By that time the cell phone was off, so it was not possible to contact Damien to ask him to send his location. The search on the ground was unsuccessful. But it was not possible to get the last position of the terminal, an Android smartphone, when it was on. Relatives and authorities involved asked Google for the geolocation data of the terminal, because of how useful it could be for the search tasks.
Marc Torrijos, Damien's co-worker, was one of those who tried to talk to Google. The company could take about 30 days to provide geolocation data, according to Torrijos. Too much time to be useful in a rescue operation. The deadline is because this information comes from satellites that are not owned by Google and there are no legal avenues to speed up the process. The same thing happens with the GPS location that Apple or Microsoft integrate into their devices.
In the end Google's response took three times that 30-day estimate, as Torrijos points out. No trace of the location of Damien's phone had been found, so there was no useful information for the search in this case. However, the company had taken about three months to provide a data that if served would have done especially in the first few hours or days. With this type of information request, Google acts as with others, under its company policy that involves a series of procedures that are not usually characterized by its agility, as in processes involving large companies and international institutions.
The usefulness of geolocation in emergencies
Rescue services already use geolocation to reach a person in distress. But to do this it is necessary that it can call 112 and send its own motu location, for example through WhatsApp. The geolocation data can be crucial in a disappearance, but to obtain it it has to be the affected person that provides it, something that can not do in case it is unconscious or has run out of battery.
In the case of Damien, Pablo Castro, one of the firefighters who participated in the search tasks, explains the interest in accessing GPS Phone Tracker information, as the last location of the mobile phone could have been obtained. "We knew he was carrying it, he used it, and the default configuration does not usually limit the geolocation of the Google or Apple user," Castro explains. Months later Google has reported that there was no record, but the speed in knowing this information can be crucial in other cases of disappearance.
There are other ways to get the position of a person with the information of the mobile phone. The authorities usually ask for the telephone triangulation, which consists of probing the power coming from the antennas that reaches the terminal. By comparing the intensities of several antennas you can get the approximate area where the mobile is. In cities the accuracy is very high, as there are many amplifiers, but in a mountainous area there are few repeaters and the margin of error is significantly higher.
In order to obtain the location by triangulation, a judge must obtain permission. This authorizes it and the telephony provider, who manages the antennas, sends the data. The judicial resolution is immediately enforceable and the deadlines are quite fast, between hours and days, according to legal sources. In the case of Damien, the information of the photos that sent by WhatsApp was not useful, because the messaging application erases (at least for Android) the Exif of the images, where you find the data about where they were taken.
However, the information that Google has, which stores a history of locations of each user, can have great accuracy if GPS is enabled. Like the data that Apple, Microsoft or BlackBerry have of their mobile users. An example of how useful this information may be is illustrated by another case of disappearance, this time in the United States. Here the emergency services were able to access the Find My iPhone application and found the person in question, who had suffered a car accident, after having been searching without success for 12 hours.
http://gps-phonetracker.net/
Legal vacuum
"The probability that someone with Android, with the geolocation activated, is lost in a mountain is quite high", this Ca Castro. Despite this probability and the usefulness of the information, there are no legal channels to obtain it with diligence. In Spain, at the moment there are only sectoral legislation. Data retention Act 25/2007, derived from the European data retention directive (which was invalidated by the European Court of Justice), requires operators to store a series of information for each user. This law does not imply that Google, Apple or Microsoft are not operators. "The criminal prosecution law has no provision in this regard, it only has a section dedicated to wiretapping, which has been since 1988. In criminal matters Completely orphaned. In the civil it is not contemplated. The situation is of a normative vacuum. There is nothing legal, in writing, that can serve a judge to order such things. There has already been a Supreme Court ruling in which he warns of the need for the legislator to regulate this, "indicate legal sources. The controversy is sown between the right to privacy and legal obstacles to investigate cases of disappearance or crimes. The preliminary draft of the reform of the criminal prosecution law that has just been submitted contemplates in Article 368 the possibility of requesting this type of proceedings. It is a matter of concern for the authorities' ability to intervene. Although nowadays situations can be so inconsistent that a judge does not authorize to intervene the telephone of an alleged victim of kidnapping, since only the terminals of persons suspected of having committed a crime can be intervened. Today in cases of emergency Or attempted suicide, for example, there is no standard that supports requesting GPS location data to a judge.
No civil procedure is established to carry out an assignment of this type of data. But even with the future legislation that comes out of the draft criminal prosecution law will solve the problem. This information comes from satellite systems whose Google or Apple services lease, but owned by the United States government or other international institutions , Because it is a technology of military origin. There are problems of jurisdiction and confidentiality when requesting these data. For his part, Castro criticizes that the protocols are not open. "It is not because they are not renewed but they are not flexible to the advances of the technology", he emphasizes. This means that emergency services can not today use data as apparently accessible as the geolocation of a smartphone. But it also implies that the new facilities that future technology can provide in the future are not contemplated in a legal framework and, therefore, can not be used in emergency situations.
