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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

#301

Post by tyfon »

kyleblarson wrote: post #291
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.

What is even scarier is the likelihood of law enforcement agencies buying tech from fly-by-night companies who will use all of the buzzwords in their sales pitches (AI, ML, big data, etc) but who have no real knowledge of such things and are just selling a shit product that will entrap innocents.

You will end up with "Computer says no" situations if there are no knowledgable humans that review the decisions from the models.

It's really no different in banks but they are regulated and must provide proper reasoning to denied customers for the models they use in my country. It's not enough to say "your score is too low".

It's very easy to create artificial stupidity!

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

#304

Post by hehetrthrthrjn »

new_guy wrote: post #178
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.

If you change the subject or redirect when someone asks you a difficult question you're not lying. That sort of thing could be called social engineering.

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

#305

Post by tyleo »

seany wrote: post #302

This is terrifying. I swear the tech community would have been universally against this just a few years ago. What happened?

I think people are also terrified by the political violence from both sides over the past year. That was obviously the impetus for this. Just as other extremist violence like 9-11 was the impetus for the patriot act.

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

#306

Post by playingchanges »

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…

I would think a warrant would still be required, so not as minority report as all that.

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

#307

Post by tyfon »

iamacyborg wrote: post #220
_trampeltier wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think, most such data comes from Apps, they just ask for permission and give you no rights at all. Location data is a such business, for traffic or business. Look at this example from Thasos. The look many hours and shifts are in companys and sell the data to traders. http://thasosgroup.com/blog/thasos-data-tesla-wsj/

Just because something is being done does not mean it’s ethical. Fortunately, this is illegal in Europe.

Might be illegal in Europe but it still happens [1].

[1] https://nrkbeta.no/2020/12/03/my-phone-was-spying-on-me-so-i...

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

#308

Post by MichaelApproved »

quercusa wrote: post #303

If you've never seen it, it's worth your time to watch "Don't Talk to The Police", a lecture by a law professor, in case the FBI, etc. come knocking on your door. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

It's a video that even lawyers should watch to remind themselves just how harmful talking can be.

Here's a great example of a lawyer in need of a refresher https://youtu.be/_rVsRmcE-u8

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

#309

Post by hocuspocus »

schoolornot wrote: post #85
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.

AT&T is still installing Carrier IQ on almost all Androids. That application is collecting info like GPS and barometric readings to estimate floor location in a highrise, etc.

They don't even need Carrier IQ, they can use Minimization of Drive Tests, it's part of 3GPP standards.

But even using timing advances, if the cells aren't too big, you get a pretty reasonable accuracy.

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

#310

Post by irrational »

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…

You are a suspect because you do not own a smartphone.
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