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FBI agents track cell phones that pinged near the Capitol

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

#171

Post by giancarlostoro »

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…

Good thing I rarely answer calls and my phone creates traffic on its own. Hell, I wouldnt be surprised if I could just spoof my phone's traffic with simple scripts.

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

#172

Post by alwayshumans »

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…

Interestingly the same techniques are applied to the fishing industry to monitor for illegal fishing in protected areas.

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

#173

Post by freshpots »

suifbwish wrote: post #130
caseysoftware wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

DC's gun ban is very strict so I assume most did respect that to avoid prison.

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

#174

Post by bogomipz »

trident5000 wrote: post #89
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…

Putting my tin foil hat on real quick. Just wait until they implement AI into all these sensors to "predict crimes", turning life into Minority Report. The interesting part is its the common people who will naively go along with it to feel more safe while at the same time further imprisoning themselves.

Predictive Policing is already a thing. It was in use for a decade by the LAPD in the US. See:

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-lapd-precision-pol...

and

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-04-21/lapd-end...

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

#175

Post by curiousllama »

trident5000 wrote: post #89
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…

Putting my tin foil hat on real quick. Just wait until they implement AI into all these sensors to "predict crimes", turning life into Minority Report. The interesting part is its the common people who will naively go along with it to feel more safe while at the same time further imprisoning themselves.

They've been doing this for years. Chicago has a list of everyone that will get shot (or shoot someone) over the next year or so. It's like 2k people with 90%+ recall. St Louis has something similar. But it hasn't exactly stopped crime.

Sci Fi is fun, but crime is a social phenomenon of the type that tech is deeply unsuited to actually solve. Privacy is a legit consideration in the short and long term, but AI taking over isn't really.

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

#176

Post by avdlinde »

iamacyborg wrote: post #158
Drip33 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have access to some marketing data and for fun, select * from mobile_location where latitude between 38.88778433380732 and 38.891917997746894 and longitude between -77.01269830654866 and -77.00613225870377 and epoch_timestamp between 1609954200 and 1610067600 Returned quite a number of mobile devices accurate to the meter. Was fun to see which phone was in which room or blade of grass of the building. I'm not even…

Yeah, that raises a whole bunch of other ethical questions though, like why you’re able to do this, what access to PII you have and why you’re able to run queries like this on a Saturday. I hope your employers keeps track of stuff like this.

My guess is that this being possible would be the norm, rather than the exception. And that keeping track of individual queries is not.

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

#177

Post by sam_goody »

The big deal here is not the technology, it is that the FBI is involved in tracking participation of a protest.

For the past year we have had not-always-fully-peaceful riots with many deaths and tremendous amount of property loss. Through all this, the FBI never breathed down the neck of the protestors- not even those who could have been actually committing a crime.

Most of the people who went to DC did so peacefully and lawfully. The fact that all protestors are being tracked - and are being told they are tracked- will send quite a chilling message:

Don't ever, ever admit that you are visibly or loudly on the "right". We are watching, and we are powerful, and you cannot prove innocence.

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

#178

Post by new_guy »

throwawy4rzn wrote: post #168

LEO using cellphone triangulation is not new. I worked as a network tech for one of the big providers. I was pulling tower location data for LEO regularly at request of corporate legal only. Though sometimes LEO would try to end run around and go to stores who would contact me. I socially engineered them to believe I could not access that info without a code generated by corp legal. Not true, of course. But hell if I…

> I socially engineered them to believe

You lied, which is totally fine, but trying to obfuscate that behind word salad is just silly.

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

#179

Post by smolder »

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.

That's quite a generalization, and not really the case going off people I know. Most aren't cheering on the surveillance state. Many are mocking the people who attacked the Capitol with their phones in hand, but that's not the same as approval of the big electric cage we're in.

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

#180

Post by Sebb767 »

grumple wrote: post #163
vmception wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding 3 I’ve been thinking of launching a courier service for this that would pollute data on a wide scale. Basically a “phone walking” service that also charges your phone. Could just be a side gig for Uber drivers, having phone lock boxes in their cars. The infrastructure is already there, phone lock boxes for charging exist in airports and nightclubs. This would be one that moves.

Is there a use for this that isn’t to enable criminals?

Yes. Protecting innocent people from getting caught in the fallout.

It seems the idea is to make (extended) phone tracking unviable and therefore stop the practice; not to enable criminals, but to avoid the side effect, which are perceived not worth the risk (in GPs opinion).

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