Pattern-of-life analytics

Evidence rule

This page is public-interest research. An argument grade is not a court finding. A watchdog page describes the device. It is not proof a Nevada agency bought it or turned a feature on. A product description is not a Nevada practice. Agencies are not merged: the City of Las Vegas Department of Public Safety, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, the Clark County School District, the City of Reno, and the Nevada Department of Public Safety stay separate. A hotlist hit is not a confirmed crime. Legal review of this page is unverified.

What it does

Pattern-of-life analytics takes many location points and summarizes a routine: where a device sleeps, works, and travels. The output is an inference about a person, not a single ping. It can be run on broker data, on carrier data, or on plate reads.

Privacy watchdog concerns

Electronic Frontier Foundation. Fog Data Science Puts our Fourth Amendment Rights up for Sale. EFF says Fog sells phone-location data to police and that an area search is the equivalent of a geofence. EFF says a warrant should be required to look up one device and that dragnet area searches raise a Fourth Amendment problem. EFF says location data cannot be anonymized. This is EFF’s argument. Carpenter is not a holding about Fog.

Constitutional issues

Unresolved question

Fourth Amendment, Nevada Constitution art. 1, § 18

Warrant practice not established for a Nevada agency

Pattern-of-life analytics: The Nevada Independent describes 2022 Fog documents as discussing patterns of life. The manual was not re-read. That description is not a holding, and it is not proof of how Nevada DPS queries are run. Carpenter does not decide the analytic.

Carpenter v. United States, 585 U.S. 296 (2018). Does not decide this technology. United States Supreme Court. Carpenter addressed historical cell-site location information from a carrier. It does not decide advertising-identifier or broker location data.
United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400 (2012). Analogical constitutional argument. United States Supreme Court. Jones decided a GPS device attached to a vehicle. Concurrences discuss longer tracking. The mosaic theory is not a majority rule. The analogy to a broker feed is unresolved.
United States v. Knotts, 460 U.S. 276 (1983). Counterauthority. United States Supreme Court. Knotts did not treat public-road beeper tracking as a Fourth Amendment violation on its facts. It is not a holding that a broker feed is lawful.

Statutes attached to read, not findings.

NRS Chapter 239. Nevada public-records law is the route to ask for contracts, policies, and logs. Citing it is not a finding that a surveillance practice is unlawful.
Nevada Constitution art. 1, § 18. State search-and-seizure provision. This page does not quote the section. No section anchor was verified. It is listed only where a search question is actually implicated.
42 U.S.C. § 1983. A civil remedy for a deprivation of federal rights under color of state law. It is not a warrant statute, and it does not itself make a surveillance practice unlawful.

Nevada use

Not documented on this page as a separate system. The Fog article’s description of 2022 documents is on the Fog card, and the manual was not re-read.

The phrase appears in the newspaper’s description of Fog documents. It is not a second contract.

Next record

Pattern-of-life analytics: Do not promote the unread manual to a finding about DPS practice.

All devices. A document workflow for this page is not built. The arrest correction form is not a surveillance-document inbox. Corrections and source documents for this page follow the corrections policy. Corrections policy.