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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

#481

Post by naewonawonga »

chronic3802 wrote: post #350
da_big_ghey wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that one is explainable and the other is not. "He was near the scene of the crime and has no convincing alibi," is very different from, "The computer said he's a suspect and we don't know why, but we still want a warrant." People being targeted for being anomalous is bad, but centralizing and scaling it up is worse.

> The computer said he's a suspect and we don't know why, but we still want a warrant. Mission critical ML systems (G/FB ads, crime forensics, medical decision support, financial algorithms) do not work like this. The designers know exactly which features are causing responses/predictions in the model, their respective perturbation sensitivities, and have clear bounds regarding adversarial inputs/outliers. “Not knowi…

>> Mission critical ML systems (G/FB ads, crime forensics, medical decision support, financial algorithms) do not work like this.

Are you speaking from experience or from intuition?

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

#482

Post by BurningFrog »

sobriquet9 wrote: post #468
BurningFrog wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK, cell towers don't even calculate phone position beyond what's needed to determine which tower should handle it. Maybe there is an element of triangulation in that, but it's far less precise and ambitious than GPS.

Cell tower needs to know timing advance [1] (how long it takes for the signal to travel between the tower and the handset) to make sure signals from different handsets do not overlap. Once you know which tower the phone is connected to, coordinates of that tower, antenna pattern, and distance (from timing advance and speed of light), you can calculate approximate cell phone location. You get more data if the phone mo…

OK, I didn't know about "timing advance". Obviously that gives at least a radius from the tower.

Your link is for GSM and states a 550 meter resolution, but I tried looking up LTE and I think it said 10 meters there.

I also understand modern (maybe next generation) towers will use directional transmission to avoid sending signals in all directions. Even if that's a 20° beam, that narrows don't the location by a lot.

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

#483

Post by naewonawonga »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #313
powersnail wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just policing. I've found that in USA, the society in general wants to meddle with people's business. Me and my buddy were standing on the sidewalk of a bridge, making a time lapse. Within one hour, someone called the police on us twice.

How can anyone possibly draw conclusions about the USA based on this? Like, really stop and think about all of the fallacies here. Do that 10 more times on 10 different bridges, and I’ll be shocked if that happens even one more time.

>> Do that 10 more times on 10 different bridges, and I’ll be shocked if that happens even one more time.

Likely it would happen another 8-10 times. Happens all the time, the bigger the bridge, the more likely.

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

#484

Post by jccalhoun »

bastardoperator wrote: post #359
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

These folks weren't smart enough to leave their tracking devices at home and a ton of them filmed their crimes. Everyone has a right to remain silent, but it's not going to help in most of these cases where the evidence is so abundant.

Not only that, but the videos I have seen are from people so proud of themselves for trying to take over the government.

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

#485

Post by mannykannot »

da_big_ghey wrote: post #281
BurningFrog wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can become a suspect for all sorts of random things you have no control over, like being near a crime, knowing certain people, etc. I don't see how it can work any other way.

The problem is that one is explainable and the other is not. "He was near the scene of the crime and has no convincing alibi," is very different from, "The computer said he's a suspect and we don't know why, but we still want a warrant." People being targeted for being anomalous is bad, but centralizing and scaling it up is worse.

I doubt that is something to be much concerned about, as I doubt there would be much use of anything that produces lists of suspects without explanation. What would one do with such a list? It would be like getting a bunch of anonymous tips all saying that a different person did the deed, without any clues to follow up on.

Getting a list of suspects is rarely a problem for law enforcement; the difficulty is in winnowing it down to the actual culprits. When a body is found, for example, family and acquaintances are all initially suspects, and experience has shown that summarily dismissing any of them, merely on intuitive grounds, will eliminate some fraction of actual culprits.

If a system did start suspecting the actual culprits with a significantly higher success rate than people achieve, there would be much reason to reverse-engineer the process in order to figure out how this was accomplished, as doing so would provide clues (and, ultimately, evidence) that otherwise could only be found by an independent process.

This assumes that due process exists, such that unsupported accusations are not taken as evidence, but if due process has been abandoned, we would have a much greater problem than that posited here.

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

#486

Post by geargrinder »

powersnail wrote: post #411
lawnchair_larry wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can anyone possibly draw conclusions about the USA based on this? Like, really stop and think about all of the fallacies here. Do that 10 more times on 10 different bridges, and I’ll be shocked if that happens even one more time.

My bad. I was speaking in too general a tone. I should have said that my interaction with the US society has been that people tend to meddle with others' business more often than in other countries that I've been to. But, yeah, I have many more anecdotes.

There are many other countries where I have experienced more societal meddling with neighbors' business. Ignoring the obvious authoritarian countries, many western european countries have a culture of making sure you are doing the normal or right thing. Germany is the easiest example.

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

#487

Post by tiziniano »

gibrown wrote: post #72
tiziniano wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be a grammar nazi, but I fail to see how this sentence works "The capitol was assaulted in order to prevent the democratically elected president." On an emotional level, I can see how you see it as a threat to your illusions. Someone was trying to prevent your president from existing. It does sound scary and fits in line with the gnostic thought pervading the American left. "The world is broken, but we will fi…

Pretty sure you have veered into being a bit more than just a grammar nazi.

Still, little content to these claims including the one above.

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

#488

Post by throwaway09223 »

OnlyOneCannolo wrote: post #472
thylacine222 wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems... incorrect. First of all, deep learning absolutely is used in mission critical systems: https://www.techrepublic.com/article/intel-and-ge-healthcare... Second, simply because designers use systems that are formally interpretable, that doesn't mean that designers know exactly what causes a given response in the model. Formal interpretability means you know what function the model is approximating -- there…

I don't think the Intel/GE tool counts as mission critical. There are already radiologists reviewing scans. The tool just flags features they may have missed. Remove the tool, and you're back to business as usual. I don't know much about ML. Are you saying that we don't know how to interpret any ML models at all? Regarding your final point, isn't that true with or without ML? Any mission-critical design process shoul…

> The tool just flags features they may have missed.

This is how it functions at first.

Fast forward a few decades and you'll have doctors saying "The computer model flagged this spot as a concern. Our human review can't find anything, but we know that studies show the computer model has a 95% confidence in locating problems so we recommend surgery anyway. Surgery is lower risk than assuming the model is wrong."

Tool dependency changes over time.

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

#489

Post by OnlyOneCannolo »

throwaway09223 wrote: post #488
OnlyOneCannolo wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the Intel/GE tool counts as mission critical. There are already radiologists reviewing scans. The tool just flags features they may have missed. Remove the tool, and you're back to business as usual. I don't know much about ML. Are you saying that we don't know how to interpret any ML models at all? Regarding your final point, isn't that true with or without ML? Any mission-critical design process shoul…

> The tool just flags features they may have missed. This is how it functions at first. Fast forward a few decades and you'll have doctors saying "The computer model flagged this spot as a concern. Our human review can't find anything, but we know that studies show the computer model has a 95% confidence in locating problems so we recommend surgery anyway. Surgery is lower risk than assuming the model is wrong." Tool…

I agree that it will eventually become mission critical. Until then, they have some time to make the implementation interpretable.

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

#490

Post by superkuh »

Santosh83 wrote: post #113
superkuh wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just don't use services that track you. It's possible to live a fairly normal life despite all this. I do it. Don't carry a cell phone, turn off javascript everywhere, use a non-onstar/etc car, don't fly commercially, use cash for in person transactions and bitcoin (or monero) online where you can. All that said, I'm not planning on trying to overthrow the government or anything stupid. I just don't like being spied…

No. At this point you become a standout anomaly, or you will become one, in the not too distant future. The progress of society is becoming increasingly collective. Individual choices are becoming less important. I'm not saying we're there yet, but already we're at a point where meaningful societal change needs at least a considerable group of people all acting together, and even then, fundamental changes have been t…

Sure. You stand out because they can't spy on you. The point isn't to hide. The point is to not be spied upon. I see this as a win.
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