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

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

insidenova.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 271 posts

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

#201

Post by hocuspocus »

nimbius wrote: post #197

Trying to steer this thread back on topic. This article is incorrect. Cellular services aren't polling GPS data from the device, they're using imei and subscriber identification triangulation from the towers which the FBI and law enforcement overlay on google maps. It works with big providers albeit I feel like this parlour trick becomes tougher if your target is using a resell carrier like mint or cricket.

Devices can and will report AGPS positions to carriers, it's part of several 3GPP protocols. Other people in comments have mentioned location sharing with emergency services, but it's also used for network quality telemetry. It's implemented at the baseband firmware level and there's nothing you can do about it.

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

#202

Post by Zak »

testbjjl wrote: post #185
eganist wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virginia as a whole has some pretty absurdly pro police laws, at least re: driving. The lesser of either 20 over the speed limit or any speed over ~80~ 85 miles an hour (thanks jmisavage) in Virginia is a misdemeanor, and at least one auto journalist has been jailed in Virginia. https://jalopnik.com/never-speed-in-virginia-lessons-from-my... It's also the only state to prohibit radar detectors.

I once got a ticket from a Virginia state trooper for driving in the HOV restricted lanes, with two passengers in a two seater. I took the ticket (like there is a choice) thinking I would go to court and contest. While looking for where to appear I came across the FAQ stating no exceptions for two passenger vehicles in the HOV. Nothing illegal, just feels wrongheaded in public safety and service are the priorities of…

The purpose of HOV lanes is not safety directly, but reducing traffic and pollution. It is rational with regard to those goals that cars are not granted exceptions for having only two seats.

Some of the other exceptions, such as motorcycles and hybrids (but not exceptionally efficient cars with conventional gasoline engines) are less rational.

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

#203

Post by jjav »

oneplane wrote: post #86
alistairSH wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how about sticking to the speed limit? Because the speed limit in much of the US is below the “natural” speed of that roadway. We have highways where 80+mph is the norm, but the posted limited can be anywhere from 55-70mph (I-95 along the east coast). Driving the speed limit actually becomes dangerous. At this point, speed enforcement becomes a hit-or-miss affair, where you’re at the mercy of the police officer. Bett…

Since when is a speed limit not a rule/law but a 'feeling' for a 'natural' speed? That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. That essentially just escalates as everyones 'naturally' speeds up as a herd and then the whole point of having rules is moot.

> That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. That essentially just escalates as everyones 'naturally' speeds up as a herd and then the whole point of having rules is moot.

You'd be wrong. If you remove all speed limits and all enforcement, people won't be driving 180mph on small roads.

Turns out for the vast majority of the drivers, a combination of awareness and experience will lead them to correctly judge a highest actually safe speed and they'll just drive that and no more.

This is codified in the rules that state that speed limits are supposed to be set to 85th percentile of natural traffic flow, not lower. That way for nearly everyone on the road the speed limit will make sense and not be oppressively low (laws are supposed to make sense, not just be arbitrary enforcement).

That's the rule on paper. Of course, if the speed limit matches the natural speed, it means hardly anyone will ever be speeding, which cuts the revenue source of speeding tickets. So jurisdictions play all kinds of games to set the posted speed limit far below the 85th percentile, which increases ticket revenue.

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

#204

Post by throwaway0a5e »

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…

>In the realm of ego orientated commenting, this one really stands out.

>I do not want to put my life in your unregulated hands.

It takes an impressive amount of cognitive dissonance to insult him and then drivel about "putting your life in unregulated hands" when the regulation in question is speed limits, a type of regulation to which compliance is low to the point of it almost being comical. If the regulation were something like standards of cleanliness for canned food or something else that's pretty much always adhered to you might have a point but it's not and you don't.

It's not the regulation that's keeping your naive self safe. Your life is pretty much already in unregulated hands because pretty much nobody is minding the regulation. It's that most people are reasonable and drive reasonably that keeps you as safe as you are. People are driving the speeds they drive because those speeds are reasonable to them. They are not whizzing by you at triple digit speeds because those speeds to not feel reasonable to them. It has nearly nothing to do with the number on the sign.

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

#205

Post by jjav »

cycomanic wrote: post #131
Dylan16807 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your common sense is wrong here. If you replace speed limits with "go a safe speed" then people don't go faster indefinitely, they'll find a speed that depends on road design. It doesn't escalate, and it's only notably faster than the speed limit when something has gone wrong with the road planning.

You obviously have not seen any of the many posted videos of some guys racing on public streets. Or are you saying the natural speed is a personal thing and everyone should be allowed to drive as fast as they personally feel comfortable with?

> You obviously have not seen any of the many posted videos of some guys racing on public streets.

Speed limits are supposed to be set to the 85th percentile of natural flow speed for the road.

The very few people racing on public streets are well above the 85th percentile, so that's a straw man argument.

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

#206

Post by throwaway0a5e »

charcircuit wrote: post #200
stefan_ wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well we have the stats and at 30mph already a pedestrian has a low chance of survival. So there is a perfectly good case to be made that just exceeding 20mph is reckless. Maybe we just limit cars there, then at least we are not "circularly informed", whatever that means.

Pedestrians don't walk on country roads.

Some do. And those that do know what they signed up for and behave accordingly.

It's like walking along a rail line. When traffic does show up you stay well out of its way.

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

#207

Post by throwaway0a5e »

xwdv wrote: post #106
jmisavage wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're out of date as of 2020. Reckless driving is 20 mph over the speed limit or over 85 mph now. It's a class 1 misdemeanor. Most of Virginia has 65 mph as the stated speed limit which usually drops to 55 mph around cities. There are stretches of I-95 and I-81 were the speed limit is 70 mph. But anyone who drives here knows that the speed limit is generally considered the slowest you should go on the road. Speeding…

I regularly drive at speeds in excess of 100mph when highways are empty and waze shows no police. What would be the fate of a person caught at those speeds in Virginia?

Realistically you'd be out a grand because it'd cost you $500 of lawyer to get it plead down to a $500 non-criminal offense.

VA only cares about the money. Individual cops will stop people they see doing stuff that warrants a "that's seriously unsafe, I can't just let that slide" response but the courts just see it as a revenue stream and will gladly let people plead down as long as the total shakedown is about the same. They don't care if a large chunk winds up in the lawyer's pockets because it's a giant revolving door.

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

#208

Post by throwaway0a5e »

novok wrote: post #48
randombits0 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's also the only state to prohibit radar detectors Which is arguably outside of the state’s jurisdiction. Only the FCC has the authority to regulate the airwaves and specifically transmitters and receivers. I bet that cop’s radar gun has an FCC sticker on it.

Maybe they are not regulating radio receiver usage, but the just the possession of it, which would be a separate kind of regulatory space.

Which is stupid if the goal is safety. A radar detector makes the user slow down for a much longer area than the sight of a cop car does.

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

#209

Post by 1123581321 »

stefan_ wrote: post #188
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.

Well we have the stats and at 30mph already a pedestrian has a low chance of survival. So there is a perfectly good case to be made that just exceeding 20mph is reckless. Maybe we just limit cars there, then at least we are not "circularly informed", whatever that means.

It means to use posted speed limits to decide what is a safe speed, rather than to evaluate the actual risk or at least have some model for what makes a number unsafe other than what the sign says. Your method, picking a number based on pedestrian survival rate, wouldn’t be that.

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

#210

Post by bladegash »

xwdv wrote: post #106
jmisavage wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're out of date as of 2020. Reckless driving is 20 mph over the speed limit or over 85 mph now. It's a class 1 misdemeanor. Most of Virginia has 65 mph as the stated speed limit which usually drops to 55 mph around cities. There are stretches of I-95 and I-81 were the speed limit is 70 mph. But anyone who drives here knows that the speed limit is generally considered the slowest you should go on the road. Speeding…

I regularly drive at speeds in excess of 100mph when highways are empty and waze shows no police. What would be the fate of a person caught at those speeds in Virginia?

Depends on the county and the judge. There’s a judge in Loudoun who is known for giving, at minimum, three days in jail for reckless driving. He allows for work-release so people don’t miss any days of work, but still.
Post reply on HN