Not surprising, since the entire telecommunications industry continues to work hand in hand with all the alphabet agencies to gobble up as much data on everyone that they can. Laws and rights to the government are but mere suggestions.
Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones
61–70 of 271 posts
Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cops get more benefit of the doubt there than anyplace I’ve seen. And the cops, prosecutors and judges are in close coordination.
I see, thanks. I suppose I too live in a pro-cop area then. The police, judges and county attorneys all know each other and work together quite a bit. I know them and they know me. I suppose the way I handle the situation is to not break the law and not treat them like we inherently have an adversarial relationship. From my perspective, having the local community support first responders is a good thing and works ver…
Last time I was in Texas, it was legal to drive 80 miles an hour on certain highways.
If you needed to make a u-turn while driving on the highway, you could pull into special areas in the median of highways to make those turns. The same places highway patrol often use to sit, wait, and monitor traffic.
Both of those things are illegal in Virginia.
Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Considering the effects of driving at these speeds, I'd say the legal absurdity is the other 49 states not having similar punishments for people who drive at these incredibly dangerous speeds. An enormous amount of people die or acquire permanent, life-altering disabilities at the hands of people who were speeding and crashed.
This kind of absolute thinking is not helpful. The US is a HUGE place. Each location has different driving conditions, types of roads, driving habits etc... Affluence also factors in significantly both on a community level and personal level. Driving 80mph through a small town with significant environmental debris on the roads where everyone is driving trucks from the 60s? That should be a felony. Driving 80mph on a…
With you on "driving to the conditions". Although just because your vehicle can stop quickly doesn't mean that unmaintained civic can do the same when you go flying past and then hard brake.
My one hope for self driving vehicles is that it normalizes efficient traffic flow.
Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Virginia as a whole has some pretty absurdly pro police laws, at least re: driving (Full disclosure: have never driven in the USA), but without wishing to sound like a know-all, how about sticking to the speed limit? I've been dinged exactly twice for speeding since getting my licence almost exactly 30 years ago this month. No points in either case. It's not hard, honest. My wife might disagree, but her licence, he…
> I've been dinged exactly twice for speeding Not to be a know-all but why not stick to the speed limit?
Because it is very dangerous to drive at the speed limit on a 55-65mph interstate.
You'll get 18-wheelers harassing you, even if you stick to the slow lane and don't mind paying extra attention to the on-ramps every mile. And those semi trucks almost never get pulled over; their job is hard enough.
Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. I think we need to put as much blame on the carriers providing these capabilities to anyone , let alone the police. That the police are publicly funded and are buying this data with my money is also a huge issue to me, but if I had to pick one thing to change, I’d make selling this data illegal. That way, no one could have it.
That’s what the warrant requirement is all about, that’s where it’s broken. This technique should only be used for major felonies. On the flip side, if you want to commit major felonies, don’t take your phone!
This one has been the case for years. Even when the technical capabilities were only at theoretical level, any criminal with some brain used to switch off their phones+ take out batteries before even having any discussions, not to mention commiting crimes. Today's phones can't be used anywhere in any context if people are involved in some criminal activities.
Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is accurate. Your vehicle is not allowed to be equipped with a radar detector that is powered or accessible to the driver. The police even have radar detector detectors.
I can’t be the only one thinking “so how do you build a radar detector detector detector?”
It's basically just a more sensitive radar detector. Instead of picking up the main frequencies radar guns use, it picks up the harmonics emitted by the oscillating crystal inside the radar detectors. All radar detectors leak on harmonic frequencies of the frequency they pick up on, it's just a matter of how much. Those cheap Walmart radar detectors leak so badly they detect each other. Pricier ones are more sophisticated in how they shield.
Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
> with probable cause It appears to be a lower standard; reasonable suspicion, perhaps.
How does that appear? The article says, > Officers simply have to attest in an affidavit that they have probable cause that the tracking data is “relevant to a crime that is being committed or has been committed.” The term "reasonable suspicion" doesn't appear in the article at all.
Not a lawyer. Probable cause for a search warrant, to my understanding, means probable cause the target committed or abetted a crime. The target must be a suspect.
Probable cause for believing the target has information “relevant to a crime” sounds like something else, perhaps even lower than reasonable suspicion.
Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Both, depending on what features are supported by the handset and/or network. Earlier phases of e911 compliance did it with triangulation, and later phases do it with GPS location. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_9-1-1#Wireless_locati...
Hunh. Does this definitely use the e911 system for tracking? If so, there’s sort of a well-poisoning thing going on here. Most people would like 911 be able to figure out where they’re calling from in an emergency, but if this is going to be abused for surveillance purposes people are going to want to disable the phone-side portion of it - which prevents it from helping in an emergency. On that note, can this even be…
As I understand it is mostly handled by the chipset firmware these days, and no options are available to disable it because it is a legal requirement. But even if you were able to disable the functionality, the carriers towers can triangulate you.
Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones
#69"We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time." Oooh, wait until they hear about CCPA... (but anyway, I'm sure the 'secret GPS pings' are just plain-old stealth SMS, and we're all better off not reading TFA in any case)
I never understood these concerns in the US, for US web sites. What do they even care about our laws? If there was a US law stating something similar for people connecting connecting to my French site from the US I would just smile and live on. I do not expect the CIA to kidnap me and bring me in front of a US court.
If the CIA were to kidnap you, I doubt it would be so they could bring you in to face a US court. It would be some site totally not on the map in a country with a higher tolerance to see if you can breath with water in your lungs.
Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones
#70Earlier 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.
All radio receivers have local oscillators built into their receiving circuitry that actually transmits energy that can be detected by specialized receivers.