FBI agents track cell phones that pinged near the Capitol • Hacker News Board

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

#201

Post by iamacyborg » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 9:09 PM UTC

Raed667 wrote: post #182

iamacyborg wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Does your company log every select query you do on your prod db? If yes, does it automatically raise alerts when PII is accessed? I'm genuinely asking, I have never seen such a setup.

It does not. Maybe it should though. I know a company I worked at logged everything that was done or accessed within our Salesforce instance, maybe something needs to be done like that rather than allowing folks to run arbitrary sql queries against the database.

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

#202

Post by _trampeltier » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 9:10 PM UTC

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.

What do you think, most such data comes from Apps, they just ask for permission and give you no rights at all. Location data is a such business, for traffic or business. Look at this example from Thasos. The look many hours and shifts are in companys and sell the data to traders. http://thasosgroup.com/blog/thasos-data-tesla-wsj/

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

#203

Post by exporectomy » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 9:10 PM UTC

suifbwish wrote: post #77

nabla9 wrote: post #33

Forensic methods used by police and intelligence go much deeper than just looking at phones near the crime scene. 1. They look at phones moving towards the crime scene and going dark when getting close. This is also how you can detect secret meetings between people. They move towards the same area and shut down their phones. 2. They look at suspect phone going dark anywhere around the time of the incident. 3. Leaving…

3 raises a very interesting and somewhat concerning possibility. In the near future as AI develops more in the crime detection arena you may become a suspect for crimes occurring in your geographical area based on things you are not doing or based on some set of states your smart devices have that match a statistical model of a suspicious person. The idea of becoming a suspect because you didn’t touch your smartphone…

There's nothing wrong with that as long as the law enforcement is trustworthy and competent. We do want to catch criminals. That's the whole point of having law enforcement. It's funny that in America, people seem to have so given up on the idea of the police being honest and competent that all they want is to reduce their power. They don't seem to want reform and instead would rather suffer from crime than be investigated by the police.

Becoming a suspect shouldn't be a scary thing to avoid. You should be able to just ignore your status and wait for the police to exclude you. But somehow it's a problem in America that people just accept.

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

#204

Post by vmception » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 9:10 PM UTC

dhosek wrote: post #191

selestify wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see how you can have it both ways. Any privacy protections for the average law-abiding citizen is going to help out the criminals too.

The question is what the non-crime use case is. I can't think of such a thing. In any event, having your phone in an uber with a bunch of other phones and not following "normal" uber ride patterns would be yet another detectable pattern.

Yes, that model would be detectable, what does that get anyone though?

I found flaws with a lot of models, whether it was greater vulnerability of not getting your phone back, or having too many other phones in the same place.

I decided that more phones in the same and route was more tolerable.

But any model I didnt think of I’d like to read it.

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

#205

Post by systemvoltage » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 9:10 PM UTC

everdrive wrote: post #183

nabla9 wrote: post #33

Forensic methods used by police and intelligence go much deeper than just looking at phones near the crime scene. 1. They look at phones moving towards the crime scene and going dark when getting close. This is also how you can detect secret meetings between people. They move towards the same area and shut down their phones. 2. They look at suspect phone going dark anywhere around the time of the incident. 3. Leaving…

Are these methods actually used by police, or are these speculations based on the sort of inferences police could draw?

I am also wondering the same. Would be great if the OP would provide some sources around this.

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

#206

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 9:10 PM UTC

01100011 wrote: post #165

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…

Yeah but the funny thing is that these surveillance networks never actually seem to be used to solve normal crimes. Is it laziness on the part of the police? Are they trying to reserve these systems for more serious crimes so we forget they exist? Is it just a matter of time before police culture catches up and we see license plate readers, cell phone records, CCTV networks, etc used to track down petty thieves and r…

[deleted]

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

#207

Post by BurningFrog » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 9:11 PM UTC

suifbwish wrote: post #77

nabla9 wrote: post #33

Forensic methods used by police and intelligence go much deeper than just looking at phones near the crime scene. 1. They look at phones moving towards the crime scene and going dark when getting close. This is also how you can detect secret meetings between people. They move towards the same area and shut down their phones. 2. They look at suspect phone going dark anywhere around the time of the incident. 3. Leaving…

3 raises a very interesting and somewhat concerning possibility. In the near future as AI develops more in the crime detection arena you may become a suspect for crimes occurring in your geographical area based on things you are not doing or based on some set of states your smart devices have that match a statistical model of a suspicious person. The idea of becoming a suspect because you didn’t touch your smartphone…

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.

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

#208

Post by oh_sigh » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 9:13 PM UTC

sam_goody wrote: post #177

The big deal here is not the technology, it is that the FBI is involved in tracking participation of a protest. For the past year we have had not-always-fully-peaceful riots with many deaths and tremendous amount of property loss. Through all this, the FBI never breathed down the neck of the protestors- not even those who could have been actually committing a crime. Most of the people who went to DC did so peacefully…

Would the key here be that the FBI has jurisdiction to investigate rioters interacting with federal property, but not when they burn down a local Minneapolis police station or something like that?

I don't think many people inside or out of the FBI would agree that it is a tool of liberal politicians.

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

#209

Post by syshum » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 9:14 PM UTC

breck wrote: post #166

syshum wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like an extension of "“Nothing to hide, nothing to fear” (NTHNTF) fallacy [1][2][3] [1] https://www.computerweekly.com/blog/Identity-Privacy-and-Tru... [2] https://www.wired.com/2013/06/why-i-have-nothing-to-hide-is-... [3] https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/secrecy/you-may-...

Not a big deal. Good engineering demands logged pings. Not doing that would be bad engineering. Could it be abused? Sure. But that's why we need to continue to engineer a better democracy as well. We can do both.

No we cant, the US was never to be a democracy, and you can not engineer a better one

We are a constitutional republic with a LIMITED government, we as a society has lost respect for those constitutional limits and instead of taking principled stands to restrict government we have taken unprincipled stands based on the outcome we desire for society

Attempting to "engineer" a better society is the exact problem we have. That is Authoritarianism not liberty

Liberty is not attempting to engineer a better society or democracy, Liberty is allowing people to live their lives unmolested by government laws and regulations

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

#210

Post by bryanrasmussen » Sat, Jan 23, 2021, 9:15 PM UTC

vmception wrote: post #161

nabla9 wrote: post #33

Forensic methods used by police and intelligence go much deeper than just looking at phones near the crime scene. 1. They look at phones moving towards the crime scene and going dark when getting close. This is also how you can detect secret meetings between people. They move towards the same area and shut down their phones. 2. They look at suspect phone going dark anywhere around the time of the incident. 3. Leaving…

Regarding 3 I’ve been thinking of launching a courier service for this that would pollute data on a wide scale. Basically a “phone walking” service that also charges your phone. Could just be a side gig for Uber drivers, having phone lock boxes in their cars. The infrastructure is already there, phone lock boxes for charging exist in airports and nightclubs. This would be one that moves.

It sounds to me like something that it would be basically impossible to get enough clients for that you could charge a small amount to make it worthwhile, so if you can't get a lot of clients you have to charge a large amount, but if you charge a large amount you shut even more people out that just are a little paranoid and care about the polluting data as a privacy thing, so basically at the point where your pricing could work would have to be for criminals, and then you have to have clever criminals who are organized.

on edit: wait, with proper marketing maybe great for celebrities. might need some extra services.