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FBI agents track cell phones that pinged near the Capitol

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

#281

Post by da_big_ghey »

BurningFrog wrote: post #207
suifbwish wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The problem is that one is explainable and the other is not. "He was near the scene of the crime and has no convincing alibi," is very different from, "The computer said he's a suspect and we don't know why, but we still want a warrant." People being targeted for being anomalous is bad, but centralizing and scaling it up is worse.

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

#282

Post by draugadrotten »

ramraj07 wrote: post #160
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 could also be perfect. Call your friend, let him come pick your phone up and show it a good time, while you go commit a crime, perfect alibi!

I know of a murder case where the suspect is trying to use a web page refresh in the middle of the night as evidence he did not kill his lover. The prosecution thinks it was an automatic refresh but have difficulties proving it.

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

#283

Post by gvd »

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…

Accuracy is generally not great compared to gps. When towers are more dense accuracy is increased. However, an LTE phone generally pings a tower every few minutes on average so you can track people pretty well. Telecom operators have tools (generally 3rd party) that indexes and geolocate this log data from the towers in order to solve network issues. It can obviously also be used for law enforcement purposes but probably require a warrant

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

#285

Post by goatinaboat »

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…

Forensic methods used by police and intelligence go much deeper than just looking at phones near the crime scene.

It’s amazing how efficient the FBI has suddenly become, practically overnight.

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

#286

Post by enriquto »

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.

> The question is what the non-crime use case is.

To protect against a tyrannical government.

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

#287

Post by dboreham »

gruez wrote: post #279
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. Leaving a phone at home that is not answering calls or creating traffic during the time of interest is also a lead (if you already have a suspect). Won't most phones being left at home generate no traffic because it's connected to wifi? AFAIK most phones turn off their mobile data connection if connected to wifi. It's also not too unreasonable to have very little baseline voice traffic, since everyone's texting t…

Probably that's not what happens.

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

#288

Post by jessaustin »

quasirandom wrote: post #139
bilbo0s wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point is, the time to stop that particular practice was in its infancy. Waiting until the practice is both widespread and normalized is a losing strategy. The use of cell phone data is well understood, well litigated, and for all intents and purposes, settled law. To come along and unwind all that now is sisyphaean. We need to start getting out in front of the issues. Not reacting all the time. And certainly not allo…

> The use of cell phone data is well understood, well litigated, and for all intents and purposes, settled law. I don't have strong views on the right policy outcome, but it is not accurate to call this issue well litigated and/or settled law. Just yesterday, NYTimes ran an article about DIA claiming a "commercial availability" exception to the only Supreme Court case addressing cell phone location data (Carpenter).…

How can it be litigated if it is secret? The sorts of lawyers allowed to know of it are not the sorts of lawyers who file suit in the public interest.

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

#289

Post by [deleted] »

alain_gilbert wrote: post #261
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…

And yet, the DMV cannot have access to a I94 form even if they already have all the information. And they also need me to print it so that they can scan it back in their computer system ! What a world we live in.

[deleted]
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