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Why do people keep coming to this couple’s home looking for lost phones?

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Re: Why do people keep coming to this couple’s home looking for lost phones?

#71

Post by kuschku »

lucb1e wrote: post #54
mikeash wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An amusing example of this sort of problem shows up sometimes on airplanes with onboard WiFi. If the phone doesn't get a GPS lock right away (common when you're in a metal tube) then it may show the position based on the mapped location for the hotspot MAC address, which is often at a completely different airport. Obviously, Skyhook isn't driving around mapping airliners, but I think these days they have the mobile d…

> I think these days they have the mobile devices themselves do the mapping, by phoning home with the WiFi hotspots it sees while out and about. That thought is correct. Google has been doing this for years, popping up an agree-to-continue like screen on Android phones on which everyone clicks "sure, I just want to use GPS now" and then uploads every place they ever go to Google. Mozilla is working on their own versi…

And it’s horrible when no one activates it, and you’re the first to do so – every minute your phone will activate WiFi, scan, activate GPS, get a lock, and upload the data.

Battery is empty in a few hours.

But, after doing so for a few days in a row, your battery consumption goes down again, probably because it has mapped enough for now.

Re: Why do people keep coming to this couple’s home looking for lost phones?

#76

Post by duaneb »

anikamariam wrote: post #41
duaneb wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, but it's unclear how the "find my iphone app" could ever lead to reasonable suspicion by itself. Among other things, they seemed to be cooperating, not resisting, and all the evidence is from a third party—no immediate evidence would have produced any reasonable suspicion. This is an abuse of police power from a position of ignorance. Do you really think that would hold up in court? I sincerely hope not. The man…

yes it will hold up in court. Police don't let suspects out of detention just because they complain they have to pee. High-tech state-of-the-art tracking technology from Google and Apple indicates that these people are somehow involved in the disappearance of a missing person. How dumb would the officer look if he let a suspect destroy evidence, escape, or otherwise pull something on the claim that they have to pee?

I think this in itself proves that the technology is far from state-of-the-art.

Google and Apple are not in the business of providing canonical evidence and should not be.

Re: Why do people keep coming to this couple’s home looking for lost phones?

#77

Post by such_a_casual »

cmiles74 wrote: post #26
craigmccaskill wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would not the location tracking telling them the girls phone was inside the house be probable cause? Seems more reliable than a dog alerting on a car.

Whoever said that the phone location tracking was anywhere near this level of reliable? IMHO, it's really only good as a sort of hint on where your phone _might_ be.

You must have missed the article where a judge ruled the police are not responsible for making sure technology is reliable, even drug tests: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10814544

(Police plan and execute a SWAT raid based on a bogus field test of tea leaves. Judge ruled the police are not responsible for knowing that the tests are completely inaccurate.)

Re: Why do people keep coming to this couple’s home looking for lost phones?

#78

Post by lovemenot »

cubano wrote: post #61

You know, its not completely out of realm of the possible that these people are lying and really know much more then they are telling police. I am not implying anything about these people, but I am just saying it isn't impossible. I lived in Las Vegas for a couple of years and was involved with some people who, from the outside, seemed like very normal folk...in fact, in many ways, I was someone like that, too, due t…

One is an engineer, the other a journalist. Maybe they or their "friends" have the skill and the motivation to hack the system, generate false positivrs to get published. Maybe this is someone trolling them, like swatting.

Re: Why do people keep coming to this couple’s home looking for lost phones?

#79

Post by TickleSteve »

emilecantin wrote: post #68
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a stretch. SSIDs aren't whats stored here, its the mac address of the access point that's stored. There are millions of SSID called "Netgear" for example. You can't use the name as a unique value, so mac addresses it is. Regardless, phones are smart enough to understand that GPS is authoratitive, AGPS second, and wifi/IP address as last. If GPS/AGPS says Chicago, but the wifi says Atlanta, the phone s…

Minor nitpick: AGPS, or Assisted GPS is actually almost the same as GPS. The only difference is that it gets the Almanach data off the Internet, instead of the satellites themselves (the satellites are constantly broadcasting that data, but it takes a few minutes to download it all).

AGPS isnt similar to GPS... it is GPS.

Like you say the almanac (and ephemeris) data is preloaded over an IP network to provide for a better TTFF (Time-To-First-Fix).

Also since the locations of the currently associated mobile tower is known, that is used as a seed for the GPS fix (or even a crude triangulation based on the signal strength from multiple towers).

Re: Why do people keep coming to this couple’s home looking for lost phones?

#80

Post by zimpenfish »

mikeash wrote: post #14
mapgrep wrote: post #9

My money is on a wifi SSID that matches the one used by thieves or a heavily-trafficked location the victims all pass through. My company moved ~5 blocks and it really screwed up the map on my phone (which I use to get around the city) for several months. My company had left the network SSID the same in the old location, so that no one had to re-configure their wifi. Even with GPS on, my phone was always convinced it…

An amusing example of this sort of problem shows up sometimes on airplanes with onboard WiFi. If the phone doesn't get a GPS lock right away (common when you're in a metal tube) then it may show the position based on the mapped location for the hotspot MAC address, which is often at a completely different airport. Obviously, Skyhook isn't driving around mapping airliners, but I think these days they have the mobile d…

UK trains with WIFI causes similar issues confusing e.g. London and Manchester stations.
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