Finding the Missing with their Phones.

We're going to look particularly at police investigations because we feel we need an evidence base in which to work from when we begin looking at cases that we're going to investigate through this podcast, and we want to give you the listener and understanding and the background of some of the logistics and roles that police play when they're

actively looking at missing persons. The reason this is so important is because we're looking particularly at the racialized nature of these cases and how the police are complicit in the continual disappearances of Aboriginal women in order to understand that, we have to actually delve into police protocols and how they actually investigate these ongoing cases. We're going to specifically look at one issue, and that's triangulation because it does play a role when police are going out to look

for a missing person. Across Australia, over forty thousand people are reported missing every year. We don't really know how many of those are Aboriginal people, how many of those are Aboriginal men, women, and children, because the police often do not count and they don't tell us.

So given that so many people who go missing have their mobile phone on them, triangulation allows the police to locate a person using their mobile data. And the way it works is that almost every mobile phone app that you have knows your location. You give your phone approval for that app to access it, so it can be done via GPS, which is a much more powerful tool

as it's very accurate. But triangulation, as it's used currently by most state polices in Australia, simply involves looking at the most recent mobile phone towers that a mobile phone has communicated with, So for it to be most effective, you want three mobile phone towers, as has been shown in a missing person's case in Victoria this year, just

one mobile phone tower was enough. And the way it works, quite simply, is that when your mobile phone communicates with a tower, it takes a certain number of milliseconds for the data to go to the tower and come back from your phone, and triangulation allows for that amount of time to be measured, and when you measure that across the three mobile phone towers. You basically draw a circle around each one based on the time it took, and each millisecond gives you roughly the number of meters it is.

And it allows those three circles, once they're drawn, to show a common point where they overlap, and that will help police know within roughly fifty to two hundred meters where a person might be. Using what's known as trilateration, which some police forces are now using, you can locate someone to within ten meters or less. So when someone's missing, this is a really powerful tool, but it has to be used and it has to be used appropriately.

or being hurt or seriously harmed. But one of the problems with that is obviously different police are going to assess someone as high risk differently, and this is what we've seen come out throughout a number of inquests that generally officers who are familiar with missing persons cases and have had the appropriate training will understand much better who is at high risk, whereas we've seen far too often that police officers who have not had that training, and

many have admitted on the stand under oath that they were never given the training to do these assessments and have wrongly categorized people as low or medium risk. And if someone is only at low risk or medium risk, then the legislation does not allow for the triangulation to occur. And what's important to understand is that is even if the family requests it, and in a lot of inquests we've seen recently where the person has never been found,

the family were desperately asking for that. So the other test is that and something that's just been changed was that the person had to face an imminent threat, meaning the danger to them was very serious. And what the inquests over the last ten years have found is again different police were determining imminent as being different from case to case, and often they were completely wrong, and again

they just hadn't had the training. So a number of requests for triangulation were refused based on these misunderstandings and often just bad practice. So the way it works is a police officer will be assigned to a missing person's case and then they take charge and they're supposed to

have a role throughout that process. Obviously they're not on duty twenty four to seven, so the file of the missing person is supposed to be updated, and new information about that person means that a new risk assessment should be done. Once they are deemed high risk with the approval of their generally like the station manager for one of a better word, it's usually an inspector, they will then ask them if they can apply for triangulation to

be performed. Then that officer has to call a dedicated officer in the police force in each state ask for their permission, and that officer decides whether it's high risk and whether there is a risk of serious harm or death to either the person someone else or causing it to themselves. And again we've seen that knocked back far too many times where triangulation would have worked very well and it was refused by that officer with the powder

decide whether it's used. So just last year, the federal government overwhelmingly voted to remove the imminent aspect of the threat because it was something it seemed largely to be a word that many police did not even understand its meaning, and a number of coroners were very scathing of the police that it was obvious to all experts involved except the police, that the was in imminent danger, and yet the police did not understand that, not because they didn't

understand the evidence, but they simply didn't understand the word. So to get past that risk, the word imminent has been removed from the legislation. But we still have the issue of whether police even ask for triangulation to occur, whether they deem the person to be at risk, whether they deem the person to be worthy. We've heard too often where police have accused Aboriginal women in particular of just walking off for gone walk about, and in that

case it simply will not be used. And the problem with that, and the problem with making that assertion by the police, and that assumption that the person wasn't at risk of harm and has just walked off or gone

away for a few days. Is once the battery of that far goes flat, triangulation is almost impossible, and so we need the police and emergency services who also including ambulance and fire departments who do have access to this technology as well, to understand how urgent that first twenty four hours is.

since the person has been last seen. Would triangulation in any way assist or would there be I guess justification for not using triangulation by those police officers.

especially if they're at risk someone's taken them. But my argument is that you can still ascertain the last location of that phone. And so if that person's gone missing from Canberra and they're reported missing in camera, but you request triangulation and shows that they're in Wollongong or that was the last known location, suddenly you completely change your investigation. You're much more likely now to focus on the area around Wollongong. You're also going to change who did that

person maybe know from Wollongong. Was there someone who was a threat to them who had a reason to head to the Wollongong area if they had kidnapped or taken

that person. It would also mean that it would instantly give authority to the Act Police to contact New South Wales Police, both at a statewide level, so that a missing person's report could be put out across New South Wales and also they could contact Wollongong Local Area Command so that investigations could take place in that area, and that would also police to go to the last known location of that mobile phone and look for clues and evidence there. So that's why I always believe that when

someone is at risk, it still should be used. The other issue is that there is newer and better technology usually known as trilateration, and what it is able to do is like any app on your mobile phone, and what your mobile phone does is not only is it using mobile phone sell tower data, it's also using the data of any Wi Fi networks that your phone has

either connected to or attempted to connect to. And it also uses the GPS signal inside your phone, which if you've ever used say Google Maps, it knows exactly where you are. If you are standing on the corner of a street, it knows you're standing on the corner of a street. So that information is available to police if

they choose to use it. And people might think that this is very difficult or expensive, but anybody who has an Apple device will have access to the fine MyPhone feature which you can use to find your phone or your iPad or rye Watch, and it's no more complicated than that, and that app simply relies on trilateration. So the last Wi Fi network, which a Wi Fi network has a very small range it would generally in a residential area, allow you to determine that the person was

in one of maybe two houses at the most. It also uses the GPS data, which not only lets police know the location or the last known location, but the route by which the person has gone from their last known location to where that phone currently is, and it also can tell them which Wi Fi connections it's tried to pick up along the way, again helping with that root information. So it's a very powerful tool, especially because we know how important those first twenty four hours are.

Generally if once the phone is off, they will then need the assistance of the telecommunications provider, and the legislation covers the procedures for that, so the police officer in charge will then be able to call, say the person's mobile phone was with Voteraphone, They can call Votaphone and Votaphone can very quickly bring up on their computer which sell towers. Mobile phone towers were the last ones that

that Mobile Phone ACTSS. And in addition to that, using trilateration, the police also have the power to contact say Google or Meta who runs Facebook and Instagram and all the other app providers and developers, and get information from them as to when a person may have logged onto Facebook, and that will also contain their location data, so the

police have that power. The telecommunications companies have that information and it's stored, so even if someone is not reported missing for a few days, it's very easy for Facebook to go and look when someone lasts accessed their website or their app and where that was done from and how it was done, was it done using Wi Fi mobile phone data? And where did that come from? And they'll be up to again detail that to a very

close area. So it really reduces things from looking for a needle in a haystack to really giving police a very good location of either where the person is or where they have been. And just to give one example of a person who sadly passed away having been reported missing by their family, the police chose not to request triangulation.

That request was refused by the senior police officer because they didn't believe the person was at risk of serious harm, even though the evidence showed that they were, and they were known after the event to have been in a room in a certain hotel and the later triangulation and trilateration data pinpointed that room, and had police made the request for triangulation, they would have had four hours where that person was still alive and still in that hotel

room and be able to go immediately to where they were.

still at least gives the police an idea. In the city, you can have things like if someone was in an underground car park, then there might not be any reception, or there might be a great delay again in that signal going from the mobile tower back to the phone, but it will still tell the police that they were

in that underground car park. In a country area where mobile phone reception is poor still in Australia, and Australia is one of the worst countries in the OECD for mobile phone reception, it will still drastically narrow down a person's location, even if it's not as accurate. Again, so in the city you could be accurate within at least a few hundred meters, if not within one or two

houses on a street. In a rural area. It might give you a result of perhaps one square kilometer, but that is still a hell of a lot better than someone being three or four or five towns away. So I would argue it's always useful, and as technology improves, it's becoming increasingly more useful.

it's shocking that this isn't a key part in investigating missing purposes to begin with, particularly when you know, like a lot of these cases we know of, there have been searchers, and what we're going to argue in future episodes is that they were searching in the wrong place.

from triangulation. So they can't access your phone calls, who you've been calling. They can't access, say, your text messages, or your photos or your videos. So there's a lot of misinformation around that. And if the police do need to access that sort of information, then there is a very detailed log that has to be recorded and it's monitored by a third party, so states have telecommunications ombardsman.

There is oversight on how often police use triangulation, in what cases was it appropriate, And there really is no suggestion of any merit that I can see that argue against using it. Largely, in my opinion, the pushback against using it is misguided, and it's misguided in the sense that it's seeking to protect people's privacy when those people's

privacy is not at risk. What is at risk is their life, And what we know is that in nations like the United Kingdom, where they've been using this technology for a lot longer than we have in Australia, that sixty four percent of people were located within the first forty eight hours, and that twenty two percent were located within the first week, and ninety seven percent of all missing people in the United Kingdom ended up being found alive.

That's by the police, and that at least twenty percent of those cases in the forty eight hours, triangulation was

a crucial tool in finding them. And so this was part of arguing for the change to the legislation last year, was that it really is very very important, and especially as you pointed out Amy, where we know in so many missing persons cases where the police have simply been looking in the wrong area, that this is a tool that would have put search and rescue, the SEES and other volunteer organizations like Surf Life savers looking in the right area. It's not just police who can use this technology,

it is emergency services across the board. And so one of the big problems, however, remains police reluctance to use it when they don't believe someone is at a high risk. And I think we have explored and we understand that in Australia, Aboriginal women and children are at a particularly high risk of serious harm or death when they go missing, and for it not to be used to locate them safely and in a timely manner is deeply problematic. Just to give one more example, many people will know about

baby Charlie who was murdered in Western Australia. Both his mother and his grandfather begged police to use triangulation to find Baby Charlie's former stepfather, who eventually murdered him, and the police refused to do it. Baby Charlie was known to be alive for at least ten hours after they'd made that request, and he was in an area where mobile phone data would have shown not only what street he was in, but right down to one, maybe two houses.

He could still be alive if triangulation was used. And I think it's a tragic and prime example of where this technology can be used to save a life, and because of the police was not used to save.

And I think so it comes down to, you know, the fact that there is this technology that could very easily find them, save potentially save lives, but also find them to bring them home to their families so their families don't have to go through that long process. And because of this, these racialized in these outright race views of Aboriginal people, we know existing police forces across the country,

it's not being utilized. And that's what I wanted to ask you as a closing question, Martin, is why is it so important to actually start digging into things like triangulation and I guess investigating every part of these processes as we look into these cases have disappeared Aboriginal women.

by knowing that they have not helped. You know, we are stupid if we keep allowing the same mistakes to be made over and over again. The second reason is it allows us to propose new legislation. As Aboriginal people and lobby groups work around these issues, then you can call for a new legislation to make, for example, some of this technology mandatory when an Aboriginal person is missing

or feared kidnapped. So, just as we have the Custody Notification Service in almost every state where the police must contact the Aboriginal Legal Service and report that there's an Aboriginal person they've taken into custody, why do we not have the same mandatory practices for when an Aboriginal person goes me? And thirdly, I think it highlights a need

for serious oversight by Aboriginal people in these contexts. So I would prefer to see rather than a senior police officer making the decision about whether triangulation should be used because we know it works, it should be taken out of their hands. And we could have dedicated Aboriginal workers who are trained in this area, who can liaise with the family, and who can make an informed decision as an advocate for that missing person that they want that

technology used immediately. And so I think there's three really key reasons why exploring these issues are so important. We can discover past mistakes, we can rectify them into the future, and we can understand how to best do that. That was episode seven of Curtin the Podcast, brought to you by black Cast and produced by Clint Curtis. For more you can visit us at www dot curtinpodcast dot com, follow us on Twitter at Curtain Podcast, and help to

support our work at Patreon dot com. Backslash Curtain Podcast