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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

#431

Post by Dylan16807 »

BurningFrog wrote: post #381
Dylan16807 wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically it's not triangulation, it's trilateration. But the math is not significantly harder. The only meaningful quirk is that without a perfect clock you don't know the exact distances to each satellite, instead you have distances a+n, b+n, c+n, etc. Still though, you're just looking for the spot where your numbers line up. There's no wizardry in the "compute a position" part of GPS.

OK, I looked it up, and the GPS system is a different and simpler from what I thought I heard. In the end the math is indeed similar, but how it gets there is quite different. For one thing, each satellite carries an atomic clock to make things work. And the receiver locates itself by listening to signals, while triangulation is several receivers working together to locate a transmitter .

I will note that you could make the system work fine without an atomic clock on the satellites. There are circuits that can keep a good enough sync to a ground-based reference. It would just be annoying.

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

#432

Post by cannabis_sam »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #316
ficklepickle wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Policing in the USA, to a nearby outsider, appears to be more about enforcing societal norms than safety or laws. It seems to me they harass anyone they perceive to be abnormal. As a delightfully abnormal human, I'm very glad I was born just north of the 49th parallel. It's not perfect, but I do feel free to be myself.

Haha, having spent time above and below 49, I would say you couldn’t be more wrong with that perception. In any American city, especially big liberal ones (which is most of them) you can forget about societal norms. There are weird and crazy people everywhere. Nothing is “weird” to anybody who has spent any amount of time in them. Everyone walks right past a circus on their way to work. Cops pay no attention. Ask a N…

>In any American city, especially big liberal ones (which is most of them) you can forget about societal norms. There are weird and crazy people everywhere. Nothing is “weird” to anybody who has spent any amount of time in them. Everyone walks right past a circus on their way to work.

> It’s also important not to generalize across such a diverse set of individuals and jurisdictions.

Pick one.

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

#433

Post by smnrchrds »

XorNot wrote: post #376
_underfl0w_ wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall (likely pre-covid) seeing a story posted here of some unsuspecting schmuck who became a suspect in a crime because his smart watch showed him circling near the area on his usual bike route. Scary times.

Being a suspect does not mean you are guilty. Being arrested and charged does not mean you are guilty. This whole line of "what could go wrong!?" starts from a much deeper sickness in the way Americans view the criminal justice system.

Being arrested, even if never convicted, even if never charged with a crime and released with a hug and an apology, will have long-lasting negative effects on your life. For example, a citizen of a Visa Waiver Program country cannot travel to the US visa-free for the rest of his or her life if they have ever been arrested. They have to apply for a visitor visa and convince an immigration officer that they deserve a visa. Just a simple mistaken identity arrest can make the rest of your life difficult and there is nothing you can do to fix it, you just have to endure it.

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

#434

Post by pnw_hazor »

kuyan wrote: post #213
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…

> 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. I don't think this claim is accurate. Federal, state, and local law enforcement have always been happy to investigate and suppress nonviolent protest activity (m…

The acting police chief of Seattle (acting because the black female chief resigned rather face a punitive pay decrease among other things) said today that they will start arresting rioters who destroy property or assault people.

He said the SPD has the support of the city attorney. The Seattle city attorney, Pete Holmes, is mostly famous for not prosecuting anyone.

The chief said it had nothing to do with who occupies the whitehouse.

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

#435

Post by Raidion »

anoyesnonymous wrote: post #417
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…

Gait recognition is supposed to be as good as a fingerprint. Plenty of video footage to identify everyone there even with masks on and no phone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gait_analysis#Gait_as_biometri...

Gaits, like fingerprints, would do a pretty good job of matching a suspect to evidence, but if they have a gait (or fingerprint) and there is no match in the system, then what?

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

#436

Post by AaronFriel »

dcolkitt wrote: post #260
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, violent crime this year is at a multi-decade high[1]. It's one thing to suffer the indignity of a surveillance, but it's quite another when the surveillance doesn't even deliver its purported benefits. [1] https://time.com/5922082/2020-gun-violence-homicides-record-...

That sharp rise in crime makes 2020 dissimilar to recent years which largely continued a multi-decade decline in violent crime.

Could it be there is something else peculiar to 2020?

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

#437

Post by titzer »

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…

Yet another reason to not let them normalize mass surveillance.

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

#438

Post by kordlessagain »

the8472 wrote: post #239
exporectomy wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already do that with their human brains. I've been stopped by the police for: - Sitting in a parked car in a suburban street for too long. - Going shopping at 2am. - Walking under a bridge at night. It's OK as long as they quickly realize you're harmless and leave you alone.

Human brains tend to be stateful, they can be talked to. And they're only deployed at small scale. AIs don't update and can be deployed at scale.

> AIs don't update

Currently.

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

#439

Post by mike_d »

anoyesnonymous wrote: post #417
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…

Gait recognition is supposed to be as good as a fingerprint. Plenty of video footage to identify everyone there even with masks on and no phone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gait_analysis#Gait_as_biometri...

Are you aware of a database of everyones gait to match against?

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

#440

Post by AshWolfy »

ficklepickle wrote: post #252
exporectomy wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They already do that with their human brains. I've been stopped by the police for: - Sitting in a parked car in a suburban street for too long. - Going shopping at 2am. - Walking under a bridge at night. It's OK as long as they quickly realize you're harmless and leave you alone.

Policing in the USA, to a nearby outsider, appears to be more about enforcing societal norms than safety or laws. It seems to me they harass anyone they perceive to be abnormal. As a delightfully abnormal human, I'm very glad I was born just north of the 49th parallel. It's not perfect, but I do feel free to be myself.

Broken windows policing believes that abnormal behavior creates disorder, so all minor infractions must be heavily punished and "problematic" neighborhoods have to have heavy police presence
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