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

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

#91

Post by ghaff »

car_analogy wrote: post #79
kube-system wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's revolting that we've allowed functionality to betray its owner to be legally mandated into "our" devices. It's no surprise that they keep this so very discreet. Edit: I am specifically referring to the e911 ability to without owner interaction or knowledge send GPS coordinates, not to network-side triangulation, or even to sending GPS coordinates when the owner initiates a 911 call.

It's "your" device but you're using it to communicate with things that are not your cell phone tower or telecoms network. One can have a reasonable discussion about the circumstances under which the telco doesn't/shouldn't know where your phone is but clearly there's some point where it's a function of using your phone.

(As others have noted there may be some confusion here between GPS data and cell tower triangulation.)

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

#92

Post by UncleMeat »

alistairSH wrote: post #75
logifail wrote: post #24

Earlier 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…

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…

> Driving the speed limit actually becomes dangerous.

I've lived in VA for decades and have driven all over the state. There is no highway where driving the speed limit is actually dangerous and there certainly isn't a highway where the norm is 20 over.

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

#93

Post by ghaff »

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.

You could also ask when is walking across the street against a red light or outside of a crosswalk a "feeling" about whether it's a safe thing to do that doesn't impede traffic--even though it violates the law?

The fact is that there are plenty of laws we somewhat violate on a daily basis. This has its own set of problems but it's the way things are essentially everywhere.

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

#94

Post by xxpor »

blantonl wrote: post #70
novok wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not only are there radar detector detectors, but then there are radar detector detector detectors, and radar detector detector detector detectors. A hilarious arms race.

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

#96

Post by Dylan16807 »

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.

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.

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

#97

Post by systematical »

jmisavage wrote: post #54
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.

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…

Richmond police force is understaffed (many have left to Chesterfield and Henrico) and the city has serious crime problems in many neighborhoods.

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

#98

Post by advisedwang »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #30

Simple improvement: ban carriers from charging for this surveillance. Could even introduce it as a pro-cop anti-corporate measure, which should take care of the political fringes. That removes the incentive to make it easy. Next, some manner of heightened threshold for more than N consecutive tracking requests or M requests in a twelve-month period. Maybe probable cause? This will be harder, politically, particularly…

> Simple improvement: ban carriers from charging for this surveillance. Could even introduce it as a pro-cop anti-corporate measure, which should take care of the political fringes. That removes the incentive to make it easy.

I like the idea of motivating cell companies to be less of a pushover, but reducing cost does _directly_ reduce the disincentive to the police to make these requests.

> Next, some manner of heightened threshold for more than N consecutive tracking requests or M requests in a twelve-month period. Maybe probable cause?

These requests already have a warrant, so meet probable cause.

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

#99

Post by istjohn »

blt wrote: post #26

> we will use all lawful tools at our disposal Interpreted precisely, this sentence doesn't rule out the possibility that they use unlawful tools too.

Correct. A little parallel construction[1], and no one will ever know.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

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

#100

Post by Dylan16807 »

woodruffw wrote: post #88
casion wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> but my car going 10mph over is SIGNIFICANTLY less dangerous to the public than that hoopty going the speed limit To the driving public, specifically. Pedestrians and cyclists will still be goop on your windshield 50 feet into your 100 foot braking.

Of which there are none on the roads where people want to go particularly fast.
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