[HN Gopher] FBI agents track cell phones that pinged near the Ca...
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FBI agents track cell phones that pinged near the Capitol
Author : danso
Score : 205 points
Date : 2021-01-23 15:02 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wusa9.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wusa9.com)
| pjc50 wrote:
| "Access denied"? (UK)
|
| Anyway, we're now going to see what happens when the huge post-
| Patriot act homeland security machinery is turned on people who
| thought they were untouchable, and all of a sudden a lot of
| powers that everyone was OK being used against nebulous "enemies"
| are going to end up in the news.
| thebruce87m wrote:
| outline.com to the rescue:
|
| https://outline.com/sf9LfV
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| GDPR'd?
| nabla9 wrote:
| 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 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).
| suifbwish wrote:
| 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
| during a particular timeframe is chilling.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| That's already a thing, not a future possibility. Jogging too
| close to a crime can get your location subpoenaed from Google
| or whoever has it. Stories crop up on HN occasionally about
| this.
| simple_phrases wrote:
| 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.
| kyleblarson wrote:
| What is even scarier is the likelihood of law enforcement
| agencies buying tech from fly-by-night companies who will
| use all of the buzzwords in their sales pitches (AI, ML,
| big data, etc) but who have no real knowledge of such
| things and are just selling a shit product that will entrap
| innocents.
| tyfon wrote:
| You will end up with "Computer says no" situations if
| there are no knowledgable humans that review the
| decisions from the models.
|
| It's really no different in banks but they are regulated
| and must provide proper reasoning to denied customers for
| the models they use in my country. It's not enough to say
| "your score is too low".
|
| It's very easy to create artificial stupidity!
| gvd wrote:
| This is such a general bs statement
| exporectomy wrote:
| 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.
| 14 wrote:
| We have had the RCMP racially profiling native Americans
| and picking on people of color. The exact reason they are
| not supposed to pull you over for offenses as you
| mentioned but need a reason such as speeding or failure
| to follow traffic laws. It's NOT OKAY and should not be
| considered normal for them to do.
| the8472 wrote:
| 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.
| ficklepickle wrote:
| 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.
| powersnail wrote:
| Not just policing. I've found that in USA, the society in
| general wants to meddle with people's business.
|
| Me and my buddy were standing on the sidewalk of a
| bridge, making a time lapse. Within one hour, someone
| called the police on us twice.
| sneak wrote:
| As a weird person who grew up in the USA (and eventually
| left for just this reason), I can attest to the accuracy
| of this analysis.
|
| I even wrote about it recently:
| https://sneak.berlin/20200628/the-problem-with-police-in-
| ame...
| lawnchair_larry wrote:
| This is just wrong on so many levels. You even included
| the widely debunked (even by her own colleagues!) Nikole
| Hannah-Jones 1619 project lies. Cops do not care if you
| are "weird".
|
| Police do in fact exist to enforce the law. It really is
| that simple.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| it's inherently scary if one is somewhat anomalous in
| behavior.
| Wistar wrote:
| Indeed. Witness all the folks who insisted Amanda Knox
| was guilty because she didn't act and look as they
| thought she should were she innocent.
| amelius wrote:
| 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?
| playingchanges wrote:
| I would think a warrant would still be required, so not as
| minority report as all that.
| exporectomy wrote:
| There's nothing wrong with that as long as the law
| enforcement is trustworthy and competent. We do want to catch
| criminals. That's the whole point of having law enforcement.
| It's funny that in America, people seem to have so given up
| on the idea of the police being honest and competent that all
| they want is to reduce their power. They don't seem to want
| reform and instead would rather suffer from crime than be
| investigated by the police.
|
| Becoming a suspect shouldn't be a scary thing to avoid. You
| should be able to just ignore your status and wait for the
| police to exclude you. But somehow it's a problem in America
| that people just accept.
| satellite2 wrote:
| It's generally well accepted in the criminology field that
| you can reduce crime and that actually the most effective
| way to reduce crime happen well before and are not related
| to policing anyone. No one wants to suffer from crime by
| inaction.
| NotPavlovsDog wrote:
| >There's nothing wrong with that as long as the law
| enforcement is trustworthy and competent
|
| "there's nothing wrong with the death penalty if you can
| trust the legal system implicitly" Neil Gaiman, American
| Gods
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Because basing the system on the assumption that police
| will always be honest and competent is what got us into the
| situation we're in. Once bitten, twice shy.
| exporectomy wrote:
| I'm talking about accountability, not blind trust.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| This already happens, most of us just don't live in the
| neighborhoods where it happens. That's the unfortunate
| reality of today's America. It's also the reason that these
| techniques will be employed in a ubiquitous fashion in
| tomorrow's America.
|
| If we wanted to stop this, the time to complain was years ago
| when the practice was started in the drug war. Or even
| recently, when the practice was employed during the BLM
| riots. Any attempt to stop it now brings howls of racism.
| Causing police departments and other law enforcement agencies
| to double down on insisting that they use it on everyone in
| their attempts to prove the people screaming racism wrong.
| 13415 wrote:
| Like with any other form of surveillance, if it's a bad
| practice, then it shouldn't be used on anyone, regardless
| of race.
| xbmcuser wrote:
| Thats his point this was being done years ago but white
| americans were not part of the demographic surveilled
| this way so didn't care now that they are and it gets
| stopped because of it then people accusing the police and
| government of racism are correct.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| 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 allowing privacy
| violations that affect others, then trying to prevent the
| very same privacy violation from affecting our own.
|
| The people doing the violating are going to double down.
| They don't want their critics being proved right. They
| don't want to be accused of being hypocritical. So what
| are they going to do?
|
| As privacy activists, we need to make it easy for
| potential partners to cooperate with us. Right now, we're
| making it very difficult for potential partners to
| cooperate with us. We're putting potential partners in
| very difficult positions, and then asking why they won't
| support us?
| nitrogen wrote:
| _We need to start getting out in front of the issues. Not
| reacting all the time._
|
| It's kind of difficult when the privacy violations in
| question begin in secret. Consider police trying not to
| disclose their use of Stingrays, for example.
|
| I somehow doubt police departments and intelligence
| agencies are going to agree to run all future uses of
| tech by a privacy watchdog, so how do you suggest getting
| ahead of the problem?
| vladTheInhaler wrote:
| Well maybe we need to go over their heads then. That's
| supposed to be the purpose of the legislative branch -
| make rules about how the government is allowed to
| operate.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| This is unnecessarily defeatist. GPDR proved that you
| could get enough support for large scale walkback of
| thoroughly entrenched practices.
| simple_phrases wrote:
| The US isn't Europe, and in the US, law enforcement has
| undue influence in government and significant lobbying
| power. PBAs successfully lobbied to keep marijuana
| illegal all over the country, and it took public
| referendums to get it legalized in states that it is
| legal in. Even then, PBAs had undue influence in crafting
| legislation so that municipal police could still ticket
| and jail people in order to still generate revenue from
| marijuana possession and sale violations.
| quasirandom wrote:
| > 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). If that is indeed DIA's rational, they are
| going to have some problems. For example, it is unlawful
| for the state to use commercially available thermal
| optics to surveil the interior of a dwelling without a
| warrant. I think DIA may be relying on dicta from Kyllo
| about devices in "common use", but their rational is
| secret so we won't know until it is... litigated.
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/22/us/politics/dia-
| surveilla...
| jessaustin wrote:
| 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.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| 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.
| donkeyd wrote:
| Which means there will be 100 suspects where usually there
| would be maybe 2. Which means the data is useless and
| therefore won't be used.
|
| Law enforcement doesn't want a system that incorrectly
| flags hundreds of people, unlike what some people seem to
| think. They want systems that reliably flag potential
| suspects, because that reduces work in stead of increasing
| it.
| da_big_ghey wrote:
| 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.
| irrational wrote:
| You are a suspect because you do not own a smartphone.
| _underfl0w_ wrote:
| 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.
| Wistar wrote:
| Perhaps this story about a Florida man and his fitness app
| data that "placed him" at the scene of a burglary because
| he had the misfortune of having ridden by the crime site
| three times during his ride?
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2020/3/7/21169533/florida-google-
| ru...
| alsetmusic wrote:
| > 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).
|
| I wonder if there's any value to putting a phone in airplane
| mode and saying you were watching a movie or having a date
| night with a partner. Probably only useful if someone pulled
| logs off a phone within a short window of time.
| RivieraKid wrote:
| Where did you learn this by the way? (I'm assuming this is not
| just a speculation.)
| nabla9 wrote:
| I read books about spatial techniques used in forensic
| investigations and listened some lectures. The company I
| worked for used to have law enforcement customers needing GIS
| and data mining consultants.
| everdrive wrote:
| Are these methods actually used by police, or are these
| speculations based on the sort of inferences police could draw?
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I am also wondering the same. Would be great if the OP would
| provide some sources around this.
| trhway wrote:
| basically leaving you phone or going dark is by itself already
| suspicious behavior warranting a quick interview with the
| police AI-based precognition screener and/or dispatch of a
| police welfare check drone.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| 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!
| draugadrotten wrote:
| 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.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Browsing fingerprints would not be the same.
| rootsudo wrote:
| You don't have to browse all the time, if it's a pattern
| just being alongside friends phone, and your phone is
| locked - it'd make sense. You're enjoying conversation,
| he's doing the spotify playlist..
|
| There you go.
| vmception wrote:
| Regarding 3 I've been thinking of launching a courier service
| for this that would pollute data on a wide scale.
|
| Basically a "phone walking" service that also charges your
| phone.
|
| Could just be a side gig for Uber drivers, having phone lock
| boxes in their cars. The infrastructure is already there, phone
| lock boxes for charging exist in airports and nightclubs. This
| would be one that moves.
| grumple wrote:
| Is there a use for this that isn't to enable criminals?
| travmatt wrote:
| To protect against harassment:
| https://www.androidheadlines.com/2019/08/t-mobile-hands-
| over...
| Sebb767 wrote:
| Yes. Protecting innocent people from getting caught in the
| fallout.
|
| It seems the idea is to make (extended) phone tracking
| unviable and therefore stop the practice; not to enable
| criminals, but to avoid the side effect, which are
| perceived not worth the risk (in GPs opinion).
| vmception wrote:
| Depends on whether you consider the people doing
| warrantless tracking to be criminals.
|
| Obviously people doing tracking with warrants will have
| useless data too and stop asking for that kind of dataset.
| vmception wrote:
| I like to think of it as phantom cloning. You physically
| could be where you normally are at home, or out somewhere
| else with no phone, or out somewhere else with a burner.
| All while what people normally use to identify you is
| moving around randomly.
|
| There are plenty of times I wish I was connected but not
| tracked all the time because I get distracted with my
| device easily while Im just not used to being with no
| connectivity any more. Hiking, running errands, you name
| it.
|
| Might as well pollute the data set for everyone else while
| you're at.
| klyrs wrote:
| Maybe... phone walkers who scrape your data while charging
| and hand it over to the cops?
| vmception wrote:
| The innovation that the gig economy needs.
|
| While everyone is worried about criminals, everyone else
| that wants to disconnect and has benign data is doing
| just fine.
| selestify wrote:
| 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.
| dhosek wrote:
| 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.
| vmception wrote:
| Yes, that model would be detectable, what does that get
| anyone though?
|
| I found flaws with a lot of models, whether it was
| greater vulnerability of not getting your phone back, or
| having too many other phones in the same place.
|
| I decided that more phones in the same and route was more
| tolerable.
|
| But any model I didnt think of I'd like to read it.
| enriquto wrote:
| > The question is what the non-crime use case is.
|
| To protect against a tyrannical government.
| megablast wrote:
| Of course. All privacy is like that. All encryptions is
| like that.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| It sounds to me like something that it would be basically
| impossible to get enough clients for that you could charge a
| small amount to make it worthwhile, so if you can't get a lot
| of clients you have to charge a large amount, but if you
| charge a large amount you shut even more people out that just
| are a little paranoid and care about the polluting data as a
| privacy thing, so basically at the point where your pricing
| could work would have to be for criminals, and then you have
| to have clever criminals who are organized.
|
| on edit: wait, with proper marketing maybe great for
| celebrities. might need some extra services.
| vmception wrote:
| Subscription service like everything else whether the
| subscribers use it often enough for themselves, drop a
| couple lockboxes in uber driver's cars. Free advertising to
| other uber riders, no ongoing overhead costs for operation.
|
| Service just needs to exist.
|
| Its not economically "unviable" its also not economically
| "worth my time to make", but for someone else that gets one
| idea in their life, maybe its worthwhile for them
| umvi wrote:
| Well during covid my phone doesn't leave home 99% of the time,
| so that wouldn't tell them anything.
| gruez wrote:
| >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 these days. As for texts, it
| might be suspicious if you have a high baseline amount of
| texts, but it's also not too unreasonable for someone to
| communicate almost exclusively using chat apps (eg. signal,
| imessage).
| elliotec wrote:
| Location and traffic data still happen over wifi of course,
| so I wouldn't think that's considered "gone dark"
| dboreham wrote:
| Probably that's not what happens.
| [deleted]
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _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.
| phkahler wrote:
| >> 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).
|
| Interesting. My phone uses WiFi for everything by default. I
| wonder if they'd be able to tell (probably via Google?) If I
| were to leave it home for a day. On the weekend of course,
| since daily commute will hit the towers except for an atypical
| occurrence.
|
| With such capability I feel like it's obvious they don't want
| to stop certain things.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| Good thing I rarely answer calls and my phone creates traffic
| on its own. Hell, I wouldnt be surprised if I could just spoof
| my phone's traffic with simple scripts.
| alwayshumans wrote:
| Interestingly the same techniques are applied to the fishing
| industry to monitor for illegal fishing in protected areas.
| olah_1 wrote:
| 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.
| gareim wrote:
| > And it also makes sense why Apple doesn't want you to be able
| to fully disable wifi on your phone.
|
| If you're referring to the lack of a hardware kill switch,
| that's true for 99.9% of Androids too.
|
| If you're referring to the temporary WiFi off toggle in the
| Control Center, the reasoning is that most people don't
| remember they turned off WiFi (my parents for example) and
| won't remember to turn it back on. But you absolutely can
| disable it by going into the Settings app.
| olah_1 wrote:
| Maybe that's new in iOS14. I remember last year seeing a
| Shortcut for turning off wifi completely. But even then I
| thought it turned itself back on randomly.
| jackson1442 wrote:
| You've always been able to ask Siri or go into settings to
| disable wifi since the first beta of that feature; I ran
| it.
|
| I think it's nice since I frequently need to tell my phone
| to hop to mobile data while walking around campus since
| it's hopping from AP to AP and the control center switch is
| geofenced, so when I stop walking I'm almost always outside
| the geofence and wifi is back on like I wanted it to be.
| adrr wrote:
| Most common use case of disabling Wifi is when you're at a
| range where wifi traffic is so degraded that you're better off
| using the cell network. Thats why it is temporary from the
| control center but you can disable permanently in settings.
| suifbwish wrote:
| The way to disable WiFi on your device to change the password
| in the access point
| olah_1 wrote:
| It will still try to connect to wifi points that you happen
| to pass by, though.
| vsareto wrote:
| 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.
| sam_goody wrote:
| 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 and lawfully.
| The fact that all protestors are being tracked - and are being
| told they are tracked- will send quite a chilling message:
|
| Don't ever, ever admit that you are visibly or loudly on the
| "right". We are watching, and we are powerful, and you cannot
| prove innocence.
| flyinghamster wrote:
| Equating people protesting police brutality with people
| attempting to overturn an election by force is quite a stretch.
| But words mean precisely nothing to the right. One moment
| they'll be screaming "Blue Lives Matter!" and the next they'll
| be braining Capitol cops with fire extinguishers. Did a store
| owner kick out a kook ranting at and bullying people? Great!
| Did $WEBSITE boot a kook for doing likewise online? CENSORSHIP!
|
| Here's what I think: Smash out a store window and steal stuff
| because the cops killed someone you might or might not know? Go
| to jail. Rampage through the halls of Congress, carrying zip
| ties and looking for elected officials to kidnap and hold
| hostage or kill, in the name of overturning the election,
| because your presidential candidate lost? You damn well better
| go to jail for a long time.
| ihsw wrote:
| How does robbing businesses, smashing people in heads with
| bike-locks, and committing arson factor into "protesting
| police brutality"?
| louthy wrote:
| > Don't ever, ever admit that you protest something the left
| does
|
| What does the political issue (left or right) have to do with
| this? Isn't this a discussion about the surveillance state?
|
| In this case that people become suspects because they happened
| to be near a riot.
| newacct583 wrote:
| > Most of the people who went to DC did so peacefully and
| lawfully.
|
| The story is about phones near the capitol building, not
| attendees at the Trump rally near the White House and certainly
| not the entirety of DC.
|
| Most of the people at the _capitol_ seem to have breached the
| perimeter, in fact. I haven 't seen any coverage of a static
| demonstration that stayed outside the barricades anywhere. Once
| those fences went down the whole mob went across.
|
| Can you point to the people at the capitol you think were
| incorrectly snared by this surveillance?
| covidthrow wrote:
| There's a great YouTube video that collects a ton of footage
| taken through the day you can review to see the behavior of
| the protestors on that day.[1]
|
| As an aside, since you appear to feel that breaching a
| threshold is grounds to review the behavior of all parties in
| the vicinity--regardless of their involvement--do you feel
| similarly about breaching country border thresholds?
|
| The reason I ask is simple: nobody disputes that people who
| illegally entered the capitol should be held responsible.
| What is under dispute are the methods used to determine who
| that was. The particular method outlined in the article
| implicates a number of completely innocent protestors.
| Further, it leaves ample room for things like "lists" used to
| monitor protestors--even if they haven't committed a crime.
|
| I'm trying to understand your principled threshold for
| engaging in law enforcement tactics that involve people who
| haven't committed a crime.
|
| 1: https://youtu.be/_6uSYhyFao4
| systemvoltage wrote:
| > The fact that all protestors are being tracked
|
| If the riotors in Portland decided to travel to DC en masse to
| take down the US government, to hang members of Congress, you
| betchya it would be the same.
|
| I condemn all violence but there is a major difference of the
| context.
| amerine wrote:
| Exactly. OP paints an extremely false equivalency. It's
| oranges and tomatoes.
| headcanon wrote:
| FBI targets the left pretty extensively as well. COINTELPRO
| says hello, first of all. Other sources:
|
| - https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/10/06/the-fbi-has-
| identified-...
|
| - https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/fbi-
| survei...
|
| - https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-
| opinion/fbi-...
| BurningFrog wrote:
| COINTELPRO ended in the 70s.
| Uyuxo wrote:
| Wow you're dumb as a box of rocks. Do you not remember the
| unmarked federal agents whisking away protestors? Or do you not
| have the nuance to understand the difference between protesting
| oppression and committing an act of sedition?
| adriancr wrote:
| Cell phone location data does not imply person is guilty and
| people will get their day in court if the FBI actually
| determines they've committed something illegal.
|
| This is similar to 2011 England riots where end result was "By
| 15 August 2011 around 3,100 people had been arrested, of whom
| over 1,100 had appeared in court"
|
| As I remember, they went pretty hard in England as well, a
| judge stated that "an overwhelming obligation on sentencing
| courts to do what they can to ensure the protection of the
| public", that "the imposition of severe sentences, intended to
| provide both punishment and deterrence, must follow" and that
| "[t]hose who deliberately participate in disturbances of this
| magnitude, causing injury and damage and fear to even the most
| stout-hearted of citizens, and who individually commit further
| crimes during the course of the riots are committing aggravated
| crimes".
|
| Also, what do you expect them to do after 2 police officers
| were killed on tape, one lady got killed by her stupidity, pipe
| bombs found, imbeciles looking for Pelosi to hang... Computers
| with potentially sensitive data stolen... and god knows what
| foreign agents could have taken/compromised just blending in...
|
| What would you do if you were in charge of the investigation?
| tyleo wrote:
| The activity at the Capitol clearly went beyond the bounds of
| what I'd call a protest. Furthermore, as a resident in an area
| which saw destruction by left-leaning groups, I believe those
| individuals should also be prosecuted.
|
| I don't think this has anything to do with "right" or "left",
| it has to do with illegally breaking into the Capitol,
| especially while congress was present. A group of left leaning
| trespassers would likely have seen, and deserved, a similar
| response.
| convery wrote:
| There were estimates upwards of 300K people there to
| peacefully protest, that some people decided to enter the
| building does not negate the protesting. Even if social media
| calls for the arrest and ostracisation of everyone within a 5
| mile radius.
| tyleo wrote:
| I think you should back that claim up with data. 200K
| people were at The Women's March in 2017 which is thought
| to be the largest US protest:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-
| cage/wp/2017/02/0...
|
| Regardless, I stand by my words, "the activity at the
| Capitol clearly went beyond the bounds of what I'd call a
| protest." I have less concern about what people outside of
| the Capitol were doing.
| mc32 wrote:
| People who went into the Capitol building are fair game,
| people who were protesting outside are not. They should not
| be part of the dragnet.
|
| If people committed crimes, try them, else, they should not
| be dragged into it.
| tyleo wrote:
| As I said, "the activity at the Capitol clearly went beyond
| the bounds of what I'd call a protest." I have less concern
| about what people outside of the Capitol were doing.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Would the key here be that the FBI has jurisdiction to
| investigate rioters interacting with federal property, but not
| when they burn down a local Minneapolis police station or
| something like that?
|
| I don't think many people inside or out of the FBI would agree
| that it is a tool of liberal politicians.
| kuyan wrote:
| > 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 (much of it from the
| left).
|
| Other commenters have pointed out the FBI's involvement. Other
| state overreactions that immediately come to mind:
|
| - Oil companies and the North Dakota AG working with private
| military contractors to "defeat" peaceful protests oil
| pipelines https://theintercept.com/2017/05/27/leaked-documents-
| reveal-...
|
| - Military surveillance technology used against peaceful
| graduate student protests at UC Santa Cruz
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/7kppna/california-police-use...
|
| - 'The Drug Enforcement Administration has been granted
| sweeping new authority to "conduct covert surveillance" and
| collect intelligence on people participating in protests over
| the police killing of George Floyd, according to a two-page
| memorandum obtained by BuzzFeed News.'
| https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/george-flo...
|
| Among others.
|
| eta: more good reading here --
| https://theintercept.com/2019/10/22/terrorism-fbi-political-...
| adriancr wrote:
| > Through all this, the FBI never breathed down the neck of
| the protestors
|
| Someone should remind him of vietnam war protests I guess...
| mc32 wrote:
| Surveillance in 2021 is way different than it was in the
| 60s.
| adriancr wrote:
| So are police methods and brutality.
|
| In the 60s they would just brutally beat and imprison
| everyone at the protests directly.
|
| They did not need to track protesters afterwards, they
| were already in jail or hospital.
| mc32 wrote:
| Even Russia cannot detain everyone at a protest. Most
| typically the leadership is followed and under covers
| trail them at protests and they get bagged.
| williesleg wrote:
| Oregon?
| breck wrote:
| This is cool! Good job on the FBI.
|
| Remember it's a good thing to have phones be pinging.
|
| 1. I want to be billed correctly
|
| 2. If my service drops often in a certain geo, I want engineers
| to be able to pinpoint exactly where the problem is and fix it.
|
| 3. If I get attacked by a shark, I want to provide breadcrumbs
| for rescuers to find me.
|
| 4. If my wife accuses me of going to the arcade, it is important
| that my dog running in the park with my cell phone in his harness
| is being properly tracked and creating an alibi for me.
|
| If you don't want to leave a trail of geo pings, don't carry
| around a device that literally could not work if it didn't leave
| a trail of pings.
| syshum wrote:
| This seems like an extension of ""Nothing to hide, nothing to
| fear" (NTHNTF) fallacy [1][2][3]
|
| [1] https://www.computerweekly.com/blog/Identity-Privacy-and-
| Tru...
|
| [2] https://www.wired.com/2013/06/why-i-have-nothing-to-hide-
| is-...
|
| [3] https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/secrecy/you-
| may-...
| breck wrote:
| Not a big deal. Good engineering demands logged pings. Not
| doing that would be bad engineering.
|
| Could it be abused? Sure. But that's why we need to continue
| to engineer a better democracy as well.
|
| We can do both.
| syshum wrote:
| 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 have. That is Authoritarianism not liberty
|
| Liberty is not attempting to engineer a better society or
| democracy, Liberty is allowing people to live their lives
| unmolested by government laws and regulations
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| This is a losing battle long term I fear. Far too many
| people see government as the way to push their ideology
| onto society as a whole.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > the US was never to be a democracy, and you can not
| engineer a better one
|
| If it wasn't designed to be democracy, it should be
| trivial to design a better one, just like it's trivial to
| build a better automobile than a tricycle, which wasn't
| designed to be an auto.
|
| > We are a constitutional republic with a LIMITED
| government
|
| That's not incompatible with democracy, and suggesting
| that they are exclusive alternatives just means you don't
| understand at least one of "democracy", "constitutional
| republic", or "limited governmemt".
|
| (And more fully, you want to say "federal republic with
| constitutionally-limited government and both the federal
| and state levels, and reserved powers for the states",
| but that still isn't exclusive with "democracy".)
|
| > we as a society has lost respect for those
| constitutional limits
|
| I don't see any evidence that respect for Constitutional
| limits has declined, which seems to be a result of
| combining a cynical view of the present with a rosy view
| of the past (the First Amendment is a beautiful set of
| Constitutional limits, but the Alien and Sedition Acts
| were adopted when the ink on it was barely dry.)
|
| > and instead of taking principled stands to restrict
| government we have taken unprincipled stands based on the
| outcome we desire for society
|
| Stands made on different sets of principles than you
| prefer do not thereby become "unprincipled".
| syshum wrote:
| >>That's not incompatible with democracy
|
| Actually it is, democracy is 2 wolves and an a lamb
| voting on what is for dinner.
|
| Democracy is incompatible with limited governance, and
| individual liberty as the majority (or even a vocal but
| powerful minority that controls the media) will always
| use the power of democracy to oppress those that do not
| have said power
|
| Constitutionally limited governance that is immune to the
| will of the majority is the only way to ensure individual
| liberty, the founders understood this. This is why the
| ONLY democratic part of the US government at its founding
| was the House of Representatives. Over time we have made
| more and more parts of the federal government
| "democratic" like the Senate, and most recently the push
| to change the election of the President to be pure
| democratic as well.
|
| This has been a DISASTER for individual liberty
| dehrmann wrote:
| I was wondering if they were going to do this, and I'm on the
| fence. If they can accurately (90%+) get it to a very tight
| parameter, ok, but a lot of protesters in the general aread
| weren't actually involved in entering the building, so if
| they're getting investigated too, it's a bit of an overreach.
| grayhatter wrote:
| well, tbf it absolutely could work without a trail of pings.
| But no system is designed that way because metrics are,
| unsurprisingly, useful. All that said I still agree 100% with
| you, don't carry an internet connected GPS with you while
| you're out criming!
| bpodgursky wrote:
| IMO the embedding of electronics and tracking in every aspect
| of our lives becomes too complex for the average non-techie to
| make informed decisions about the technology they use.
|
| Maybe it should be "obvious" with a phone, but what if your
| bluetooth headset tried to pair against someone's electronics
| and got detected? What about the GPS history from your Apple
| Watch (should that data be available)? How many RFID-tagged
| devices are in your wallet?
|
| I'm not saying that any of these aren't convenient or worth the
| tradeoff, but the last assertion (telling people to just be
| smart about what electronics they bring) is not realistic as
| the vast majority of THINGS we own become trackable
| electronics, whether the average consumer knows it or not.
| breck wrote:
| A fair point.
|
| Ideally we can build ways to make it easier to learn how tech
| works.
|
| God knows it took me decades to figure it out.
| hourislate wrote:
| 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 for the service.
|
| People are waiting for the day when you have zero privacy and
| anonymity. It's already here. Everyone should assume they can or
| are being tracked all the time.
| dcolkitt wrote:
| 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-...
| ashtonkem wrote:
| It's pretty clear that a huge percentage of police budgets
| have nothing to do with public safety. All one needs to do is
| point out how many small towns have APCs for some
| inexplicable reason. It's not a huge jump to assume that a
| non trivial percentage of police techniques don't have
| anything to do with stopping crimes either.
| sosborn wrote:
| Well, realistically, it isn't about preventing crime, it's
| about catching criminals. (I'm not a fan of all this)
| LatteLazy wrote:
| No one said the surveillance was meant to stop poors stabbing
| each other. Its for protecting assets and securing power.
| alain_gilbert wrote:
| 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.
| ianhawes wrote:
| That is a function of funding. The DMV isn't well funded but
| we'll pay 8 and 9 figure contracts to domestic intelligence
| agencies.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Yeah; on one hand, we're tracked everywhere. On the other,
| since the systems are so disparate, it takes a lot of leg
| work to put the data together, even without a warrant. It's
| better than nothing.
| [deleted]
| reddog wrote:
| Add license plate scanners and high resolution police/military
| drones to that list.
| loteck wrote:
| 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.
| zaroth wrote:
| Why should OP draw the conclusion for you? Everything they've
| said is most certainly true. You can decide what you want to
| do about it.
|
| For me, it makes the "going dark" claims that the FBI likes
| to drum up about encryption particularly ridiculous.
| trident5000 wrote:
| Putting my tin foil hat on real quick. Just wait until they
| implement AI into all these sensors to "predict crimes",
| turning life into Minority Report. The interesting part is its
| the common people who will naively go along with it to feel
| more safe while at the same time further imprisoning
| themselves.
| bogomipz wrote:
| Predictive Policing is already a thing. It was in use for a
| decade by the LAPD in the US. See:
|
| https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-lapd-precision-
| pol...
|
| and
|
| https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-04-21/lapd-
| end...
| curiousllama wrote:
| They've been doing this for years. Chicago has a list of
| everyone that will get shot (or shoot someone) over the next
| year or so. It's like 2k people with 90%+ recall. St Louis
| has something similar. But it hasn't exactly stopped crime.
|
| Sci Fi is fun, but crime is a social phenomenon of the type
| that tech is deeply unsuited to actually solve. Privacy is a
| legit consideration in the short and long term, but AI taking
| over isn't really.
| syshum wrote:
| The TV Show Person of Interest's "Samaritan" AI, is how I see
| reality to be when we get general purpose AI for police use.
|
| There will be no "good AI" (aka "The Machine" in the show) to
| combat it.
| [deleted]
| trident5000 wrote:
| This is kind of what Musk has been constantly warning
| about. Also important in another scenario is that
| legislators, police heads, and civilians simply have no
| idea how task specific AI (rather than general purpose)
| that governs them works so its a tiny unelected shadow club
| mass governing people.
| nbzso wrote:
| Musk is embodiment of 'Hegelian Dialectic' in action.
| Tesla is normalising surveillance, Space X and StarLink
| are building the network capabilities of the future AI
| and Neural Link is the end point of human connection.
| What a hero, a real Tony Stark for the masses:)
| gvd wrote:
| 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
| 01100011 wrote:
| Yeah but the funny thing is that these surveillance networks
| never actually seem to be used to solve normal crimes. Is it
| laziness on the part of the police? Are they trying to reserve
| these systems for more serious crimes so we forget they exist?
| Is it just a matter of time before police culture catches up
| and we see license plate readers, cell phone records, CCTV
| networks, etc used to track down petty thieves and robbers?
|
| Last year the police were begging for help to solve some of the
| gun store robberies that happened during the BLM unrest. Why
| did they need the public's help? They could have checked cell
| phone records, stitched together traffic camera video, and
| likely tracked down the suspects within weeks.
|
| I think the most likely scenario is that we gave all these
| tools to create a surveillance state, but the bureaucracy is
| too lazy to use them.
| papa_reton wrote:
| Didn't you hear of Snowden's revelations?
|
| NSA has full access such data. The police does not.
|
| The police cares about murders and bank robberies. NSA does
| not.
| sneak wrote:
| https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/01/09/us-secret-evidence-
| erode...
|
| The data is already being used by domestic law enforcement
| in a technique called parallel construction.
| goatinaboat wrote:
| _Why did they need the public 's help? They could have
| checked cell phone records, stitched together traffic camera
| video, and likely tracked down the suspects within weeks._
|
| They will mysteriously remember that they can do that in the
| next spate of unrest, now that it serves no useful purpose.
| swader999 wrote:
| Should be feasible to track all contacts for covid cases
| through existing intelligence infrastructure. But we don't.
| [deleted]
| gvd wrote:
| They are used in murder cases
| superkuh wrote:
| Just don't use services that track you. It's possible to live a
| fairly normal life despite all this. I do it. Don't carry a
| cell phone, turn off javascript everywhere, use a non-
| onstar/etc car, don't fly commercially, use cash for in person
| transactions and bitcoin (or monero) online where you can.
|
| All that said, I'm not planning on trying to overthrow the
| government or anything stupid. I just don't like being spied
| on. I'm glad these treasonous idiots carried their ankle
| bracelets (cell phones) while they committed their crimes.
|
| I'm not too surprised at the spatial resolution that
| basestation multi-lateration gave either. The low noise and
| synchronization of clocks in _modern_ cell phone basestations
| are getting really good. GPS is not required.
| Santosh83 wrote:
| No. At this point you become a standout anomaly, or you will
| become one, in the not too distant future. The progress of
| society is becoming increasingly collective. Individual
| choices are becoming less important. I'm not saying we're
| there yet, but already we're at a point where meaningful
| societal change needs at least a considerable group of people
| all acting together, and even then, fundamental changes have
| been taken out of people's hands altogether, unless "we" are
| prepared to go to extremes, which is simply not a
| characteristic of large groups, unless the situation has
| deteriorated severely, but be sure, our overlords will keep
| us minimally complacent enough. /rant
| bloopernova wrote:
| The point about cameras blanketing DC reminded me:
|
| Do we know if there are any security cameras in the US Capitol
| building? Were they all working? Has the footage from the
| insurrection attempt been saved?
|
| I ask because the capitol seems like one of those places that
| would resist internal security cameras because congresspersons
| wouldn't want their meetings potentially being recorded. Plus
| the general incompetence of security leadership before and on
| that day makes me wonder if any cameras were actually in
| working order and saving footage.
| Cd00d wrote:
| -> the insurrection attempt
|
| That's wording that made me think, and I had to actually look
| up the definition of insurrection. I think it was complete
| insurrection, not a just an attempt at it. But, maybe there's
| a legal definition or duration of success matters?
| jzer0cool wrote:
| I find it resembles the techniques we find ourselves doing in
| software engineering. Given good practice clear logs of events
| for traceability. As in a mass outage which everyone sees, which
| can be tracked backwards for root cause analysis and well as
| interviews with anyone connected to systems or vicinity at the
| time of event.
|
| As in cases of anyone possibly interacting with a production
| server, there may be interviews with those who may have "logged
| in" or accessed to such systems to help find a root cause.
| momeunierfr wrote:
| Access Denied You don't have permission to access
| "http://www.wusa9.com/article/features/producers-picks/fbi-tr..."
| on this server.
| lol768 wrote:
| All European visitors, I take it?
|
| Mirror:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210120062149/http://www.wusa9....
| seany wrote:
| This is terrifying. I swear the tech community would have been
| universally against this just a few years ago. What happened?
| tyleo wrote:
| I think people are also terrified by the political violence
| from both sides over the past year. That was obviously the
| impetus for this. Just as other extremist violence like 9-11
| was the impetus for the patriot act.
| quercusa wrote:
| If you've never seen it, it's worth your time to watch "Don't
| Talk to The Police", a lecture by a law professor, in case the
| FBI, etc. come knocking on your door.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
| MichaelApproved wrote:
| It's a video that even lawyers should watch to remind
| themselves just how harmful talking can be.
|
| Here's a great example of a lawyer in need of a refresher
| https://youtu.be/_rVsRmcE-u8
| tamaharbor wrote:
| I find the rioting and looting and violence in American cities
| all summer much more disturbing than the half-assed attempt at
| the capitol. Especially when the violence continues in the nearby
| residential areas.
| sys_64738 wrote:
| The people who invaded the Capitol Building are domestic
| terrorists who tried to overthrow the government. The former
| lot you refer to are just criminals. Huge difference.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| >"And they can actually pinpoint on Google Maps exactly where you
| were standing. Like, he knew where I was standing on the
| sidewalk, like specifically, based on my cell phone ping."
|
| You don't get that level of granularity by merely triangulating
| cell tower pings. Sounds like they got GPS location data from
| people's Google accounts.
| superkuh wrote:
| It's not triangulation, it's multi-lateration and the spatial
| resolution depends on just how good the basestation clocks are.
| And they've become very good. Every telco in the USA stores
| multi-lateration for cell handsets location for 2-5 years by
| default. They both sell this commercially and provide/sell it
| to authorities on request.
|
| >Multilateration should not be confused with triangulation,
| which uses distances or absolute measurements of time-of-flight
| from three or more sites, or with triangulation, which uses a
| baseline and at least two angles measured e.g. with receiver
| antenna diversity and phase comparison.
| Drip33 wrote:
| I have access to some marketing data and for fun,
|
| select * from mobile_location where latitude between
| 38.88778433380732 and 38.891917997746894 and longitude between
| -77.01269830654866 and -77.00613225870377 and epoch_timestamp
| between 1609954200 and 1610067600
|
| Returned quite a number of mobile devices accurate to the
| meter. Was fun to see which phone was in which room or blade of
| grass of the building. I'm not even American.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Yeah, that raises a whole bunch of other ethical questions
| though, like why you're able to do this, what access to PII
| you have and why you're able to run queries like this on a
| Saturday.
|
| I hope your employers keeps track of stuff like this.
| avdlinde wrote:
| My guess is that this being possible would be the norm,
| rather than the exception. And that keeping track of
| individual queries is not.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Well, that sounds worrying.
| Raed667 wrote:
| 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.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| It does not. Maybe it should though. I know a company I
| worked at logged everything that was done or accessed
| within our Salesforce instance, maybe something needs to
| be done like that rather than allowing folks to run
| arbitrary sql queries against the database.
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| This is standard practice at large companies with proper
| data controls. Usually they have a "break glass" feature
| for emergencies and don't let any humans access PII
| without a damn good reason.
| _trampeltier wrote:
| What do you think, most such data comes from Apps, they
| just ask for permission and give you no rights at all.
| Location data is a such business, for traffic or business.
| Look at this example from Thasos. The look many hours and
| shifts are in companys and sell the data to traders.
| http://thasosgroup.com/blog/thasos-data-tesla-wsj/
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Just because something is being done does not mean it's
| ethical. Fortunately, this is illegal in Europe.
| _trampeltier wrote:
| I did not say, I think it's a good thing or it's ethical.
| It's just the truth. But we all accept it somehow, so
| Google or wherever can make us good traffic warnings.
| Here in Switzerland the location data is also sold by the
| telco companys, you have to opt out by yourself (at least
| by Swisscom).
| tyfon wrote:
| Might be illegal in Europe but it still happens [1].
|
| [1] https://nrkbeta.no/2020/12/03/my-phone-was-spying-on-
| me-so-i...
| schoolornot wrote:
| AT&T is still installing Carrier IQ on almost all Androids.
| That application is collecting info like GPS and barometric
| readings to estimate floor location in a highrise, etc.
| hocuspocus wrote:
| They don't even need Carrier IQ, they can use _Minimization
| of Drive Tests_ , it's part of 3GPP standards.
|
| But even using timing advances, if the cells aren't too big,
| you get a pretty reasonable accuracy.
| pdoege wrote:
| Absolutely. In addition all carriers use multi-lateration and
| sectorization to fine tune location. The better the location
| the more valuable it is for commercial resale and CALEA
| sales.
|
| Notice that all of this is entirely legal, above board, and
| you agreed to it as part of your service agreement.
|
| Source: I worked for AT&T and Carrier IQ
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > you agreed to it as part of your service agreement
|
| "Agree" implies willful consent and being in harmony with
| the implied outcome.
|
| People accept because they have no meaningfully acceptable
| choice - which is the exact target that carriers aim for.
| emteycz wrote:
| You don't get that level of granularity from a single ping, but
| you theoretically could from hundreds, the noise will tend to
| center around the true location.
|
| Also consider that more than 3 stations probably were nearby.
| BelenusMordred wrote:
| Modern mobile networks choose the best 7 for the client but
| the number of towers within physical range getting pinged is
| quite substantial.
|
| It's an awesome, deep and nuanced topic certainly not suited
| to a political HN comments section. "Timing Advance" is the
| probably the jumpoff keyword for anyone interested.
|
| Mobile towers also use beam-forming in two directions and
| have a few other techniques to get better signals, the
| metadata involved with these things (if kept) essentially
| drops the error range down to GPS levels if not better.
| ev1 wrote:
| 5G significantly increases granularity by a metric shit ton,
| and if they were continually pinging in the same area,
| eventually you end up with roughly one zone.
| tiagod wrote:
| Who the hell has a 5G device?
| nickysielicki wrote:
| It doesn't matter if you have a 5G device, it is a function
| of the increased tower density. Those towers are capable of
| the old frequencies, too.
| scsilver wrote:
| Alot of people buy new Iphones.
| ev1 wrote:
| You don't even need iPhones - most of the cheap prepaid
| brands that you'd see next to a payday loan shop are
| offering Samsung's lower grade phones or OnePlus 5G
| phones for free if you set up autopay (it's locked to
| that carrier). Of course it comes with even more privacy-
| violating bloatware than ever, but still - 5G is no
| longer a rarity or expensive.
| gambiting wrote:
| Is this....a serious question? All new iPhones are 5G
| compatible for the start and they sell millions, and loads
| of other manufacturers have released 5G compatible phones.
| In fact I'd risk a guess that if you bought a phone in the
| last 12 months it's likely to be a 5G compatible phone.
| throwaway09223 wrote:
| I bought a Pixel4 in March 2020 :(
| mfkp wrote:
| Assuming you meant Pixel 4a, that one does not have 5G.
| The "4a 5G" model does, though, but it came out later in
| the year.
| tobylane wrote:
| I'm guessing people who flew into DC on a weekday are more
| likely than average to own a decent smartphone. QAnon folk
| don't seem to avoid mainstream technology in the quantity
| HN users do.
| [deleted]
| ev1 wrote:
| Probably anyone that has signed a contract that came with a
| free phone in the last year and a half, anyone upgrading
| iPhones.
|
| Lower cost prepaid carriers are also pushing 5G phones
| heavily (albeit somewhat crappy ones), and offering them
| for free.
| diebeforei485 wrote:
| Could you share some resources with more information on this-
| how does it increase granularity?
| nexthash wrote:
| Here's Verizon's explainer [1] about how 5G works.
| Basically, since the frequencies needed to transmit large
| amounts of data are so high (28 - 39 GHz millimeter
| wavelength bands), the signal does not reach as far as a 4G
| tower. Therefore, a higher density of towers is needed (500
| feet apart to effectively penetrate buildings [2]),
| allowing for higher granularity cell-phone
| triangulation/tracking as a by-product.
|
| [1] https://www.verizon.com/about/news/how-far-
| does-5g-reach
|
| [2] https://www.celltowerleaseexperts.com/cell-tower-lease-
| news/...
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| Well GPS is 1.2 to 1.5GZ and you can get accuracy to a
| few meters easily. I have a higher end module that gets
| down to a meter[1]. Seems obvious that G4 which uses
| roughly same frequencies but with cell towers vastly
| closer than a GPS satellite could get 1M.
|
| [1] Give it a few minutes and it'll pin point where my
| desk is inside my office.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| GPS does _not_ use triangulation.
|
| It does some real dark arts physics wizardry to compute a
| position. Nothing like that can be done for cell phone
| signals.
| ficklepickle wrote:
| Isn't it still triangulation, just accounting for
| relativity?
|
| You need to lock with multiple satellites, I assumed this
| was for triangulation.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| > GPS does not use triangulation.
|
| LOL
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Technically it's not triangulation, it's trilateration.
|
| But the math is not significantly harder. The only
| meaningful quirk is that you don't know the exact
| distances to each satellite, instead you have distances
| a+n, b+n, c+n, etc. because you don't know the _exact_
| time down to the nanosecond. 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.
| sobriquet9 wrote:
| Both GPS receivers and cell phone towers use the same
| basic approach based on the time it takes for the signal
| to travel between transmitter and receiver.
|
| The only substantial difference is that in case of GPS
| the calculation happens on the receiver side (GPS signals
| only go in one direction), while cellular service
| providers calculate time advance on the tower side.
| tonetheman wrote:
| Idiots who are worried about vaccines with chips ... you are
| willingly carrying it.
| chasd00 wrote:
| Heh so steal someone's phone and fedex it to the protest and back
| then return it to the owner (for maybe even a reward)
| LatteLazy wrote:
| It amazes me that 6.5 years after Snowden, people aren't aware of
| this stuff. The police, the FBI, and everyone down to your local
| scout leader have a shit tonne of information about where you
| are, where you've been, who you've been with and talked to, what
| you've searched etc.
| sneak wrote:
| Presumably this also includes journalists and other people the
| government has no business tracking.
|
| At what point will people say enough is enough to these kinds of
| insane overreaches?
| gibrown wrote:
| Huh? Insane? The capitol was assaulted in order to prevent the
| democratically elected president. An actual insurrection which
| maybe had some attempted assassination and theft/sale of
| national security secrets mixed in. Seems like a pretty
| reasonable response.
| sneak wrote:
| I don't see how putting everyone in a huge radius,
| journalists and those otherwise uninvolved included, under
| investigative suspicion and location surveillance to respond
| to what is only charitably described as an insurrection (the
| group was almost entirely unarmed) is in any way reasonable.
|
| It seems like a massive overreaction. If we're truly
| interested in democracy and the rule of law, we'd do well to
| not shred our standard democratic and legal procedures (such
| as the presumption of innocence, and the fourth amendment's
| prohibition on searches without probable cause) the instant a
| few thousand angry, unarmed yahoos show up with pitchforks
| and banners and achieve precisely nothing.
|
| We shouldn't even do that if a few thousand armed, trained
| people show up, with the express intent of doing battle,
| taking control, and holding territory (which, again, to be
| clear, is not what happened). We absolutely should not do it
| when a bunch of idiot yahoos break windows and set off fire
| extinguishers and steal shit.
|
| Even had the building burned to the ground, universal
| surveillance such as this would not be a proportionate
| reaction.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| _I don 't see how putting everyone in a huge radius,
| journalists and those otherwise uninvolved included, under
| investigative suspicion and location surveillance to
| respond to what is only charitably described as an
| insurrection (the group was almost entirely unarmed) is in
| any way reasonable._
|
| Huh?
|
| Don't get me wrong, I actually agree with you on overreach.
| But this action is completely reasonable because it's
| standard operating procedure for many law enforcement
| departments around the nation. Most of us simply do not
| reside in the neighborhoods where these tactics are
| employed. None of what we are discussing today is even
| Patriot Act type stuff. It's just standard law enforcement
| investigative technique. Worse, our law enforcement
| infrastructure already took the exact same actions during
| the BLM riots. None of the people complaining now, uttered
| a peep at the time.
|
| I said all of that to say this, as a privacy activist, I
| learned decades ago that the best method of protecting my
| rights is to protect the rights of others. The issue today,
| is that most who complain are called out as hypocritical.
| With good reason. We can't go back now. Law enforcement
| would be accused of racism. Whatever tactics we used on
| others, we have to use now. And law enforcement gets to use
| them because people were not forward thinking enough to
| protest these methods when they were designed and employed
| during the latest stages of the drug war. Or even just a
| few scant weeks ago during the BLM riots.
|
| I'd just encourage everyone to be more forward thinking on
| these issues. Sometimes complaining only when the issue
| affects you creates more problems than it solves. It makes
| it more difficult to get legislative changes made because
| certain key organizations, and people, whose cooperation we
| need have to double down on their positions so as not be
| called out as hypocritical themselves. AS a consequence, we
| come into headwinds trying to get the changes necessary to
| outlaw these practices.
| maxerickson wrote:
| What is the harm that is incurred when the tower records
| are transferred from the operator to the government?
|
| Is it just too scary of a slope to stand on or something?
|
| To me it seems to fit under 'reasonable' for the government
| to issue a warrant for presence information in the locality
| of the capitol. Given the 3rd party doctrine that probably
| isn't what happened, but the objection there would be more
| procedural than about control over data stored on servers.
| sneak wrote:
| The US government has publicly admitted that they
| assassinate people based solely on metadata.
|
| https://www.justsecurity.org/10318/video-clip-director-
| nsa-c...
|
| https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2014/05/10/we-kill-people-
| base...
|
| The state collecting this information is a public hazard,
| especially considering the relatively recent development
| of the assassination of US citizens without trial.
| throwoutttt wrote:
| Thank God the maga shaman didn't get his hands on the magic
| lecturn and legislate an election audit
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| >assault on the capitol; insurrection; attempted
| assassination
|
| I just want to point out the two problems with the rhetoric
| that mass-media and you are using to describe this event:
|
| 1. These words confer explosions, gunfire, and mass loss of
| life. In using these words, you are conjuring extremely
| violent images within the minds of your listeners. When your
| listeners discover the truth of the event, that the images
| you've associated with the event do not match what actually
| happened, your listeners feel manipulated, they feel you're
| trying to deceive them, and you lose credibility.
|
| 2. If enough people keep parroting these particular words to
| describe this event, the meanings of these words become
| diluted. For example, prior to this event at the capitol, if
| you said "terrorist attack", my mind would imagine men
| wearing balaclavas, wielding AK's, beheading people on video,
| gassing villages filled with innocent families, scattering
| them as refugees across the globe. But now, if we accept this
| event at the capitol as a "terrorist attack", now I don't
| know if you're talking about a guy smiling and waving as he
| holds a podium, or if you mean a Wahabbi extremist raping a
| Yazidi woman after putting a bullet in her son's head.
|
| Imagine this woman recounting her rape and the murder of her
| family, "I experienced a horrific terrorist attack." And then
| there's you, in referring to some guy taking a selfie at a
| politician's desk, "I witnessed a horrific terrorist attack."
|
| Please, choose more precise, more honest words.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| > These words confer explosions, gunfire, and mass loss of
| life
|
| There were bombs planted at both Democratic and Republican
| party headquarters. One man was arrested with a pickup
| truck full of napalm.
|
| At least some subset of the Capitol rioters absolutely
| intended to cause "explosions, gunfire, and mass loss of
| life". I think you're being dishonest pretending this was
| only a bunch of goons posing for instagram.
|
| This is similar to the way people remember Columbine as a
| school shooting, but the two murderers actually built a
| large number of IEDs including propane tank bombs. If they
| hadn't been such incompetent bomb-builders, hundreds would
| have died and the event would be remembered as a bombing
| akin to Oklahoma City instead of mere mass-shooting.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| > a guy smiling and waving as he holds a podium
|
| As a complete aside, I was amused that that photo even
| existed (he looks so _happy_ with Nancy Pelosi 's podium)
| and also completely unsurprised that he got arrested two
| days later.
| gedy wrote:
| > If enough people keep parroting these particular words to
| describe this event, the meanings of these words become
| diluted.
|
| Agreed, though the hyperbole and shifting definitions seems
| intentional and effective in many cases, you see with this
| with terms "hate", "racism", "white supremacy", etc as
| well.
|
| When I was younger these had much more specific groups and
| frightening meanings! Makes me feel many using these terms
| so loosely today may have never run in to actual people
| these used to describe.
|
| (No this is not a defense of hatred/racism/white supremacy
| or other bad behavior).
| Thorrez wrote:
| I don't disagree with your overall point. But you're not
| making a very fair comparison. The guy holding the podium
| was not the worst part of the attack on the capitol.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| What was the worst part of the event at the capitol? What
| do you think would make a fair comparison?
| ForHackernews wrote:
| > Guns, Brass Knuckles, Homemade Napalm: Read Some of the
| Documents From Arrests After the Capitol Riot
|
| https://www.washingtonian.com/2021/01/11/guns-brass-
| knuckles...
| belltaco wrote:
| Just a couple
|
| https://v.redd.it/ybbshl1ujia61
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJOgGsC0G9U
| gibrown wrote:
| Just because it sounds extreme doesn't mean I am using the
| wrong words. Guns are not required for violence or murder
| to occur. Just because some people there were not trying to
| do either doesn't mean that didn't happen. Why do you feel
| the need to defend them by focusing on selfies?
|
| "Insurrection" is a violent attack on a government.
|
| "Assassination" is murdering a prominent person for
| political reasons.
|
| > In charging papers, the FBI said that during the Capitol
| riot, Caldwell received Facebook messages from unspecified
| senders updating him of the location of lawmakers. When he
| posted a one-word message, "Inside," he received
| exhortations and directions describing tunnels, doors and
| hallways, the FBI said. Some messages, according to the
| FBI, included, "Tom all legislators are down in the Tunnels
| 3floors down," and "Go through back house chamber doors
| facing N left down hallway down steps." Another message
| read: "All members are in the tunnels under capital seal
| them in. Turn on gas," the FBI added.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/legal-
| issues/conspiracy...
| thethethethe wrote:
| > 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
| tiziniano wrote:
| Not to be a grammar nazi, but I fail to see how this sentence
| works "The capitol was assaulted in order to prevent the
| democratically elected president." On an emotional level, I
| can see how you see it as a threat to your illusions. Someone
| was trying to prevent your president from existing. It does
| sound scary and fits in line with the gnostic thought
| pervading the American left. "The world is broken, but we
| will fix it, and it will be not broken then." (Cue the
| unicorns...)
|
| Now, addressing the actual proposition (short of an
| argument): Where was the "actual insurrection" and where is
| the evidence for "attempted assassinations" and "theft/sale
| of national secrets". I'm not a lawyer and certainly not in
| your jurisdiction, but it is apparent that you possess
| evidence of these three things. Hence, I urge you to contact
| the appropriate law enforcement and share your findings.
| gibrown wrote:
| Pretty sure you have veered into being a bit more than just
| a grammar nazi.
| hcurtiss wrote:
| If that was an actual insurrection or attempted
| assassination, it was the weakest effort imaginable. That
| doesn't necessarily change the thrust of your comment (that
| enforcement is appropriate) but the breathless hyperbole
| around what happened has really surprised me. An actual
| insurrection would have looked very different. More guns and
| C4, fewer selfies.
| shakna wrote:
| > More guns and C4, fewer selfies.
|
| It's not like there weren't homemade explosives found on
| the site:
|
| > Coffman, 70, told police he had mason jars filled with
| "melted Styrofoam and gasoline." Federal investigators
| believe that combination, if exploded, would have the
| effect of napalm "insofar as it causes the flammable liquid
| to better stick to objects that it hits upon detonation,"
| according to the court record. [0]
|
| [0] https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/08/politics/us-capitol-
| riots...
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| FWIW, those aren't explosives. Flammable, yes, but
| definitely not explosive. Spreading gross misinformation
| like this is part of the problem.
| Denvercoder9 wrote:
| You assume that competency is a requirement for
| insurrection. It is not.
| api wrote:
| Look into Mussolini and Hitler's early attempts. They
| looked really amateur and ridiculous too. The Munich Beer
| Hall Putsch was almost as much of a clown show. You even
| had some volkisch occult wackos who would have felt quite
| at home with the Q shaman.
| tiziniano wrote:
| Look into the burning of the Reichstag...
| api wrote:
| That was later. I'm talking about the early stuff.
| caseysoftware wrote:
| "More guns" is right.
|
| I watched it live and then dug through the videos, selfies,
| etc after and _inside_ the Capitol, I found one guy who
| _might_ have had a gun. The other weapons appear to have
| been convenient - a fire extinguisher, flags, etc. It looks
| less and less like an "insurrection" and more like
| jackasses doing jackass things.
| taneq wrote:
| This is a good point - this is the same group that is
| very gun rights focused and has been wandering around the
| streets armed with automatic weapons. It's kind of weird
| to see them _without_ guns.
| trident5000 wrote:
| Almost no civilian in the country has "automatic weapons"
| this is what people are saying when they mention theres a
| lot of hyperbole around this topic.
| stretchcat wrote:
| Slight correction: _Legal_ automatic weapons. It is hard
| to estimate how many people have or could retrofit
| semiautomatic weapons into automatic weapons illegally.
| There are public plans for such modifications floating
| around the net, and at least some of them actually work,
| with some guns. And that 's not counting the quasi-
| automatic stuff like bumpstocks or gimmicky 'trigger
| cranks.'
|
| I once met somebody who wears a lightning link as a
| pedant around their neck. Probably it wouldn't be
| compatible with their rifle's receiver, but who knows.
| KMag wrote:
| I think the risk-to-reward ratio is pretty low for having
| an illegal automatic weapon. It takes a lot of trigger
| discipline even for average trained soldiers to not to
| quickly waste most of their ammo with fully automatic
| weapons.
|
| Then again, just because it's not smart doesn't mean
| people don't do it.
| stretchcat wrote:
| It really depends on what their objectives are; what they
| think they might accomplish by having an automatic rifle.
| There are a wide array of tactical objectives, some
| better served by automatic weapons than others. Consider
| particularly the different tactical objectives terrorists
| and soldiers might have. Particularly, soldiers need more
| discipline because they're likely to be fighting people
| who can fight back. Having bullets come back at you would
| surely fray the nerves.
| KMag wrote:
| Point taken, but I think most people tempted to have
| illegal automatic weapons are the paranoid home defense
| crowd, not the massacring unarmed civilians crowd.
| They're probably imagining having to use them against
| SWAT and military.
| CydeWeys wrote:
| Walking around with a gun in DC is an automatic felony
| with potentially years in jail, especially if it's in
| connection with a violent act which this insurrection
| was. DC is not a gun-friendly place. These people were
| stupid, but not _that_ stupid.
| caseysoftware wrote:
| To make sure I understand you: Your claim is that a bunch
| of people showed up to violently overthrow the government
| but didn't bring guns because _that_ would be illegal?
| KMag wrote:
| They were deluded by their political puppet masters into
| thinking they were actually showing up to defend the
| constitution by intimidating corrupt politicians who knew
| they were corrupt.
|
| They didn't bring guns because their goal wasn't to
| overthrow the government.
| sneak wrote:
| They didn't show up to violently overthrow the
| government, they showed up to violently overturn the
| results of a specific election.
|
| There's a subtle but extremely important difference.
| Perhaps they are entirely equivalent to you, but they
| were not at all to the rioters/attackers.
|
| What they did was crime, not war.
| maxerickson wrote:
| I don't know what the framework was, but open carry
| wasn't allowed prior to the rally.
|
| This article quotes the police chief saying as much:
|
| https://www.kvue.com/article/news/local/protests/march-
| for-t...
|
| I would also expect anyone coming from the rally had been
| through some security screening.
| caseysoftware wrote:
| Relevant data points:
|
| - Open Carry is always illegal in DC.
|
| - DC _does_ issue concealed carry permits _but_ doesn 't
| honor them from other states (called reciprocity).
|
| - This was talked about far and wide in advance on
| Twitter, Facebook, and elsewhere framed as "don't bring
| guns to DC! You will go to jail!" and supported by flyers
| posted throughout DC. (You can still find pictures of
| them online.)
| suifbwish wrote:
| I believe breaking into the capitol building is also
| illegal so I fail to see why people who are already
| breaking one law would care about the others
| KMag wrote:
| > why people who are already breaking one law would care
| about the others
|
| Remind me not to get in your way when you're jaywalking.
|
| Premeditating a felony firearms offense is one thing. I
| think the majority who entered the Capitol were probably
| thinking that most of the rhetoric they were hearing
| beforehand was hyperbole and were probably expecting to
| just protest outside the capital, and then got swept up
| in the moment and committed misdemeanor/felony breaking-
| and-entering.
| swalsh wrote:
| *semiautomatic weapons
| op00to wrote:
| Luckily, you're not a police investigator, because you
| can't be more wrong. All manner of weapons were
| confiscated - guns, ammo, explosives, crossbows, brass
| knuckles, etc. These were people who came to kill.
|
| https://www.esquire.com/news-
| politics/politics/a35214244/cap...
| krona wrote:
| _These were people who came to kill._
|
| Or protect themselves from counter-protesters? Are you
| saying anyone with a gun at the event had the mens rea
| for murder? There are probably more guns at the average
| baseball game.
| stretchcat wrote:
| I'm not sure about baseball, but the last time I went to
| a basketball game I had to walk through a metal detector,
| got my bag searched, and was patted down.
| [deleted]
| caseysoftware wrote:
| Read your article. None of those things were found
| _inside_ the Capitol.
|
| If they didn't go into the Capitol, we're clearly talking
| about different groups. The unasked questions are: _Why
| not? What were they there to do?_
|
| I did work in law enforcement in DC. One of the first
| things you learn is how to separate facts from conjecture
| from imagination. Mixing up the three isn't helpful to
| anyone and often taints you as an investigator.
| suifbwish wrote:
| That's what made it appear fake. Every republican protest
| recently has dozens of people carrying rifles. Why would
| it make sense for them not to do this when they are
| invading the capitol? It doesn't add up. It's almost as
| if they were not planning to really do anything except
| cause a diversion.
| caseysoftware wrote:
| I agree with most of your reasoning but intrigued by the
| diversion bit. Any theories on what this was a
| distraction from? What got less/no attention as a result
| of this?
| freshpots wrote:
| DC's gun ban is very strict so I assume most did respect
| that to avoid prison.
| stonecraftwolf wrote:
| Just because you failed at crime doesn't mean you didn't
| commit a crime. Attempted murder is still a thing.
|
| And I think you should probably read more about what
| actually happened. The initial photos were of idiots in
| horns and face paint and that has colored the public
| perception of what happened, but the clownshow gave cover
| to a smaller number of organized militia types compromised
| of former and active duty military and law enforcement.
| Those people were armed, came prepared, had intelligence
| about the layout of the building, and received updates on
| the location of MOC. They were there to kill and take
| hostages, and they came within minutes of achieving that
| goal.
|
| Nothing about this was laughable, and the concern is not
| overblown.
| caseysoftware wrote:
| > _a smaller number of organized militia types
| compromised of former and active duty military and law
| enforcement_
|
| I haven't seen anything about this. Can you share a link
| - especially pictures or video? I'd love to learn more.
| Thanks.
| wombatpm wrote:
| Start by looking for 'oath keepers capitol' there have
| been stories on CNN and Washington Post since charges
| were filed on the 19th
| heylook wrote:
| https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-trump-capitol-
| arrests...
| [deleted]
| caseysoftware wrote:
| Thanks, much appreciated.
|
| BIG red flag from this article: No weapons charges. If
| they were armed, they were not armed lawfully either in
| DC as a whole or in the Capitol specifically. Therefore,
| we have to ask: were they armed?
|
| Regardless, this line is scary at first glance: _" All
| members are in the tunnels under capital seal them in.
| Turn on gas."_ but I've been trying to figure out what it
| means.
|
| I worked on the Hill for years and used some of the
| tunnels frequently. If they mean the "tunnels" in
| general, they're huge and expansive so it'd take a huge
| amount of effort across numerous entry points in almost a
| dozen buildings to "seal them in."
|
| Alternatively, if they mean one of the secure areas
| (think: bunkers), they're _designed_ to be buttoned up
| but "turn on gas" still doesn't make sense.
|
| Regardless, thanks for the link. It will be interesting
| to see how the trials play out.
| hobs wrote:
| Dont forget all the explosives that were removed.
| gwright wrote:
| My understanding was that the explosives were not at the
| capitol (DNC headquarters I think), but maybe I'm just
| out of date on additional information?
|
| Not saying that is good either, just that there were many
| things going on that day that aren't necessary related
| via any sort of coordinated operation.
| gwright wrote:
| I think it is reasonable to argue that there were a
| number of people in the crowd that had ill intent. Not
| sure which crime fits the facts though (sedition,
| attempted murder, etc.) That will depend on actual facts,
| which is why we have trials, etc.
|
| I don't think it is reasonable to think that everyone on
| the Capitol grounds had that same ill intent. More likely
| that the organized minority instigated the crowd and used
| them as cover for their shameful and ridiculous efforts.
|
| Needless to say, the predominent narrative seems to be
| that anyone in the crowd was an "insurrectionist". That
| goes too far IMHO.
| defen wrote:
| Even if literally nothing had happened, the government still
| would have had this technical capability. I think that's what
| people are worried about, not the specific fact that they're
| using it to track down the Capitol rioters. If the FBI were
| evil instead of a force for good, they could use this
| capability to harass the "good guys".
| [deleted]
| trident5000 wrote:
| The same people complaining about the Patriot Act and cheering
| on Snowden for publicizing NSA PRISM are the same people
| cheering on govt mass triangulating civilians.
| smolder wrote:
| That's quite a generalization, and not really the case going
| off people I know. Most aren't cheering on the surveillance
| state. Many are mocking the people who attacked the Capitol
| with their phones in hand, but that's not the same as
| _approval_ of the big electric cage we 're in.
| vehemenz wrote:
| Yes. It is possible to believe in law enforcement and the
| curbing of privacy-invading legislation at the same time.
| trident5000 wrote:
| Actually no. You cannot believe in curbing privacy-invading
| legislation and also cheer on warantless mass cell phone
| location tracking at the same time. You need to pick one.
| DennisP wrote:
| Great: no surveillance
|
| Not so great: surveillance on everyone and catching
| criminals with it, but within a democratic framework
|
| Disastrous: surveillance on everyone, while giving a pass
| to insurgents attempting to overthrow democratic
| governance, because if they take over the surveillance
| infrastructure you're doomed
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| How were a bunch of crazies in the capitol going to take
| control of the US surveillance infrastructure?
| asutekku wrote:
| The world is not black and white. You absolutely can pick
| both.
| the_only_law wrote:
| yep, and in the other half I know people who made their
| entire careers in surveillance and cooperating with the sort
| of organizations implementing these things, but it was "good
| actually".
|
| Either way, no sympathy for these hypocrites.
| DennisP wrote:
| And some of the same people who cheered on the Patriot Act
| and called Snowden a traitor are now getting swept up by
| government surveillance, after they committed serious crimes.
| mindslight wrote:
| If the technical capability exists, it is going to be abused.
| And there is no better catalyst for (ab)use than attacking
| congresscritters' personal safety.
|
| These latest techno-authoritarian actions are best seen as
| effects from having lost the battle, rather than another front.
| For decades, clued in people have been droning on about the
| insecurity of cell phones allowing them to be persistently
| tracked by the network, the MITM-idiocy of webapps, etc. The
| best time to get people to care is before there is some real
| tangible threat that will make them seek the comfort of
| authoritarianism, but yet crickets. I blame the sheer amount of
| money behind big tech, making tech people turn a blind eye to
| the faults of centralized technology while pushing shiny-but-
| flawed technologies to the masses.
|
| After something happens? Well of course the power structure
| wants to unlock phones, track phones, censor speech, etc. At
| this point, buckle up - political activism on the subject is
| done, or at least on pause for quite some time.
| SantalBlush wrote:
| Right now, I'm more concerned about the people who broke into
| the Capitol and tried to take away my voting rights.
| NDizzle wrote:
| They were reacting to their voting rights being taken away.
| Seems like a better response than vandalizing a Starbucks.
| [deleted]
| pen2l wrote:
| That seems beside the point though. Nation-states could
| well coopt/dupe unwitting agents to do their deeds for
| them. Not necessarily saying that's what happened here,
| just making a point.
| ghouse wrote:
| Were they reacting to their voting rights being taken away,
| or reacting to having been led to believe that their voting
| rights were taken away? I have seen no credible evidence
| that they were disenfranchised.
| NDizzle wrote:
| Well, we can't investigate because the ballots have
| already been shredded and the voting machines have
| already been re-imaged. Despite there being laws on the
| books that cover one, if not both of those cases, making
| it illegal to do those things.
|
| I guess that means nothing fishy was going on!
| ipython wrote:
| What investigative steps, taken by what body, would quell
| your concern about election fraud?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Except, their voting rights were not taken away. They voted
| for a candidate that received fewer votes than his
| opponent. They didn't like the results. They were fed
| deliberate lies and baseless theories, and acted upon bad
| intelligence.
| hobs wrote:
| They were reacting to lies about their voting rights being
| taken away, no such thing occurred.
|
| Storming the capitol because a bunch of con-men tricked you
| is not a better response than almost... anything?
| tiziniano wrote:
| Don't be so emotional, they were only taking your illusion of
| them.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| It blows my mind that a bunch of conspiracy-minded folks (the
| sort of people who won't get a vaccine because they think it
| contains a tracking chip from Bill Gates) would stage an
| insurrection and not turn their phones off!
|
| Honestly, what did they think was going to happen? As the saying
| goes, "When you strike at a king, you must kill him." You don't
| get to fail miserably at your coup and then go back home to your
| regular lives.
| krapp wrote:
| >Honestly, what did they think was going to happen?
|
| They thought they would succeed. The Democrats would be marched
| en masse to the gallows and revealed to the world to be the
| satanic blood drinking pedophiles the faithful always knew they
| were. The world would see the insurrectionists as patriots and
| heroes for stopping the CCP in league with the Democratic Party
| from stealing the election and denying Donald Trump his
| rightful second term .
|
| Many of these people literally believe they're involved in a
| holy war and that Trump was sent by God, so for them, victory
| was a metaphysical certainty. The rest were certain Trump would
| pardon them in any case. Why bother with OPSEC when the Lord
| will prepare a table for you in the presence of your enemies
| and your leader has infinite "get out of jail free" cards to
| hand out?
| guilhas wrote:
| Because no one was there for an insurrection. Thats a
| conspiracy theory by mainstream media and the democrats
| HNfriend234 wrote:
| I visit right-wing websites for research purposes and this is
| actually true. If you visit right wing websites and review
| posts about the jan 6th protest it was actually related to
| basically having a peaceful protest to put pressure on the
| electoral vote. Most of the flyers related to it and were
| extremely vague. The slogan was simply: "be there, it will be
| crazy" with no other concrete details.
|
| The reality is that the actual insurrectionists were a small
| fringe group (Qanon) that managed to convince the rest of the
| useful idiots to join in. If you watch the videos of the
| siege you can see that it was mostly Qanon people leading the
| charge in while the other people simply walked into the
| building.
|
| Of course comments like mine are not welcome because it
| paints a different picture compared to the narrative being
| presented in the media but the facts are still there. I
| encourage everyone to go online and do your own research. Go
| to the right-wing websites, pull up posts from December
| talking about the march and see what is being said. It is all
| public information. Same with the siege videos, you can watch
| the livestreams and reach your own conclusions yourself.
| ggm wrote:
| This isn't reddit, so the /s has to be presumed.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| What euphemism do you prefer for trying to overturn the
| result of democratic election using violence?
| danso wrote:
| Worth noting that the headline refers to _" DC residents get
| visits"_, but the story is based solely on one person's account
| (so far). It's not unbelievable that the FBI would overreach in
| an investigation, but if the interviewee's account is true, we
| should in the next few days see more people come out.
| silexia wrote:
| I didn't catch this! Good point.
| Zenst wrote:
| I just get: "Access Denied
|
| You don't have permission to access
| "http://www.wusa9.com/article/features/producers-picks/fbi-tr..."
| on this server."
| eganist wrote:
| Gonna guess it's a privacy law matter. WUSA9 is local to me in
| DC and I can open it just fine.
|
| Article body:
|
| ------------------------------------
|
| WASHINGTON -- If you were anywhere near the Capitol on Jan. 6,
| you may be getting a knock on your door from the FBI.
|
| A D.C. woman said an agent visited her neighbor and called her,
| telling them investigators were tracking people whose cell
| phones connected to wi-fi or pinged cell phone towers near the
| Capitol during the riots.
|
| "They don't call first, they just come to your house," Bree
| Stevens, a legal investigator who lives near Capitol Hill,
| said.
|
| Stevens said an FBI agent told her they were reaching out to
| every single person whose cell phone put them near the Capitol
| during the riots.
|
| She was out for a walk with a friend and his two young
| daughters on the afternoon of Jan. 6, but they were diverted by
| bomb scares until they ended up right next to the insurrection.
| Adults and kids were cordoned off and unable to get back to
| their apartments for four hours.
|
| "You don't want to be anywhere where they're going to go!" she
| said on a video she shot while police officers in riot gear
| quick-stepped toward the Capitol.
|
| Monday night, an investigator knocked on the door of her
| friend's apartment, who was "in house clothes" at the time.
|
| "His little girl had just painted his toenails, that was a
| little bit embarrassing," Stevens said.
|
| Stevens was out of town, so the agent called her on the phone
| number that the FBI had tracked.
|
| "Extremely creepy, because he explained that they have
| everyone's phone number from pinging off the cell phone towers,
| and they know basically exactly where you were, within the
| vicinity of the Capitol," Stevens said. "And they can actually
| pinpoint on Google Maps exactly where you were standing. Like,
| he knew where I was standing on the sidewalk, like
| specifically, based on my cell phone ping."
|
| Stevens said the agent told her she wasn't a suspect, but said
| he wanted pictures of things she might have seen.
|
| Some civil rights advocates are concerned about the FBI's
| surveillance power.
|
| When contacted, the FBI declined to discuss its investigative
| methods.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Another company that doesn't understand the first principles
| about data privacy and the GDPR.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| And another self-centered European who can't countenance that
| the rest of the world has neither incentive nor inclination
| to kowtow to Europe's whims, instead preferring to lecture us
| on our moral inferiority.
|
| But such things happen, and we should both get used to it.
| ev1 wrote:
| I don't live in the EU currently but I don't think "no
| means no" and "informed consent is good" and "stop abusing
| and violating all of your users" is a bad thing.
|
| edit: This news article of several paragraphs is loading
| content from 11 domains directly. If you unblock a few of
| them, it loads JS that collects and sending your data and
| unique identifiers to dozens of domains. This one page of
| text makes over 1,000 requests, almost all of them for
| tracking/fingerprinting. According to devtools, the page
| itself is 900KB ungzipped. The ad XmlHttpRequest load is
| 37MB.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| No one said pursuing these good things is a bad thing.
|
| But expecting everyone to do it for you, and then
| lecturing them on their inferiority when they find it
| easier or more profitable to block you than comply, is
| pretty lame. Europeans and their representatives have
| shut themselves off from this world of 1000 fingerprints;
| they should try owning the consequences of their actions.
| lousken wrote:
| https://archive.is/vOVNn
| Zenst wrote:
| Thank you
| po1nter wrote:
| Might be GDPR related if you are in Europe.
| throwawy4rzn wrote:
| LEO using cellphone triangulation is not new.
|
| I worked as a network tech for one of the big providers. I was
| pulling tower location data for LEO regularly at request of
| corporate legal only. Though sometimes LEO would try to end run
| around and go to stores who would contact me.
|
| I socially engineered them to believe I could not access that
| info without a code generated by corp legal.
|
| Not true, of course. But hell if I was going to risk being mired
| in a legal fiasco for a possibly immoral investigator.
|
| Tracking of our cellphones has been a thing since well before
| smartphones. Smartphones just enable it to be real time, and more
| granular than a tower triangulation.
| new_guy wrote:
| > I socially engineered them to believe
|
| You _lied_ , which is totally fine, but trying to obfuscate
| that behind word salad is just silly.
| hehetrthrthrjn wrote:
| If you change the subject or redirect when someone asks you a
| difficult question you're not lying. That sort of thing could
| be called social engineering.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > LEO using cellphone triangulation is not new.
|
| Everyone was listening to _Serial_ in 2014, and it went into
| depth on how it was done in the early 2000 's.
| jariel wrote:
| I support law enforcement using tech where it is necessary and
| proportional, but completely against it when not the case.
|
| This seems to me like a dragnet and I would hope the ACLU takes
| this up and hopefully the press can start to make some noise
| about it.
| foolfoolz wrote:
| every few seconds your phone (if not in airplane mode) will
| contact all base stations whiting in range and send a globally
| unique identifier to it. it doesn't matter if the base station is
| for your company or if it's fake (stingray). even if the tower
| does not give you access, maybe it's not the company you're a
| subscriber for, they still know you were in that area
| zekica wrote:
| This is not true:
|
| It is true that your phone listens to control channel on
| currently selected base station. It is also true that your
| phone scans other channels relatively frequently to see if a
| better signal is available, but unless the phone decides (based
| on data received from the network) to switch to another base
| station, it will only talk to the network about once or twice
| per hour.
|
| The network can ping the phone if it wants (and does so
| whenever there is something to be signalled, or if law
| enforcement decides to).
| jononor wrote:
| Can one track/log how often a phone gets pinged?
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Only with a specially prepared phone. There was a talk
| about this a few years back at ccc
| itsnot2020 wrote:
| There are a few CCC talks of interest around this:
|
| https://media.ccc.de/v/ARMP3D
| https://media.ccc.de/v/rc3-11406-spot_the_surveillance
| secfirstmd wrote:
| That's a very interesting and more refined insight then
| people usually get (everything thinks it's ever few seconds
| etc). I'd love to know more about how the process works
| daneel_w wrote:
| If it matters that someone, anyone, knows you were at this or
| that location at this or that point in time, don't bring your
| phone with you at all. We're at a juncture where you cannot trust
| your smartphone (I'm looking at Android specifically) to not have
| its cellular transceiver running even when the phone is
| supposedly powered off.
| pyronik19 wrote:
| Man all of this cool tech would have been useful during the... oh
| I don't know... entire summer of deadly riots and the formation
| of an actual rebel state in Seattle CHAZ
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