If it matters that someone, anyone, knows you were at this or that location at this or that point in time, don't bring your phone with you at all. We're at a juncture where you cannot trust your smartphone (I'm looking at Android specifically) to not have its cellular transceiver running even when the phone is supposedly powered off.
FBI agents track cell phones that pinged near the Capitol
111–120 of 516 posts
Re: FBI agents track cell phones that pinged near the Capitol
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
Walking around with a gun in DC is an automatic felony with potentially years in jail, especially if it's in connection with a violent act which this insurrection was. DC is not a gun-friendly place. These people were stupid, but not that stupid.
To make sure I understand you: Your claim is that a bunch of people showed up to violently overthrow the government but didn't bring guns because that would be illegal?
They didn't show up to violently overthrow the government, they showed up to violently overturn the results of a specific election.
There's a subtle but extremely important difference. Perhaps they are entirely equivalent to you, but they were not at all to the rioters/attackers.
What they did was crime, not war.
Re: FBI agents track cell phones that pinged near the Capitol
#113All cells phones, at all times, are tracked everywhere. I'm sure there are 1000's of cameras that are also used to capture visual data (in DC area). Every person flying (domestic/international) is already tracked. MC/VISA/Bank/ATM records are tracked. Every txt, post, voice call, letter you send, package you receive, is tracked (OCR's). Your vehicle is tracked via programs like Onstar, etc, even if you don't sign up…
Just don't use services that track you. It's possible to live a fairly normal life despite all this. I do it. Don't carry a cell phone, turn off javascript everywhere, use a non-onstar/etc car, don't fly commercially, use cash for in person transactions and bitcoin (or monero) online where you can. All that said, I'm not planning on trying to overthrow the government or anything stupid. I just don't like being spied…
No. At this point you become a standout anomaly, or you will become one, in the not too distant future. The progress of society is becoming increasingly collective. Individual choices are becoming less important. I'm not saying we're there yet, but already we're at a point where meaningful societal change needs at least a considerable group of people all acting together, and even then, fundamental changes have been taken out of people's hands altogether, unless "we" are prepared to go to extremes, which is simply not a characteristic of large groups, unless the situation has deteriorated severely, but be sure, our overlords will keep us minimally complacent enough.
/rant
Re: FBI agents track cell phones that pinged near the Capitol
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
And another self-centered European who can't countenance that the rest of the world has neither incentive nor inclination to kowtow to Europe's whims, instead preferring to lecture us on our moral inferiority. But such things happen, and we should both get used to it.
I don't live in the EU currently but I don't think "no means no" and "informed consent is good" and "stop abusing and violating all of your users" is a bad thing. edit: This news article of several paragraphs is loading content from 11 domains directly. If you unblock a few of them, it loads JS that collects and sending your data and unique identifiers to dozens of domains. This one page of text makes over 1,000 requ…
No one said pursuing these good things is a bad thing.
But expecting everyone to do it for you, and then lecturing them on their inferiority when they find it easier or more profitable to block you than comply, is pretty lame. Europeans and their representatives have shut themselves off from this world of 1000 fingerprints; they should try owning the consequences of their actions.
Re: FBI agents track cell phones that pinged near the Capitol
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
Huh? Insane? The capitol was assaulted in order to prevent the democratically elected president. An actual insurrection which maybe had some attempted assassination and theft/sale of national security secrets mixed in. Seems like a pretty reasonable response.
>assault on the capitol; insurrection; attempted assassination I just want to point out the two problems with the rhetoric that mass-media and you are using to describe this event: 1. These words confer explosions, gunfire, and mass loss of life. In using these words, you are conjuring extremely violent images within the minds of your listeners. When your listeners discover the truth of the event, that the images you…
> These words confer explosions, gunfire, and mass loss of life
There were bombs planted at both Democratic and Republican party headquarters. One man was arrested with a pickup truck full of napalm.
At least some subset of the Capitol rioters absolutely intended to cause "explosions, gunfire, and mass loss of life". I think you're being dishonest pretending this was only a bunch of goons posing for instagram.
This is similar to the way people remember Columbine as a school shooting, but the two murderers actually built a large number of IEDs including propane tank bombs. If they hadn't been such incompetent bomb-builders, hundreds would have died and the event would be remembered as a bombing akin to Oklahoma City instead of mere mass-shooting.
Re: FBI agents track cell phones that pinged near the Capitol
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't disagree with your overall point. But you're not making a very fair comparison. The guy holding the podium was not the worst part of the attack on the capitol.
What was the worst part of the event at the capitol? What do you think would make a fair comparison?
> Guns, Brass Knuckles, Homemade Napalm: Read Some of the Documents From Arrests After the Capitol Riot
https://www.washingtonian.com/2021/01/11/guns-brass-knuckles...
Re: FBI agents track cell phones that pinged near the Capitol
#117>"And they can actually pinpoint on Google Maps exactly where you were standing. Like, he knew where I was standing on the sidewalk, like specifically, based on my cell phone ping." You don't get that level of granularity by merely triangulating cell tower pings. Sounds like they got GPS location data from people's Google accounts.
You don't get that level of granularity from a single ping, but you theoretically could from hundreds, the noise will tend to center around the true location. Also consider that more than 3 stations probably were nearby.
Modern mobile networks choose the best 7 for the client but the number of towers within physical range getting pinged is quite substantial.
It's an awesome, deep and nuanced topic certainly not suited to a political HN comments section. "Timing Advance" is the probably the jumpoff keyword for anyone interested.
Mobile towers also use beam-forming in two directions and have a few other techniques to get better signals, the metadata involved with these things (if kept) essentially drops the error range down to GPS levels if not better.
Re: FBI agents track cell phones that pinged near the Capitol
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Like with any other form of surveillance, if it's a bad practice, then it shouldn't be used on anyone, regardless of race.
Point is, the time to stop that particular practice was in its infancy. Waiting until the practice is both widespread and normalized is a losing strategy. The use of cell phone data is well understood, well litigated, and for all intents and purposes, settled law. To come along and unwind all that now is sisyphaean. We need to start getting out in front of the issues. Not reacting all the time. And certainly not allo…
This is unnecessarily defeatist. GPDR proved that you could get enough support for large scale walkback of thoroughly entrenched practices.
Re: FBI agents track cell phones that pinged near the Capitol
#119Forensic methods used by police and intelligence go much deeper than just looking at phones near the crime scene. 1. They look at phones moving towards the crime scene and going dark when getting close. This is also how you can detect secret meetings between people. They move towards the same area and shut down their phones. 2. They look at suspect phone going dark anywhere around the time of the incident. 3. Leaving…
Where did you learn this by the way? (I'm assuming this is not just a speculation.)
I read books about spatial techniques used in forensic investigations and listened some lectures. The company I worked for used to have law enforcement customers needing GIS and data mining consultants.
Re: FBI agents track cell phones that pinged near the Capitol
#120It blows my mind that a bunch of conspiracy-minded folks (the sort of people who won't get a vaccine because they think it contains a tracking chip from Bill Gates) would stage an insurrection and not turn their phones off! Honestly, what did they think was going to happen? As the saying goes, "When you strike at a king, you must kill him." You don't get to fail miserably at your coup and then go back home to your re…
Because no one was there for an insurrection. Thats a conspiracy theory by mainstream media and the democrats