Well without that they would’ve needed probably months correlating things like “goes to bed at X o clock” with those chat logs. For a whole neighbourhood to then get a search warrant with that. Which of course is not above the capabilities of a state actor but depending on how big a fish he was they might not have bothered spending the resources. Being able to pin-point a house in maybe a day when all you have is a municipality is a whole different ballpark.
Timing attacks work, but if they’re running those then they have a pretty good idea as to both sides of the convo.
Put another way, if they’ve got to that point your opsec has already failed.
Well without that they would’ve needed probably months correlating things like “goes to bed at X o clock” with those chat logs. For a whole neighbourhood to then get a search warrant with that. Which of course is not above the capabilities of a state actor but depending on how big a fish he was they might not have bothered spending the resources. Being able to pin-point a house in maybe a day when all you have is a municipality is a whole different ballpark.