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

FBI agents track cell phones that pinged near the Capitol

wusa9.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

491–500 of 516 posts

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

#491

Post by hourislate »

loteck wrote: post #189
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…

I'm always puzzled by posts like this. What is your purpose in posting this kind of extreme message claiming privacy is dead? Do you want people to give up on privacy and surrender themselves? Or, do you want people to be inspired to fight for more privacy? I would like to know what you intend for me as the reader to take away from this message, if you wouldn't mind clarifying.

My intention for the reader is to make them aware. What they decide to do is their choice.

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

#492

Post by thethethethe »

sneak wrote: post #466
thethethethe wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> These words confer explosions, gunfire, and mass loss of life. There were pipe bombs found. A guy had a car full of molotov cocktails. People were carrying guns and wearing body armor. Five people died. Its pretty surprising it didn't go much worse

I guess what they're trying to say is that if this had been a real insurrection, the bombs, incendiary devices, and guns would have been used , and in volume. The fact that some were found, and basically none were used (none of the deaths were a result of people being shot by the rioters) indicates the level of seriousness we're dealing with here. This is not to say that they shouldn't face consequences: they should;…

Insurrection is not war. Insurrection is a violent uprising against a government, which is exactly what happened. The fact that explosive devices were not used, but were present, was likely a matter of luck, not intent. Besides these things are not required for something to be an insurrection. They could have been armed with screwdrivers and hammers and it would still be an insurrection, albeit a less extreme insurrection.

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

#493

Post by mbrumlow »

mannykannot wrote: post #485
da_big_ghey wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I doubt that is something to be much concerned about, as I doubt there would be much use of anything that produces lists of suspects without explanation. What would one do with such a list? It would be like getting a bunch of anonymous tips all saying that a different person did the deed, without any clues to follow up on. Getting a list of suspects is rarely a problem for law enforcement; the difficulty is in winnow…

> produces lists of suspects without explanation.

No. They will come up with some fancy sounding term to describe these situations. Some experts will agree this is a sound method and it will be used to get warrants.

They will just put the cause as "suspect by unattended abnormalities" (aka phone not used during crime)

Everybody will smile. Warrants will be made. Life's turned up side down. And likely false arrest and convictions.

Even if we program rules into th3 AI to avoid this there is a real chance that the AI could work around and add people to thr list that it suspects is involved in one crime but could not list thr suspect do to rules, but a new crime opened a way for it to allow a suspect of crime one to br listed on crime 2.

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

#495

Post by AWildC182 »

rbanffy wrote: post #479
AWildC182 wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. To put it simply, they like Precise data, not Accurate data. They want a bunch of data-points saying one thing and couldn't care less if it's objectively the right target, not a bunch of data points saying a bunch of things, one of which is actually right. Precision data gives them convictions and convictions give them promotions. As they say, any metric that becomes a target... This is why giving the police in…

> They want a bunch of data-points saying one thing and couldn't care less if it's objectively the right target If your system produces data points with 8 significant digits of wrong data, we have two problems: the system and whoever approved the purchase. Any convictions will have to be corroborated by other evidence.

Until that other-evidence is just the product of some other hellish surveillance system. What I'm really saying is broadly we need fewer of these systems as they will only be abused, especially in concert. If you have one system that says the suspect had their phone off at the time of the bombing, and another saying they searched for "how do bombs work" on google a few years ago the jury will eat that shit up even though in actuality it provides almost zero evidence of anything.

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

#496

Post by syshum »

JohnBooty wrote: post #410
syshum wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hav…

Liberty is allowing people to live their lives unmolested by government laws and regulations You live in a society. Presumably you would like some legal remedy if somebody tries to harm you, or poison your drinking water upstream, or violates a written contract, sexually assaults your loved ones, or so forth. A life "unmolested by laws and regulations" is the most naive kind of fantasy imaginable. If history has taug…

>>A life "unmolested by laws and regulations" is the most naive kind of fantasy imaginable.

Not really, the fundemntal foundation of a libertarian law would be best highlighted from Frederic Bastiat's The Law

"The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all. "

The problem with modern society today is the law goes far far far beyond what individuals have the ethical right to do, namely self defense. Today the law has been perverted by the influence of two entirely different causes: stupid greed and false philanthropy.

The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder. And it has converted lawful defense into a crime, in order to punish lawful defense.

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

#497

Post by iamacyborg »

MertsA wrote: post #467
Raed667 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As someone who works for a tech giant I'd like to provide some input here. 1. Absolutely yes for ad hoc queries and there's a wealth of logging and privacy features built into all of our tools. 2. Absolutely yes and those queries are audited. For any query that matches some heuristics it'll warn us with a big scary message to make sure the query is legitimate work. For the query linked above about checking who was ar…

This is how it should be.

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

#498

Post by simple_phrases »

amelius wrote: post #244
simple_phrases wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ML is really good at picking up anomalies, and that is scary if, say, law enforcement or prosecutors are doing dragnet surveillance for anomalies in order to drum up charges.

How do you train for anomalies, given that the data is widely different every time? Or in other words, how do you obtain a dataset that is representative?

I'd argue that it is often difficult to impossible, but that doesn't stop companies from making AI/ML products for law enforcement. I'm someone who regularly trips up my bank's weird behavior detection system, and have my debit card frozen more often than it should be because of my purchasing patterns and travel.

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

#499

Post by olah_1 »

vsareto wrote: post #164
olah_1 wrote: post #59

This makes me appreciate kill switches more on the librem five phone. And it also makes sense why Apple doesn’t want you to be able to fully disable wifi on your phone.

Kill switches seem a bit silly against the US government. If you're doing something that drastic, it's probably better to take pains to organize without any electronics on you at all.

You’re probably right. But we’re also at the point where software is so tightly controlled by the hardware manufacturers that the devices simply don’t do what you expect them to do.

If I can flip a switch to disable wifi instead of tap three times, that’s a UX improvement to me.

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

#500

Post by mikem170 »

emteycz wrote: post #463
mikem170 wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to throw a thought out there: It is a problem if the government uses algorithms or ML systems that are secret and/or cannot be independently vetted by the citizenry. Judges cannot just sign off on warrants and sentencing just because "the computer says so", for all we know the computer may be programmed to say "poor and non-comformist = guilty" or some other nonsense, and/or reprogrammed after every election…

Is it what's happening? I thought "computer says so" triggers an investigation, which in turns produces reasoning for the judge, based on which the judge decides? Is there any source that confirms the belief about judges deciding based on computer output in the past or in the future - relevant cases, law, etc?

The worst I've heard of along these lines currently in practice is predictive policing [0]:

First the Sheriff’s Office generates lists of people it considers likely to break the law, based on arrest histories, unspecified intelligence and arbitrary decisions by police analysts.

Then it sends deputies to find and interrogate anyone whose name appears, often without probable cause, a search warrant or evidence of a specific crime.

They swarm homes in the middle of the night, waking families and embarrassing people in front of their neighbors. They write tickets for missing mailbox numbers and overgrown grass, saddling residents with court dates and fines. They come again and again, making arrests for any reason they can.

One former deputy described the directive like this: “Make their lives miserable until they move or sue.”

It seems that police departments are happy to buy tools for stuff like this, and private companies are happy to make a buck. But are these systems vetted by anyone on behalf of the public? Some like sting rays and breathalyzers have been hidden behind non-disclosure agreements, kept out of open court, etc.

Other than the above I've also heard of computer systems in NJ advising judges whether a suspect is a risk of not appearing in court (as they are reforming the bail system). I wondered if the criteria is published, how it reviewed and modified, etc.

I'm just concerned about the increasing influence of hidden algorithms on our society, and very concerned in general that the government is going to hook all of its databases together and do more of this, a la Chinese social scores, etc.

[0] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200907/12212945257/flori...

Post reply on HN