81–90 of 266 posts
My guess is that some IP-to-Geolocation service says nothing more specific than "Atlanta" and this couple happens to live in the geocenter of Atlanta.
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.
Crazy idea: install a heavy, wood engraved sign in front of their house that says "No, your phone isn't here".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disclaimer: I agree with the intent of your comment but, as this is the second time I've seen this comment in this thread, I'll bite and play devil's advocate. Additionally, I have absolutely no knowledge of dispatch or any other law enforcement software. Where would the knowledge of this phenomena be stored? Does the dispatch software have a notes field? If so, is it procedure to put that sort of information in plac…
> Where would the knowledge of this phenomena be stored? In the same place where cops record false intruder alarms and give people a warning or fine for too many.
In this very remote use case, I doubt CAD (Computer Aided Dispatch) vendors are going to write this use case into their development plans.
Unless they saw this on HN...
I found this particularly disturbing: > In June, the police came looking for a teenage girl whose parents reported her missing. The police made Lee and Saba sit outside for more than an hour while the police decided whether they should get a warrant to search the house for the girl’s phone, and presumably, the girl. When Saba asked if he could go back inside to use the bathroom, the police wouldn’t let him. > > “Your…
Now flip the situation around. If there was a missing girl being held there and the police didn't check it, how would people react? The chance of checking and making sure while in the process inconveniencing someone far outweighs the chance of not checking. Sure it sucks, but what are the other options? If you are the parent of this missing kid and the police tell you your child might be there but they can't look int…
Go to a judge, communicate the situation, and maybe get a warrant if the judge deems it appropriate. That's how the system is designed to work.
>The chance of checking and making sure while in the process inconveniencing someone far outweighs the chance of not checking.
>If you are the parent of this missing kid and the police tell you your child might be there but they can't look into it, you would be ok with that?
There are good reasons we don't let emotional parents head the investigations of their missing children.
The laws constraining law enforcement exist to stop harm that used to happen at their hands, but no longer does because those laws are in place (modulo lack of enforcement).
If there are situations where the law is an unreasonable constraint on law enforcement, then we should change the law to take that scenario into account, not argue for carte blanche to take whatever action is deemed maybe possibly useful.
I found this particularly disturbing: > In June, the police came looking for a teenage girl whose parents reported her missing. The police made Lee and Saba sit outside for more than an hour while the police decided whether they should get a warrant to search the house for the girl’s phone, and presumably, the girl. When Saba asked if he could go back inside to use the bathroom, the police wouldn’t let him. > > “Your…
Stories like this further my conviction to simply never answer the door if it's a police officer unless they specify having a warrant. They can't detain you if you don't answer, and chances are the officer will escalate the situation on his own if he wants a reason to detain you. There is nothing to gain and everything to lose.
I found this particularly disturbing: > In June, the police came looking for a teenage girl whose parents reported her missing. The police made Lee and Saba sit outside for more than an hour while the police decided whether they should get a warrant to search the house for the girl’s phone, and presumably, the girl. When Saba asked if he could go back inside to use the bathroom, the police wouldn’t let him. > > “Your…
They had probable cause: the last reported location of a missing teenage girl was their house.
They did not, so they could not.
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…
It seems much more likely that there is some bogus location data set somewhere that improperly links SIDS and GPS coordinates or filters fail and result some index into a GPS table that happens to correspond to this couple's home. If I were these two people, I'd contact the local police department every single time anyone shows up at their house and require that the PD fill out a report of some kind and keep it in a…
I think this is the biggest issue! Their rights where violated.
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?
It is rather odd that you insist on this when you know it to be false. The technology is not state-of-the art because it is missing the crucial feature of telling you how confident it is in its assessment. These people were clearly not involved and the tracking app was simply malfunctioning.
In my opinion this clearly shows how irresponsible it is to make an app like this which recklessly reports results without providing information on their accuracy and reliability. Of course the app will disclaim any sort of liability, but common sense tells you there will be life-and-death situations such as this where incorrect results will have consequences.