The Verge:
None of the witnesses saw Graham’s face in February, and Graham himself wasn’t talking. He was physically similar to the man who held up the bank in February — but it was only enough to keep the case going, not enough to make it stick.
So investigators tried a new trick: they called Google. In an affidavit filed on February 8th, nearly a year after the initial robbery, the FBI requested location data pulled from Graham’s Samsung Galaxy S5. Investigators had already gone to Graham’s wireless carrier, AT&T, but Google’s data was more precise, potentially placing Graham inside the bank at the time the robbery was taking place.
And:
That data is collected as the result of a little-known Google feature that builds a comprehensive history of where a user has been — information that’s proved valuable to police and advertisers alike.
Every breath you take
Every move you make
Every bond you break
Every step you take
I’ll be watching you
— The Police
I still remember the “scandal” from around 5 years ago when iOS was locally cashing GPS positions (to improve maps functionality) and people made tools to visualize that data. As an iPhone user, I’m glad that was changed. I’m not really that surprised that the government is now using this data on Android users. Just another thing you give up when you allow yourself to be the product instead of the consumer.
In the case of Graham, that’s damned fine police work. He was robbing banks and they found evidence of it.
The moral of the story? Don’t take a smart phone with you when robbing a bank!