This week we had some great police work that resulted in the apprehension and identification of some area auto thieves. As you may recall, recently I have been talking about the thefts of some high-end SUV vehicles from the area. We had identified a vehicle of interest that was a White pick-up truck with dual rear wheels. Area residents had provided us with some video surveillance footage of vehicles that matched the same description that had been in the area at the time of some the thefts. Some of these videos were of a very good quality and provided unique vehicle characteristics. On Tuesday night, one of our evening officers noticed a vehicle matching this description driving in XXX near midnight and initiated a traffic stop. The officer had a suspicion that something just was not right with the subjects inside of the truck and called Commander YYY who was home asleep.

By chance after reading last week’s V-LINC another resident had sent some photos of our suspect vehicle that he had seen posted on another neighborhood social media web site. The commander had seen these pictures and knew even more about our suspect vehicle due to reviewing those photos Saturday morning. The commander was able to determine upon talking with the unit at the scene of the traffic stop, that this was indeed our suspect vehicle due to some very unique and specific characteristics. This was enough to effect an arrest. A search of the suspect vehicle subsequent to the arrest, located multiple sets of master key fobs and several vehicle “brain blockers” that are plugged into stolen vehicles to block GPS and other vehicle anti-theft software and technologies from working.

A call to HPD auto theft detectives also excited them as they too have been looking for this crew of thieves. The crew of 4 will be facing a litany of charges as several area agencies are putting together charges for this active group of criminals and their criminal enterprise. Great work by our officers by staying observant, by our residents for being engaged and for sharing their videos and photos, specifically by one resident for sharing information and pictures from another social media web site

While it was no secret that cameras were documenting the attack, another type of technology was also keeping a close watch — and making a detailed record — of the people who walked from the National Mall, where the president gave his speech, to the halls of the Capitol building. This location data, consisting of millions of pings — a record of the location of a given smartphone at a given time — was being dutifully collected by companies that specialize in such things.

The data is supposed to be anonymous. But, as past reporting from Times Opinion has demonstrated, it’s ludicrous to describe it this way. The movement history of each smartphone is as unique as a fingerprint. In the case of the riot, the smartphones they carried could be traced from the Capitol back to the owner’s home in many instances. That’s why it was so easy for my colleagues Charlie Warzel and Stuart Thompson to match smartphones with their owners, after a source shared a leaked data set containing millions of pings from Jan. 6.

The availability of this data raises its own set of questions. The source was outraged by the attack on the Capitol but also outraged that the tracking technology is now as pervasive as it is unregulated. What today could be used to identify insurrectionists could just as easily be turned against peaceful demonstrators and other innocent Americans.