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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

#361

Post by TuringNYC »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #316
ficklepickle wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Haha, having spent time above and below 49, I would say you couldn’t be more wrong with that perception. In any American city, especially big liberal ones (which is most of them) you can forget about societal norms. There are weird and crazy people everywhere. Nothing is “weird” to anybody who has spent any amount of time in them. Everyone walks right past a circus on their way to work. Cops pay no attention. Ask a N…

Have you considered that your viewpoint might be so wildly opposing to other opinions because you’re part of an “accepted group” that gets their way...while others like me [an individual of color] get the brunt of enforcement — with or without cause?

Heck, I’ve been stopped in NYC for “walking with a limp” (bike accident, fractured knee)...while wearing a $500 shirt and designer suit.

What you refer to as “cherry picked videos” are just the instances that happen to have been filmed. Seriously, after Central Park Karen and Minnesota, can we at least acknowledge there might be an issue?!

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

#362

Post by seamyb88 »

atlih wrote: post #353
williamdclt wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I was going to react to that. I'm not from Italy or Spain but definitely could be in "so forth", I found that somewhat offensive. Especially coming from an American policeman, where police brutality is no small problem... I found him a good advocate of "don't talk to police", a lot of things he describes as standard police practice I would have hoped are illegal, and probably are in some EU countries (police ca…

Just because there's a lot of news of US police brutality and little or no news from [insert country]'s police brutality, that data point could just as well mean that the news are more robust in the US than that there's less of it in other countries.

There are some pretty poor attempts to justify it, but "it's not that our police are bad, it's that our News is brilliant" has to be up there.

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

#363

Post by djrogers »

skeletonjelly wrote: post #357
SQL2219 wrote: post #318

I watched the summer riots on youtube live streams, I don't recall the FBI using this technique for the tens of thousands of man-hours spent looting, burning and rioting in Portland, LA, Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago, NYC or Atlanta.

Then you weren't paying attention enough, and just because you don't recall doesn't mean it didn't happen, which it did: https://theintercept.com/2020/07/09/twitter-dataminr-police-... Know where I recalled I read this? Here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23783503

Your linked article is about a company data-mining Twitter. TFA we are discussing is about the FBI getting location data from phones. These are two very different things...

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

#364

Post by sn_master »

sn_master wrote: post #346
barkingcat wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because leaving comments enabled invites the worst of humanity to post excrement on your videos. It's a well known issue. Unless you have time to devote to deleting offensive comments (and many comments are just swear words copied and pasted a few hundred times), just disable comments.

Often case it's the author disagreeing with a good number of the viewers, and not any spam or vulgar content.

YouTube already has moderation like Facebook if someone says Report, it's not like the channel author isn't responsible for every single comment.

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

#365

Post by will4274 »

suifbwish wrote: post #131
caseysoftware wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relevant data points: - Open Carry is always illegal in DC. - DC does issue concealed carry permits but doesn't honor them from other states (called reciprocity). - This was talked about far and wide in advance on Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere framed as "don't bring guns to DC! You will go to jail!" and supported by flyers posted throughout DC. (You can still find pictures of them online.)

I believe breaking into the capitol building is also illegal so I fail to see why people who are already breaking one law would care about the others

Protests are big drinking events. For some reason people don't talk about this. Angry people go out planning to peacefully protest for George Floyd or Trump, they drink some liquor, their inhibitions go down, they decide to throw a couple bottles, break a couple windows. It's hard to miss the number of red faces in the videos of the capital riot.

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

#366

Post by MichaelApproved »

seamyb88 wrote: post #360
javajosh wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if you agree with that advice then you shouldn't say anything in public either, e.g. here on HN, since that too can be used against you.

It's a talented cop who can tie you to a murder based on your favourite JavaScript framework.

Who said anything about a murder?

Why don't you come in to clear the air about these JavaScript muders? Just a friendly chat...

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

#367

Post by djrogers »

A lot of comments here about ‘overreach’ ‘privacy violations’ and such as if the FBI is showing up and accusing these people of crimes. If you actually read the story, the one person who they quote explains they weren’t suspected of anything but the agents asked for any photos they had of the events.

This is straight up classic police legwork...

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

#368

Post by Sebb767 »

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.

> to some marketing data

I guess this part answers the questions of "why", "what" and "does the employer care". Well, at least these people now know what they did "not" have to hide the whole time.

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

#369

Post by konjin »

seamyb88 wrote: post #362
atlih wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because there's a lot of news of US police brutality and little or no news from [insert country]'s police brutality, that data point could just as well mean that the news are more robust in the US than that there's less of it in other countries.

There are some pretty poor attempts to justify it, but "it's not that our police are bad, it's that our News is brilliant" has to be up there.

The US isn't better or worse than Europe, it's different. Having lived in both the hypocrisy of Europeans when it comes to police brutality to gypsies is astonishing, doubly so since I'm half gypsy but white enough to get a free pass and get told how bad 'they' are.

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

#370

Post by brown9-2 »

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-...

The “multi-decade high” here is the highest in 20 years, which is two decades - a time of historically low crime. “Multi-decade” sounds like a much longer range than two decades.
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