How to see if Google Maps is tracking you!!

A conversation came up about how Facebook is always listening to you...(which it is).  I also brought up the fact that Google Maps is tracking you too unless you disable it.

I wrote up a "How to" a few years ago & posted it in Facebook I think.  Not sure if anyone paid any mind to it but it bears repeating.  Here are the steps to find out if Google Maps is tracking you and how to turn it off.  This only applies to you if you have a GMAIL account and an Android.  I don't know if it does it on an Apple phone.  Someone would have to check for me.

1.  Make sure you are logged into GMail account and go to maps.google.com.

2.  In the search bar, top left, there are 3 horizontal lines.  Click on them.

3.  You'll see an option for "Your Timeline".  Click on that.  

If things settings are on, you should see a timeline of where you've been with little red dots showing everything.  Below is my timeline but I turned it off a couple of years ago:

You can see one dot, down in Athens, Ohio. I was there in 2012 visiting my daughter in college.

Paranoid yet?  If you have any dots, zoom in & click on them.  Feel free to explore.  It's very interesting to see Google tracking your movements.  Hell...it will even show the route you too, drive time, how long you were in certain place.  All kinds of information!!

(I blanked out some info here for privacy reasons)

But, as you can see, it provides a full timeline of where you were, how long you were there, all the fun stuff!

Personally, I have nothing to hide.  But nonetheless, Google doesn't need to keep track of me regardless of how cool it looks.

HOW TO TURN IT OFF!!

1.  If you see red dots, it's on.  At the bottom of the screen with all the red dots there is a banner that says something like "Location History is on".  Underneath it there is a "Manage Location History" button.  Click on that.

2.  Once in it will be titled "Activity controls".  Feel free to look around but the option you are looking for is "Location History" and a slider button next to it.  Click the slider button.

3.  A HUGE banner will come up "warning" you, you are pausing your location history.  Read it to be sure this is what you want to do.  If you don't want to pause it, click the "Cancel" button on the bottom.  If you do want to pause it, click "Pause".

4.  If you clicked "Pause" you'll be shown a banner that your setting is now off.  I see a new feature has been added to "Delete old activity".  Click that if you want.  If not, click "Got it".

5.  You'll be back to the "Activity controls" screen and the "Location History" will show it's paused.

You can back out of here, or close it all together, or feel free to look around.

If you have any questions, I'll do my best to answer them.  Hope this has helped at least one person out there!

John

To indict or not to indict...

The topic header was the question we were to answer every time a new case was brought before us.

When we showed up every morning by 8:30am, we had a stack of indictments in front of us.  The count was anywhere's between 10 to as many as 50 or so and the goal was to get through all of them that day, or try to. More on that part later.  
They called it a "Vote and Schedule Sheet".  A typical one looked like the one below:

For me, I'd jot my notes down on this, how much drugs they had, what kind,  how many needles, what kind of gun they were carrying, etc.  Things of that sort.
And if I was feeling rather bored, which was a lot of times, I'd throw down some serious doodling on the sheet.  What did I care?  It was being shredded at the end of the day.  :)

The process was explained to us and this is how I explained it to my wife and those that asked.
A witness or victim would come into the Grand Jury room where 12 of us were at and the PA (read My Grand Jury "tour" to find out what a PA is).   We would turn on a digital recorder and I would log the digital recorder #, who was testifying, where they were from (if they were public officials ie police officers, sheriff, deputy, parole officer, or victim or witness), the case number and who the defendant was.  So in essence I was the Grand Jury logger.  And to think my chicken scratch log taking is now part of a permanent record in the Summit County records somewhere.  :)
After the digital recorder was turned on, our foreman would swear this person in & they would sit down.
The PA would ask them to state their name, where there from and confirm they were there for this particular case #.
The witness/victim would then give us their side of the story.  What they were there for, what they saw, what they did, basically paint a very brief picture of what transpired to lead to the felony charge(s) the defendant received to get them to end up in front of us.
These testimonies could last as little as 57 seconds (me and deputy foreman joked around that we wanted to see if we could hear a testimony in as little as 1 minute.  It happened only once.  That being the cop would give his testimony,  the PA would have no questions for him, we would have no questions for him and he was done....BAM!!  57 seconds is the fastest we went through one of them!)
but to continue, the testimonies did last from 1 minute up to 2 days due to multiple witnesses and what not.  The one that lasted 2 full days was a big one!  But for the most case they were about 1 minute to about 10-15 minutes on average.
Once the witness would testify, the PA would ask any questions they would have of the witness to get a better picture of what happened.
Once they were satisfied with answers to their questions, we were allowed to ask any questions we had.
Sometimes some good questions were asked.  Sometimes, some very bad questions, not pertinent to the case was asked.  In some cases, the PA would let the person asking that question know that that wasn't pertinent to the case.  Some PA's would allow the question even though it wasn't pertinent.  We never understood that.
We had a couple of Grand Jurors (GJ) that sometimes would ask the most impertinent questions of the witness.  That only prolonged an already long day and generally had no bearing on the case and frustrated me (in particular) on many, MANY occasions.
One GJ, in particular, at one point during a testimony asked the testifying police officer, after we were told he used his ASP to try to slow down a defendent, she asked him how much the ASP weighed and if he was "properly trained in the use of the ASP."
I didn't care...I just lowered my head and was thinking, "NO...they just handed this cop the ASP and told him to look up some YouTube videos on the use of it and sent him on his way!!"
The cop sort of looked at the PA, the PA shrugged his shoulders and the cop said, "Umm..not sure of the weight of Officer Jones' asp, they vary in size.  And yes, all of the police officers have thorough training in all the gear they wear and are issued."
I just looked at her & I could see a look of confusion on her face like she was expecting more.  Everyone was looking at her.  She wrote something down as we waited for her to acknowledge his answer and after about a good 30 seconds, she said, "ummm...ok...thank you."  like, "Well I guess that will have to do."
This same juror was absolutely notorius for asking very, very off the wall questions that really had no bearing on the testimony and she would do the same thing after each question.  Write something down with a look of absolute confusion on her face as if there should be more information, wait about 20-40 seconds, then say, "Umm...ok...thank you." to release the attention from her.  And to top it all off, 90% of the time, she wasn't even involved in the voting.  She was one of the jurors that would have to leave when it came time for us to vote.
Her "antics" (for the lack of a better word) started almost immediately when we started hearing cases.  And I have more descriptions of other jurors.  But you'll have to check back for that chapter.
Once the PA and the GJ were satisfied with the answers, the testimony was over and the victim/witness was excused.
We'd shut off the digital recorder and the victim/witness would leave the room.  The PA would ask us if we had any questions for them pertaining to this particular case.  Sometimes we did, most of the time we did not.  Early on we had a number of questions and they quite expected that.  But after about 2-3 weeks...we had most of this stuff down pat.
The PA and 3 "alternate" jurors would leave the room.  We only needed 9 to vote and all we needed to indict was a vote of 7-2.
Sometimes we'd discuss what we heard just to make sure someone didn't miss anything.  Our foreman and one of the other jurors were meticulous on note taking.  I came to rely on one or the other if I felt I missed something.  I'd say about 85%-95% of the testimonies we heard were pretty much cut 'n dry.  "Probable cause" was all we had to worry about to indict someone.

Most of the time we were all in agreement on our votes.  On rare occasions after some debate, we'd end up with a "remanded" case meaning it was a 6-3 or lower vote (I think the 6-3 was the number) and that case either meant not enough evidence to convict or we, the jurors, just didn't think it was indictable.
Often times the PA would tell us, before they left, if they thought it wasn't indictable.  Meaning, "It's up to you GJ's to indict or not.  But if you do indict, I will have a hard time presenting this case in court and the defense will make mincemeat out of me.  But I am bound by the courts to do what you decide on."  I think only once did we go against the PA's suggestion.  Those votes were rather easy.

The foreman would jot down the vote count, write it on his vote sheet and take it out the the secretary...rinse, repeat....then we'd hear the next case!


Next episode...OMG...Did that defendant really say that?