to estimate a device’s location to within 20 meters or less. This precision also allows Google to infer where a user has been (such as to a ski resort), what they were doing at the time (such as driving), and the path they took to get there.

Location History is offered to users on both Android and IOS devices, but users must opt in to data collection. Google states that only about one-third of its users have opted in to Location History, but this represents “numerous tens of millions of Google users.”

Police have been increasingly seeking access to this treasure trove of data over the last few years via geofence warrants. These warrants reportedly date to 2016, but Google states that it received 1500% more geofence warrants in 2018 than 2017 and 500% more in 2019 than in 2018. According to the New York Times, the company received as many as 180 requests in a single week in 2019.

Geofence warrants typically follow a similar multi-stage process, which appears to have been created by Google. For the first stage, law enforcement identifies one or more geographic areas and time periods relevant to the crime. The warrant then requires Google to provide information about any devices, identified by a numerical identifier, that happened to be in the area within the given time period. Google says that, to comply with this first stage, it must search through its entire store of Location History data to identify responsive data—data on tens of millions of users, nearly all of whom are located well outside the geographic scope of the warrant. Google has also said that the volume of data it produces at this stage depends on the size and nature of the geographic area and length of time covered by the warrant, which vary considerably from one request to another, but the company once provided the government with identifying information for nearly 1,500 devices.

After Google releases the initial de-identified pool of responsive data, police then, in the second stage, demand Google provide additional location history outside of the initially defined geographic area and time frame for a subset of users that the officers, at their own discretion, determine are “relevant” to their investigation. Finally, in the third stage, officers demand that Google provide identifying information for a smaller subset of devices, including the user’s name, email address, device identifier, phone number and other account information. Again, officers rely solely on their own discretion to determine this second subset and which devices to target for further investigation.

There are many problems with this kind of a search. First, most of the information provided to law enforcement in response to a geofence warrant does not pertain to individuals suspected of the crime. Second, as not all device owners have opted in to Location History, search results are both over and under inclusive. Finally, Google has said there is only an estimated 68% chance that the user is actually where Google thinks they are, so the users Google identifies in response to a geofence warrant may not even be within the geographic area defined by the warrant (and therefore are outside the scope of the warrant).

Unsurprisingly, these problems have led to investigations that ensnare innocent individuals. In one case, police sought detailed information about a man in connection with a burglary after seeing his travel history in the first step of a geofence warrant. However, the man’s travel history was part of an exercise tracking app he used to log months of bike rides—rides that happened to take him past the site of the burglary. Investigators eventually acknowledged he should not have been a suspect, but not until after the man hired an attorney and after his life was upended for a time.

This example shows why geofence warrants are so pernicious and why they violate the Fourth Amendment. They lack particularity because they don’t properly and specifically describe an account or a person’s data to be seized, and they result in overbroad searches that can ensnare countless people with no connection to the crime. These warrants leave it up to the officers to decide for themselves, based on no concrete standards, who is a suspect and who isn’t.

The Fourth Amendment was written specifically to prevent these kinds of broad searches.

As we argued in Dawes, a geofence warrant is a digital analog to the “general warrants” issued in England and Colonial America that authorized officers to search anywhere they liked, including people or homes —simply on the chance that they might find someone or something connected with the crime under investigation. The chief problem with searches like this is that they leave too much of the search to the discretion of the officer and can too easily result in general exploratory searches that unreasonably interfere with a person’s right to privacy. The Fourth Amendment’s particularity and probable cause requirements as well as the requirement of judicial oversight were designed to prevent this.

Reverse location searches are the antithesis of how our criminal justice system is supposed to work. As with other technologies that purport to pull a suspect out of thin air—like face recognition, predictive policing, and genetic genealogy searches—there’s just too high a risk they will implicate an innocent person, shifting the burden of proving guilt from the government to the individual, who now has to prove their innocence. We think these searches are unconstitutional, even with a warrant.

The defendant’s motion to quash the geofence warrant and motion to suppress the evidence will be heard in San Francisco Superior Court on July 7, 2020.

See EFF.org for original article and links to court documents HERE.

Sprint customers say goodbye to their 5G service

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By Corinne Reichert | July 2, 2020 |

T-Mobile is shutting down the service to bolster its own offering. Sprint’s Samsung Galaxy S20 is the only device unaffected.

T-Mobile has switched off Sprint’s 5G network, three months after the carrier’s $26.5 billion merger with Sprint was completed on April 1. It’s redeploying the airwaves as part of its own 5G service, but unless Sprint’s 5G customers have a Samsung Galaxy S20 5G, they’ll need a new phone to use T-Mobile’s 5G network.

Though T-Mobile already made this move in New York City, it’s now switched off Sprint’s entire 5G network, which was also live in parts of Chicago, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Washington, DC, Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Kansas City and Miami.

T-Mobile is already switching the 2.5GHz spectrum back on, and it’s available now for 5G in some areas of LA, New York, Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia.

“We are working to quickly re-deploy, optimize and test the 2.5GHz spectrum before lighting it up on the T-Mobile network,” a T-Mobile spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

The carrier is offering replacement phones for former Sprint 5G customers. Customers who lease or finance a 5G phone at more than $10 a month will be given a Galaxy S20 5G for $10 a month after $31.67/month credit on an 18-month lease. Customers who own, lease or finance a 5G phone for less than $10 a month will be given a Galaxy S20 5G for zero dollars a month after $41.67/month credit on a new 18-month lease.

Read the original article at CNET.com HERE.

Google just announced it will automatically delete your location history by default

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June 24, 2020 | By Jessica Bursztynsky |

KEY POINTS

  • Google will start automatically deleting users’ location history after 18 months.
  • Web and app activity will also default to 18 months for new accounts.

 

Google announced Wednesday it will start to automatically delete users’ location history and web activity after 18 months.

Previously, users had to turn this setting on if they didn’t want Google to store their data for an indefinite amount of time.

The move allows Google to still hold on to information and recommend things you might like based on your previous location or browsing history, but it won’t have years and years worth of private data.

Here’s what’s changing.

Google location tracking

Google location history tracking is still off by default, but turning it on can be useful if you want products like Google Maps to offer personalized recommendations, like restaurants you might like, based on where you’ve been in the past. Or, Google might know from your location history that you typically leave for work at 8 a.m., and can recommend that you leave a bit earlier to avoid traffic on a particular day.

When location tracking is on, however, Google follows your location with precise detail — something you can see if you view your Google Maps Timeline.

Now, if you turn location history on, Google will auto-delete that data after 18 months. You can also set Google location history to automatically delete every three months or every 36 months.

Google web and app activity tracking

Web and app activity will also be deleted automatically every 18 months, but only for new accounts. New YouTube accounts also will have their history deleted after three years.

Web and app activity tracking, and YouTube history, is logged by default for an indefinite period of time for existing users. But, you can turn turn on web and app activity auto-delete, which rolled out last year, through the Google Activity Controls page.

“We continue to challenge ourselves to do more with less, and today we’re changing our data retention practices to make auto-delete the default for our core activity settings,” Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said in a release.

Other privacy changes

Google is making it easier to access incognito mode on select apps. The mode lets you browse or use apps privately, and Google won’t save your browsing history, cookies, or site data. In Google Maps, Google won’t keep a history of where you’ve been when you have incognito mode on.

A feature rolling out to iPhone on Wednesday, and later for Android and other apps, will let users long press on their profile picture in Google Search, Maps and YouTube to turn on incognito mode. Google said it will soon make it possible to stay in incognito mode across its family of apps, so you won’t have to turn it on in each individual app.

Google said it will also offer more proactive privacy controls and help guide users through managing their privacy settings. Additionally, users will be able to access key Google Account controls through search.

Read original article at cnbc.com HERE.