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Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

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Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#161

Post by woodruffw »

1123581321 wrote: post #159
woodruffw wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speed limits are a blunt instrument, because "slow" isn't the real goal: the goal is to get people to drive safely , and one way they currently don't do that is by driving at reckless speeds (regardless of what the limit happens to be.)

You don’t know which speeds are actually reckless. Using speed limits to inform your opinion is circular. It depends on the design and condition of the road, the quality and features of the car, and traffic, weather and environmental conditions.

I didn’t say that I did know. It’s a general point, one that I can make by pointing to any particular example of reckless driving (of which there are many, including ones I have been personally subjected to.)

Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#162

Post by 1123581321 »

woodruffw wrote: post #161
1123581321 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t know which speeds are actually reckless. Using speed limits to inform your opinion is circular. It depends on the design and condition of the road, the quality and features of the car, and traffic, weather and environmental conditions.

I didn’t say that I did know. It’s a general point, one that I can make by pointing to any particular example of reckless driving (of which there are many, including ones I have been personally subjected to.)

Yes, you did. You said you didn’t think there was any excuse for going 93 in a 55.

Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#163

Post by 1123581321 »

worik wrote: post #140
warning26 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I don't think speed limits really should exist in any context. If you want people to go slow, design the roads for slower driving, don't just impose arbitrary limits.

> Eh, I don't think speed limits really should exist in any context. If you want people to go slow, design the roads for slower driving, don't just impose arbitrary limits. In the realm of ego orientated commenting, this one really stands out. I do not want to put my life in your unregulated hands. I want you regulated to hell and back when you operate a tonne of steel at thirty metres per second heading in my genera…

Narrow roads to improve safety are a proposed (and increasingly adopted) regulation. They’re not privatized roads.

Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#164

Post by kingcharles »

sixothree wrote: post #29
colpabar wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I think we need to put as much blame on the carriers providing these capabilities to anyone , let alone the police. That the police are publicly funded and are buying this data with my money is also a huge issue to me, but if I had to pick one thing to change, I’d make selling this data illegal. That way, no one could have it.

I assume they target these people because they can seize assets. And drug dealers often deal in cash. Why else would they be so absolutely inept solving or prventing most crimes (looking at just about any metric available), yet still be laser focused on these certain crimes.

Asset forfeitures can be beneficial to police departments, but not usually of much concern to individual police officers, except in ad hoc situations where they can easily pocket cash they take during a search (happens very frequently from my experience).

And to add to that, a lot of jurisdictions have cracked down massively on forfeitures (technical term: civil in rem forfeiture) because of how badly abused the system has been in the past by prosecutors and police departments.

Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#165

Post by jameshart »

tomc1985 wrote: post #153
worik wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Golly.I read that article. What a hideous person. Who drives so fast on country roads? Very selfish people who do not care about their own lives let alone the lives of others. What a good punishment! Much better than a fine. We should use short prison sentences much more for the sorts of crimes rich privileged reprobates like this do. Then the winging! It seems gaol is not pleasant. Does the writer want sympathy? Non…

The 101 through Sonoma/Humboldt/Mendocino counties is, at some places, a 2-lane highway weaving its way through a twisty curvy Redwood forest at 55-65mph, and up to 75mph when it's a six-lane highway. And here in Southern California I regularly get away with 80-85mph in front of CA highway patrol. Most places I've been to in the US seem to consider 5-10 over the limit to be acceptable. I have even heard of freeways i…

For someone so ready to leap to conclusions, you don’t sound particularly informed about British attitudes to road speed (notably, Britain still uses mph, not km/h). You might be surprised to discover that outside built up areas in the UK the national speed limit on an undivided road is 60mph. Not an undivided highway - an undivided road.

Here’s an example of a random British B road with a 60mph speed limit: https://goo.gl/maps/2jetrMeoWbuTvShN9

Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#166

Post by orthoxerox »

Rufhfhs3747rhe7 wrote: post #138

Why are drug dealers still using an easily trackable phone number for communication? Why not a 3rd party messaging and voice app like Matrix/Element? Am I incorrect in assuming that local police would not be able to easily track it?

Most criminals aren't very smart.

Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#167

Post by kingcharles »

DevX101 wrote: post #134

I'm assuming the police is primarily using GPS to prove guilt, but are there any recorded cases of someone using GPS to "prove" their innocence, as an alibi?

That's a good question. There are plenty of people who have proved the GPS is wrong.

For instance, I am on 24/7 GPS/cell tower surveillance because I am poor. The police regularly (3 times this week) come to my home, pull me out onto the street, cuff me up and arrest me because they believe (from the GPS data) that I am not in my home. Then they will have me stand on the street corner in handcuffs until the GPS matches what they see with their eyes.

Those of us who are under constant surveillance for our poverty have taken to installing cameras that record onto the cloud so that we can later prove in court we were where we said we were (not where the GPS thinks we are):

https://news.wttw.com/2022/03/16/designed-reduce-cook-county...

Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#168

Post by cryptonector »

somehnguy wrote: post #135
cryptonector wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the police use Waze though? Last time I used it -and it was many years ago- it was clearly possible to use it to find speeders using it.

Can you explain how? Waze doesn't show your speed to others on the map.

It's been like eight years. I don't recall exactly, but what I recall is that Waze showed me other Waze users on the road, including their positions, and these were updated in something close to real-time, which means one could estimate their speed. I imagine a police officer waiting to "ambush" a speeder they know is coming.

Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#169

Post by kingcharles »

sneak wrote: post #149
DevX101 wrote: post #134

I'm assuming the police is primarily using GPS to prove guilt, but are there any recorded cases of someone using GPS to "prove" their innocence, as an alibi?

In a lot of cases by the time you learn you are being accused, the data is no longer retained/available from the carriers.

I don't know. I did a subpoena to Verizon once for a guy accused of murder who I knew was innocent. There's a long story about how the guy didn't want to admit to police he wasn't at the scene of the crime because it would have to out him as having a gay lover, which he was worried about. He'd been in jail for 6 years at this point. I said we should subpoena his cell tower records to prove he was away from the scene, and we did, but Verizon came back and said they deleted them after 5 years.

tl;dr: they do delete them, but Verizon said it has a 5 year retention

Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#170

Post by jonhohle »

warning26 wrote: post #137
woodruffw wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am someone who's extraordinarily sympathetic to journalists. But I don't think there's really any excuse for going 93 miles an hour on a country road marked for 55, as this author did. Should he have been sent to jail for it? I don't think so. But it's remarkable how acceptable that behavior seems to be.

Eh, I don't think speed limits really should exist in any context. If you want people to go slow, design the roads for slower driving, don't just impose arbitrary limits.

At least in Arizona where the top end is 75MPH, speed limits on highways seem reasonable for the environment. There are plenty of opportunities to go careening off the side of a mountain or into oncoming traffic because a ¼ mile earlier nothing would suggest that the natural momentum from the grade of the mountain road was excessive for the upcoming switchback.

So they could set up some arbitrary obstacles to slow people down prior to the natural contour of the terrain, or, you know, throw up a sign which indicates a safe speed for the upcoming section of highway.

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