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

GPS glitched across the US by as much as 33 feet

sciencealert.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 159 posts

Re: GPS glitched across the US by as much as 33 feet

#121

Post by lazyasciiart »

avazhi wrote: post #95
openasocket wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They absolutely can, depending on the jurisdiction. I saw plenty of cases out of Atlanta with drug possession cases with no prior history getting an ankle monitor, back when they were live streaming bond hearings from Rice street.

[flagged]

What on earth is this claim? Are you sure you’re on top of Fulton County’s 1500-person ankle monitoring program, and the push to reduce jail overcrowding? Have you really been tracking the national trend to introduce ankle monitors for pre-trial defendants who would have been simply released on recognizance?

Re: GPS glitched across the US by as much as 33 feet

#122

Post by prepend »

chaps wrote: post #86
Dylan16807 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Btw, the courts are public and you should try some criminal courts watching. Pick a random day and just go. So you could find an example easily but you don't want to? Or you're suggesting court watching in general and not to find an example? "I have an example I won't share" is better than nothing, I guess. But you were being snarky before you even said that much, when you were just linking your article and not say…

It wasn't easy to find, heh. Lots of FOIA requests to even get to a point of where I could go through court records at the Clerk of Courts. Obstinate lawyers for months and months. But after all that, I can find the court documents at the Clerk of Courts. I printed them there and I don't have them anymore. I would need to redact even if I had them. But they were all the same form, but with the actual violations large…

If you FOIA’d them, then why would you need to redact?

If you can’t show evidence, then it’s probably best not to cite that evidence. At that point it seems to me that you’re asking people to just trust your claim. You seem like a nice person, but what sort of rational reader trusts an internet stranger.

This is an important issue and you seem interested in the topic.

Re: GPS glitched across the US by as much as 33 feet

#123

Post by Avamander »

1e1a wrote: post #5

Wouldn't RTK help mitigate this, as the base stations would also be affected by the atmospheric disturbance?

Adjacent to that, I'm a bit surprised that there hasn't been a mass rollout of assisted GNSS in large cities. Maybe not full RTK, but something more than just delivering almanac being delivered.

Are the current GNSS solutions good enough (or too degraded?) in city jungles that there would not be any mass benefit? Too expensive to run a few base stations here and there?

Re: GPS glitched across the US by as much as 33 feet

#124

Post by GJim »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #120
dataflow wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay thanks, so here's what I don't understand. When there is video evidence that someone was in their house the whole time, and given that everyone who has used a GPS knows it can easily be inaccurate by 30ft, why in the world would the judge trust the ankle monitor accuracy over video footage they see with their own eyes that directly contradicts it? Something about this just doesn't seem very plausible, especially…

Everyone knows video footage can be faked. Why would the judge ever trust video provided by the defendant over serious professional technology like GPS? Might as well just take their word for it! What’s funny here is that you are displaying misplaced trust in the justice system that exactly parallels my hypothetical judge’s misplaced trust in technology.

> Everyone knows video footage can be faked.

Everyone also knows GPS can be spoofed.

Your point?

Re: GPS glitched across the US by as much as 33 feet

#125

Post by inigyou »

hypfer wrote: post #113
iamshs wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The story is about GPS errors which end up making life hell for people under monitoring since they end up generating a Police response. If 80% alerts were false, then an error like this can result in a surge of these alerts. It is an important story to tell.

[flagged]

[dead]

Re: GPS glitched across the US by as much as 33 feet

#126

Post by skywhopper »

dataflow wrote: post #32
chaps wrote: post #12

This is exactly the sort of thing that leads to people getting reincarcerated after their electronic monitoring devices mistakenly report them leaving their homes. Some reporting I did on the topic a few years back: https://chicagoreader.com/news/many-on-house-arrest-in-cook-...

> This As in, GPS being off by 33 feet? > leads to people getting reincarcerated I'm reading your article and it seems to be about police coming to check and realizing that the reporting of being miles away was in error, not people getting reincarcerted because of GPS incorrectly reporting they moved ~30 feet too far? One of these is much more insane than the other.

It’s the same category of error, is the point he was making. Relax a bit.

Re: GPS glitched across the US by as much as 33 feet

#128

Post by skywhopper »

dataflow wrote: post #38
chaps wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure where your confusion is coming from. Have you never used GPS in a place with bad signal? Where it gets confused and you miss your turn? It's the same failure mode. Just the repercussions are getting arrested instead of getting off on the wrong exit. Also wrote this one, hopefully it helps your confusion: https://chicagoreader.com/news/false-alarms/

You're claiming that erroneously reported movements by ~33 ft lead to incarceration, yet the article you're linking to reports that erroneously reported movements by ~1mi+ lead to police coming to double-check what's going on. Am I incorrect and do you therefore have examples of ~30ft errors actually leading to their incarceration , or are you struggling to see the disconnect between what you're claiming vs. what is…

The point is that the enforcement agencies make the assumption that GPS data is always correct. But there are any number of issues that can cause problems with it. People making decisions about how to enforce house arrest or design autonomous farm equipment need to take GPS flakiness into account. Differences in scale are not the point.

Re: GPS glitched across the US by as much as 33 feet

#129

Post by merryocha »

I'm an Amazon driver and we heavily rely on GPS for delivering. We don't just use it for navigating, we also make each delivery inside of a geofence, and the delivery location is recorded and used for future routing. When the GPS says you're a block away from where you are, you're unable to make the delivery without contacting support. I've had days where GPS problems wasted a lot of my time, so I imagine it would be expensive if it happened across an entire region. On the other hand, these kinds of disruptions are already factored into the business model and planned for, so saying it cost an industry X amount of dollars is assuming that the industry was planning for ideal conditions in the first place.
Post reply on HN