Who would have thought that the app that millions of people use every day to avoid getting lost would become the Sherlock Holmes of the 21st century? Surely, if you have followed the news these days, you know what we are talking about, with Soria as the protagonist. Simply put, Google Maps is now helping to solve crimes too.
One of the great examples is located in Galapagar, a small town in Madrid that suddenly became the hideout of an Italian gangster.
He thought he was safe, but he didn’t realize that Google Maps has eyes everywhere. The police, thanks to satellite images, were able to identify the house where he was hiding.
But there are many more cases. In India, a taxi driver was murdered and his body abandoned in the middle of nowhere. How did they find it? With Google Maps. Police used the location history of the victim’s cell phone to trace his last trip and the body turned up exactly where the map indicates.
Should Google location data be another tool for the Police?
Despite the great help that the app represents for this type of case, The truth is that it is a quite controversial topic that has been debated for years due to location records. For example, Google has been widely used by police.
A well-known case occurred in Virginia. Authorities violated the Constitution when they used Google location data to find people near the scene of a bank robbery in 2019.
The judge found that this police tactic, which is widely used throughout the United States, violated the law that protects people from unreasonable searches by collecting information about them, even without evidence that they might be suspicious.
And it is that, These warrants have become popular with law enforcement in cases where they have run out of leads using traditional investigative techniques.. They have been used to help solve all types of crimes, from robberies and home invasions to murders and sexual assaults, and to identify the people who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Critics say the warrants put innocent people at risk of being wrongly detained, as happened to a Florida man who became caught up in an investigation into the same robbery in 2019 after riding his bicycle past the scene.
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Tags: Google Maps, Mapas