Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

FBI agents track cell phones that pinged near the Capitol

wusa9.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 516 posts

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

#271

Post by sneak »

ficklepickle wrote: post #252
exporectomy wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already do that with their human brains. I've been stopped by the police for: - Sitting in a parked car in a suburban street for too long. - Going shopping at 2am. - Walking under a bridge at night. It's OK as long as they quickly realize you're harmless and leave you alone.

Policing in the USA, to a nearby outsider, appears to be more about enforcing societal norms than safety or laws. It seems to me they harass anyone they perceive to be abnormal. As a delightfully abnormal human, I'm very glad I was born just north of the 49th parallel. It's not perfect, but I do feel free to be myself.

As a weird person who grew up in the USA (and eventually left for just this reason), I can attest to the accuracy of this analysis.

I even wrote about it recently: https://sneak.berlin/20200628/the-problem-with-police-in-ame...

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

#272

Post by 14 »

exporectomy wrote: post #229
simple_phrases wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They already do that with their human brains. I've been stopped by the police for: - Sitting in a parked car in a suburban street for too long. - Going shopping at 2am. - Walking under a bridge at night. It's OK as long as they quickly realize you're harmless and leave you alone.

We have had the RCMP racially profiling native Americans and picking on people of color. The exact reason they are not supposed to pull you over for offenses as you mentioned but need a reason such as speeding or failure to follow traffic laws. It's NOT OKAY and should not be considered normal for them to do.

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

#273

Post by caseysoftware »

heylook wrote: post #237
caseysoftware wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a smaller number of organized militia types compromised of former and active duty military and law enforcement I haven't seen anything about this. Can you share a link - especially pictures or video? I'd love to learn more. Thanks.

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-trump-capitol-arrests...

Thanks, much appreciated.

BIG red flag from this article: No weapons charges. If they were armed, they were not armed lawfully either in DC as a whole or in the Capitol specifically. Therefore, we have to ask: were they armed?

Regardless, this line is scary at first glance: "All members are in the tunnels under capital seal them in. Turn on gas." but I've been trying to figure out what it means.

I worked on the Hill for years and used some of the tunnels frequently. If they mean the "tunnels" in general, they're huge and expansive so it'd take a huge amount of effort across numerous entry points in almost a dozen buildings to "seal them in."

Alternatively, if they mean one of the secure areas (think: bunkers), they're designed to be buttoned up but "turn on gas" still doesn't make sense.

Regardless, thanks for the link. It will be interesting to see how the trials play out.

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

#274

Post by dehrmann »

breck wrote: post #40

This is cool! Good job on the FBI. Remember it's a good thing to have phones be pinging. 1. I want to be billed correctly 2. If my service drops often in a certain geo, I want engineers to be able to pinpoint exactly where the problem is and fix it. 3. If I get attacked by a shark, I want to provide breadcrumbs for rescuers to find me. 4. If my wife accuses me of going to the arcade, it is important that my dog runni…

I was wondering if they were going to do this, and I'm on the fence. If they can accurately (90%+) get it to a very tight parameter, ok, but a lot of protesters in the general aread weren't actually involved in entering the building, so if they're getting investigated too, it's a bit of an overreach.

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

#275

Post by sosborn »

dcolkitt wrote: post #260
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…

And yet, violent crime this year is at a multi-decade high[1]. It's one thing to suffer the indignity of a surveillance, but it's quite another when the surveillance doesn't even deliver its purported benefits. [1] https://time.com/5922082/2020-gun-violence-homicides-record-...

Well, realistically, it isn’t about preventing crime, it’s about catching criminals. (I’m not a fan of all this)

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

#276

Post by LatteLazy »

dcolkitt wrote: post #260
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…

And yet, violent crime this year is at a multi-decade high[1]. It's one thing to suffer the indignity of a surveillance, but it's quite another when the surveillance doesn't even deliver its purported benefits. [1] https://time.com/5922082/2020-gun-violence-homicides-record-...

No one said the surveillance was meant to stop poors stabbing each other. Its for protecting assets and securing power.

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

#277

Post by sneak »

papa_reton wrote: post #219
01100011 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but the funny thing is that these surveillance networks never actually seem to be used to solve normal crimes. Is it laziness on the part of the police? Are they trying to reserve these systems for more serious crimes so we forget they exist? Is it just a matter of time before police culture catches up and we see license plate readers, cell phone records, CCTV networks, etc used to track down petty thieves and r…

Didn't you hear of Snowden's revelations? NSA has full access such data. The police does not. The police cares about murders and bank robberies. NSA does not.

https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/01/09/us-secret-evidence-erode...

The data is already being used by domestic law enforcement in a technique called parallel construction.

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

#279

Post by gruez »

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. Leaving a phone at home that is not answering calls or creating traffic during the time of interest is also a lead (if you already have a suspect).

Won't most phones being left at home generate no traffic because it's connected to wifi? AFAIK most phones turn off their mobile data connection if connected to wifi. It's also not too unreasonable to have very little baseline voice traffic, since everyone's texting these days. As for texts, it might be suspicious if you have a high baseline amount of texts, but it's also not too unreasonable for someone to communicate almost exclusively using chat apps (eg. signal, imessage).

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

#280

Post by gvd »

01100011 wrote: post #165
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…

Yeah but the funny thing is that these surveillance networks never actually seem to be used to solve normal crimes. Is it laziness on the part of the police? Are they trying to reserve these systems for more serious crimes so we forget they exist? Is it just a matter of time before police culture catches up and we see license plate readers, cell phone records, CCTV networks, etc used to track down petty thieves and r…

They are used in murder cases
Post reply on HN