221–230 of 266 posts
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They had probable cause: the last reported location of a missing teenage girl was their house.
Then they should have gotten a warrant, and it should not have taken them an hour to realize it was a mistake.
Usually it's pretty accurate. But several times a year there are major anomalies For example showing me traveling the 4 miles to work in London via a quick journey to Oslo.
It's pretty reliable but not 100%
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I would guess that the find my phone apps have greater than 99% accuracy. Just not 100%. I'm disturbed by how anti-police HN is. Like even searching for a missing person is now some great abuse of power.
> I'm disturbed by how anti-police HN is. Like even searching for a missing person is now some great abuse of power. Because police, be it in the US or anywhere else, has time and again proven that they are not to be trusted and any power the legislation grants them can and will be exploited or illegaly expanded. Add to this that police (and most legislators, as well as most judges) don't have a fucking clue how comp…
What you're doing is the exact same kind of justification. As far as cops not "having a fucking clue" I'm willing to bet you have an equal deficiency of clue about solving and preventing crimes or any number of technical systems used in law enforcement, or the legal and documentation requirements in law enforcement.
You're just the 'too cool' anti-cop 'hacker' fighting for a 'cause' that really doesn't exist to fit some idealized boogeyman-version of law enforcement reality.
When cops screw up, let's hold them accountable, but let's not automatically assume that cops are evil. You don't support racial stereotyping do you? This is no different. I have been robbed twice in my life at gunpoint by black people (I drove a taxi for a time during college.) Yet, I don't look at all black people with suspicion. Yet we are willing to apply a hatred and disdain towards cops based on perception of their 'badness.'
As far as legislators and cops, how about you educate them? Or become one? Since you're an expert, put your name on the ballot and run for office. Or go work as a legislative aid. Start a website called a Legislator's guide to tech or something. Go testify at Congressiinal hearings. Police and legislators represent us, we the people and they are us, we the people. You sitting in your basement drinking fair trade coffee isn't helping. You actually doing something -- that's how you create positive change. Hating the police is the wrong fight.
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out of curiosity, does it only show you a single point? Does it not show you the potential error? I'm working on a mapping app that uses GPS data and the first thing we had to address was the fact that the data we got from the GPS units in the field are not perfect, they have error, hell they report their error, and our application shows that error as part of the map data. based on the data we have gotten from mobile…
Does it not show you the potential error? I often use Find My Friends to keep track of the kids. I presume its location methodology is similar to Find My iPhone. Here's how it behaves: About 10% of the time, it doesn't show a current location at all for the kid. It does remember the previous one, so it will show a location and say something like "46 minutes ago". When it does display a location, about 60% of the time…
That's the way I've always seen it, and I think it's a UX error. As you say, most people don't even see the circle as the potential error in accuracy. IMO it should be just the enclosing circle, otherwise people only see the point; with just a circle there's less ambiguity.
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I'm pointing out existence certificates of each independent property. View them as two systems, or assume they can be merged into one system. It's obviously impossible to have a publicly-available network that hides its existence to the public (while a private network can obviously hide its existence to the public completely), so each problem will obviously have different ideal solutions.
> View them as two systems, or assume they can be merged into one system. It's the merging and the details of the same that's the complicated bit, and the only thing worth talking about in this sub-thread. You made the assertion that the "the committees designing [wireless communications] protocols don't think [that things screamed on the street corner are public data]". [0] This is simply not true. The folks who des…
A high-bandwith radio transmitter obviously gives its presence up, but that doesn't mean it needs to identify itself. Of course the FCC likes transmitters to do this, but that too is an anti-feature with respect to public-use spectrum.
There were obviously tradeoffs involved for 802.11, which is how we got WEP. I'd just be surprised if having a (semi-)fixed MAC address was ever questioned, given that it's the basis for 802.3 and leaking some associated identity is basically a forgone conclusion in today's world of license plates, etc. But with the obvious effects of mechanized tracking and aggregation, it really shouldn't be. So I stand by my assertion that the designers would have benefited from a perspective where being pushed to do the equivalent of continually shouting/showing one's identity is a very bad thing.
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The findmyfriends feature on my iPhone has been 100% accurate in identifying where my friends are My wife and I use Find My Friends quite often to keep track of our children. I've used it for years, so I'm quite familiar with it. Our experience is quite the opposite of "100% accurate". I provided more detail in this other post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10950107 Edit: just looked up the USA version of "pro…
What percent of the time is the location totally wrong? Greater than 50% of the time? If not then it's totally justified.
Why do they keep answering the door?
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> 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? There's a lot of ways in which the American system is deliberately set up to let some of the guilty go free and requires a certain degree of responsibility for those detained, charged, or imprisoned in order to preserve a set of rights that are important related to basic huma…
what the hell are you talking about? no one cares how you think the laws should be. The laws are the way they are. The police can detain you if they have reasonable suspicion to believe you are involved in a crime in any way this was 100% legal according to the laws. no one cares what your fantasy interpretation is
TLDR - Please watch the tone of your comments (EDIT: here and in other comments on this topic). Thanks!
""" Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face-to-face conversation. Avoid gratuitous negativity.
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. E.g. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3." """
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There's nothing in the article to say that the residents were arrested. An arrest is the threshold for controlling someone's legitimate actions: if the police don't have enough evidence to arrest the person, then they shouldn't be limiting their movements. That is the whole point of arrest (and the related burden of proof required to make an arrest). To restrict someone's actions without legal authority - such as arr…
Holy shit civics education is pretty bleak in high school these days huh? everyone commenting on this is so ignorant you all must be teenagers the cops dont have to arrest you to control you. They can detain you whenever they want and barely need any reason at all. A hunch is sufficient to detain you for pretty much as long as they want if their hunch continues. fuckin privileged teenagers
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Why do parents track their children? Kids are tougher than parents credit them for. It's unfortunate that new technology will let parents hover forever. Luckily, they're resourceful. I wonder if it's possible to hack the app to send false location data? There are ways to jailbreak a phone that make it appear unjailbroken (e.g. to put a keylogger on it). Maybe this technique could be used to acquire freedom, by MITMin…
>Why do parents track their children? Two reasons come to mind: - parents spend a ridiculous amount of time worrying over ever-yet-more unlikely ways that their children will be maimed or murdered that very day - it's not unknown for kids to have relatively poor reasoning and decision-making skills
Agreed. And one way to get better at decision making (if you're a kid) is having the opportunity to try and fail at it. So this isn't a good reason to track your kids after all, IMHO.