So, people keep coming to the thread with the same question over and over of why it took so long to get the information about the cell pings back. I tried to answer it yesterday based on secondary experience being previously married to a LEO and I've been wracking my brain and Google trying to think of a way to explain it from my 911 dispatching experience in the county that KB and CDC went missing from. I've been out of then profession for about 8 years now, so things have probably changes some however there were a couple instances when I was working where we had to request pings from cell companies because someone called in to advise they'd been in an accident and had gone off the road and we couldn't find them. Our call location system would triangulate cell calls based off the three nearest cell towers. However, it wasn't perfect and sometimes calls would jump towers and you would get a call from another county or even state. When you request info from a cell company, they are in the business of protecting their customer's legal rights from LE in these situations, so we had to prove the customer was in imminent danger. Of course we had a 911 call, but we still had to get an warrant signed by a judge, if I am not mistaken and it sometimes still took a couple hours turn around time before we got the location back from the cell company. Most of the times one of us stayed on the phone with the victim until we got help there, the voice in the darkness, praying their phone didn't die or lose signal.
With this case I imagine they had a hard time proving their was imminent danger, since it was probably the cell ping to a RSO's property that was the clear indicator that they were indeed in danger. I'm curious to find out how they finally convinced the cell company to.give up the info. As I was trying to find a good link for you guys last night showing what different cell companies require as proof and what they will release to whom I noted that a lot require permission from the account holder and or a court order. Unfortunately, I was having computer issues and gave up and went to bed. I am out running errands so when I get back home, I will try to find it again.
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