GPS tracking device found on an activist's car • Hacker News Board

Re: GPS tracking device found on an activist's car

#111

Post by mseebach » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 3:26 PM UTC

vonuebelgarten wrote: post #70

jonmrodriguez wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. It's extremely important that we as engineers be ethical about what we build. If you are enabling a surveillance state, I think many people would consider that to be harmful to public welfare.

There is a lot of ethical uses of such trackers (e.g. a company tracking its own vehicles, shipping container tracking, etc.). We can't assume the developer of the original board knowingly designed it for evil purposes. Full disclosure: I design smart-grid and telemetry applications, including a GSM + GPS device (GPS was initially used for getting accurate timestamps, but we also added positioning registers, which ma…

> There is a lot of ethical uses of such trackers (e.g. a company tracking its own vehicles, shipping container tracking, etc.)

Never mind court-warranted law enforcement tracking of legitimate suspects under investigation.

Re: GPS tracking device found on an activist's car

#112

Post by huhtenberg » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 3:30 PM UTC

tomkinstinch wrote: post #4

Very few companies produce GPS chips. Most devices that include GPS capability do not bother to reinvent the wheel, but instead elect to integrate an existing GPS processing chip. It's unlikely the GPS module is integrated with the processor core of this thing. Since it is likely separate, it would be fun to probe the PCB with a logic analyzer to see if there are any exposed serial (or possibly I2C, SPI) traces relay…

> if you want to make it difficult ...

Or you can use the good old seal-the-whole-thing-with-a-coat-of-epoxy approach.

Re: GPS tracking device found on an activist's car

#113

Post by mkr-hn » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 3:31 PM UTC

callahad wrote: post #37

Cool! Free SIM card with data!

Someone tried this with the card in a smart meter. They were still billed for it when they got caught.

Re: GPS tracking device found on an activist's car

#114

Post by makenova » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 3:50 PM UTC

tacoman wrote: post #74

A friend of mine hired someone to gather data on his cheating wife. A device that looked similar to this was used on her car. $400 for a month of real-time location data. Maybe this has nothing to do with conference this person was attending.

I agree, there is a company in my city that will hook a device up to the car battery and place it in a discrete location. They mostly deal with fleet management but some of their business is from spouses tracking each other. There a "funny" story about a wife bringing in a vehicle that her husband had brought in earlier.

Re: GPS tracking device found on an activist's car

#115

Post by e40 » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 3:58 PM UTC

tacoman wrote: post #74

A friend of mine hired someone to gather data on his cheating wife. A device that looked similar to this was used on her car. $400 for a month of real-time location data. Maybe this has nothing to do with conference this person was attending.

Your friend overpaid for that service. You can purchase an OBD-II dongle that records this information for $80 and $20/mo. So, $100 for 1 month.

Re: GPS tracking device found on an activist's car

#116

Post by tacoman » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 4:07 PM UTC

makenova wrote: post #114

tacoman wrote: post #74

A friend of mine hired someone to gather data on his cheating wife. A device that looked similar to this was used on her car. $400 for a month of real-time location data. Maybe this has nothing to do with conference this person was attending.

I agree, there is a company in my city that will hook a device up to the car battery and place it in a discrete location. They mostly deal with fleet management but some of their business is from spouses tracking each other. There a "funny" story about a wife bringing in a vehicle that her husband had brought in earlier.

A family member works for a large chain of car dealerships. They regularly buy vehicles at auction. It's not uncommon that they find trackers on the vehicles. Here's a picture of one he sent me to play with a couple years ago.

The battery pack on the left, and the tracker on the right were in a magnetic Pelican case attached to the underside of a black Escalade. The sim in the tracker was from some US MVNO that I didn't recognize.

https://i.imgur.com/VLzTPt4.jpg

Re: GPS tracking device found on an activist's car

#117

Post by rjempson » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 4:11 PM UTC

tomkinstinch wrote: post #63

jonmrodriguez wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. It's extremely important that we as engineers be ethical about what we build. If you are enabling a surveillance state, I think many people would consider that to be harmful to public welfare.

Ethical engineering is important. With great capability comes great responsibility. This is why I think it is good for engineering students to take as many courses in the humanities and liberal arts as possible, to get better perspectives on the world we're all building for.

Or they could just make sure the have a good spidey collection.

Re: GPS tracking device found on an activist's car

#118

Post by Symbiote » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 4:14 PM UTC

ripb wrote: post #105

jonmrodriguez wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. It's extremely important that we as engineers be ethical about what we build. If you are enabling a surveillance state, I think many people would consider that to be harmful to public welfare.

>If you are enabling a surveillance state, I think many people would consider that to be harmful to public welfare. I honestly do not know how those working for the NSA, GCHQ, etc. can live with themselves for the damage they're doing. Snowden said he was getting something like $120k p/a as a consultant for the NSA, so it's not like it's massively financially lucrative.

A friend of a friend suggested to me that a job in his team would suit me. I said I refuse to make weapons or spy on people.

He said he liked "catching baddies".

Re: GPS tracking device found on an activist's car

#119

Post by kh_hk » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 4:18 PM UTC

tsotha wrote: post #83

kh_hk wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the media article linked on the submission, the activist was stopped for a "routine search" of the car for more than one hour on the frontier with France by spanish national police (CNP). One week ago she was stopped again near the city were this convention took place. So yeah, even if this is private investigator grade hardware, according to the info available it would not surprise me if this was either…

Why pay extra if you don't have to? Looks perfectly serviceable to me.

Was pointing out we should not rule out any government agency just for the quality of the setup. I find it hard to believe that an activist would be targeted by a private investigator.

Re: GPS tracking device found on an activist's car

#120

Post by Symbiote » Sat, Mar 07, 2015, 4:31 PM UTC

dingaling wrote: post #79

During the ' Troubles' in Northern Ireland, chassis inspection mirrors were a common sight. These were large convex mirrors mounted horizontally on castors and with a long handle. They were slid under the car to look for suspicious packages that may have been attached covertly with malicious intent. Very quick to use and were widely issued to individuals who might have been at risk. So it was common to see people usi…

Are they not still needed? Considering the most recent car bomb in Northern Ireland was in November...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of_Continuity_Irish_...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Real_Irish_Republic...