FBI agents track cell phones that pinged near the Capitol • Hacker News Board

Re: FBI agents track cell phones that pinged near the Capitol

#121

Post by simple_phrases » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 5:29 PM UTC

suifbwish wrote: post #77

nabla9 wrote: post #33

Forensic 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…

3 raises a very interesting and somewhat concerning possibility. In the near future as AI develops more in the crime detection arena you may become a suspect for crimes occurring in your geographical area based on things you are not doing or based on some set of states your smart devices have that match a statistical model of a suspicious person. The idea of becoming a suspect because you didn’t touch your smartphone…

ML is really good at picking up anomalies, and that is scary if, say, law enforcement or prosecutors are doing dragnet surveillance for anomalies in order to drum up charges.

Re: FBI agents track cell phones that pinged near the Capitol

#122

Post by reddog » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 5:31 PM UTC

hourislate wrote: post #82

All 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…

Add license plate scanners and high resolution police/military drones to that list.

Re: FBI agents track cell phones that pinged near the Capitol

#123

Post by xbmcuser » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 5:32 PM UTC

13415 wrote: post #94

bilbo0s wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This already happens, most of us just don't live in the neighborhoods where it happens. That's the unfortunate reality of today's America. It's also the reason that these techniques will be employed in a ubiquitous fashion in tomorrow's America. If we wanted to stop this, the time to complain was years ago when the practice was started in the drug war. Or even recently, when the practice was employed during the BLM r…

Like with any other form of surveillance, if it's a bad practice, then it shouldn't be used on anyone, regardless of race.

Thats his point this was being done years ago but white americans were not part of the demographic surveilled this way so didn't care now that they are and it gets stopped because of it then people accusing the police and government of racism are correct.

Re: FBI agents track cell phones that pinged near the Capitol

#124

Post by diebeforei485 » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 5:35 PM UTC

ev1 wrote: post #15

DebtDeflation wrote: post #8

>"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.

5G significantly increases granularity by a metric shit ton, and if they were continually pinging in the same area, eventually you end up with roughly one zone.

Could you share some resources with more information on this- how does it increase granularity?

Re: FBI agents track cell phones that pinged near the Capitol

#125

Post by suifbwish » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 5:36 PM UTC

olah_1 wrote: post #59

This makes me appreciate kill switches more on the librem five phone. And it also makes sense why Apple doesn’t want you to be able to fully disable wifi on your phone.

The way to disable WiFi on your device to change the password in the access point

Re: FBI agents track cell phones that pinged near the Capitol

#126

Post by nbzso » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 5:37 PM UTC

trident5000 wrote: post #102

syshum wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The TV Show Person of Interest's "Samaritan" AI, is how I see reality to be when we get general purpose AI for police use. There will be no "good AI" (aka "The Machine" in the show) to combat it.

This is kind of what Musk has been constantly warning about. Also important in another scenario is that legislators, police heads, and civilians simply have no idea how task specific AI (rather than general purpose) that governs them works so its a tiny unelected shadow club mass governing people.

Musk is embodiment of 'Hegelian Dialectic' in action. Tesla is normalising surveillance, Space X and StarLink are building the network capabilities of the future AI and Neural Link is the end point of human connection. What a hero, a real Tony Stark for the masses:)

Re: FBI agents track cell phones that pinged near the Capitol

#127

Post by Wistar » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 5:38 PM UTC

_underfl0w_ wrote: post #110

suifbwish wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3 raises a very interesting and somewhat concerning possibility. In the near future as AI develops more in the crime detection arena you may become a suspect for crimes occurring in your geographical area based on things you are not doing or based on some set of states your smart devices have that match a statistical model of a suspicious person. The idea of becoming a suspect because you didn’t touch your smartphone…

I recall (likely pre-covid) seeing a story posted here of some unsuspecting schmuck who became a suspect in a crime because his smart watch showed him circling near the area on his usual bike route. Scary times.

Perhaps this story about a Florida man and his fitness app data that "placed him" at the scene of a burglary because he had the misfortune of having ridden by the crime site three times during his ride?

https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/7/21169533/florida-google-ru...

Re: FBI agents track cell phones that pinged near the Capitol

#128

Post by simple_phrases » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 5:39 PM UTC

Enginerrrd wrote: post #118

bilbo0s wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The US isn't Europe, and in the US, law enforcement has undue influence in government and significant lobbying power. PBAs successfully lobbied to keep marijuana illegal all over the country, and it took public referendums to get it legalized in states that it is legal in. Even then, PBAs had undue influence in crafting legislation so that municipal police could still ticket and jail people in order to still generate revenue from marijuana possession and sale violations.

Re: FBI agents track cell phones that pinged near the Capitol

#129

Post by DennisP » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 5:42 PM UTC

trident5000 wrote: post #83

sneak wrote: post #2

Presumably this also includes journalists and other people the government has no business tracking. At what point will people say enough is enough to these kinds of insane overreaches?

The same people complaining about the Patriot Act and cheering on Snowden for publicizing NSA PRISM are the same people cheering on govt mass triangulating civilians.

And some of the same people who cheered on the Patriot Act and called Snowden a traitor are now getting swept up by government surveillance, after they committed serious crimes.

Re: FBI agents track cell phones that pinged near the Capitol

#130

Post by suifbwish » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 5:43 PM UTC

caseysoftware wrote: post #13

hcurtiss wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that was an actual insurrection or attempted assassination, it was the weakest effort imaginable. That doesn’t necessarily change the thrust of your comment (that enforcement is appropriate) but the breathless hyperbole around what happened has really surprised me. An actual insurrection would have looked very different. More guns and C4, fewer selfies.

"More guns" is right. I watched it live and then dug through the videos, selfies, etc after and inside the Capitol, I found one guy who might have had a gun. The other weapons appear to have been convenient - a fire extinguisher, flags, etc. It looks less and less like an "insurrection" and more like jackasses doing jackass things.

That’s what made it appear fake. Every republican protest recently has dozens of people carrying rifles. Why would it make sense for them not to do this when they are invading the capitol? It doesn’t add up. It’s almost as if they were not planning to really do anything except cause a diversion.