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The tech behind catching the Austin serial bomber
- rwc 9y agoIn no small part with the help of Google: "Google search history: The authorities were also able to look at the individual's Google search history, the Statesman noted, which gave them further insight into his dealings."
- mikejb 9y agoFYI, google has a dashboard that shows all/most/some of the data in your account. Go through it and remember the US government can access it (likely with some form of Warrent or paper required)
- michaelcampbell 9y agoFrom TFA: > In order for Google to produce any data, the request has to be made in writing, signed by an official of the requesting agency and issued under an appropriate law. Google can also look to narrow the request if it believes it is "overly broad."
- bhhaskin 9y agoJust goes to show how all this tech can be used against you. Sure this time it was used to catch a serial bomber, but it could also be just as easily used to catch a serial protester.
- matthewbauer 9y agoOrdinarily I don't care where articles come from on HN. But in this case, I think, it's important to point out how ruinous Fox News is for American democracy. Fox News does not deserve HN's clicks. > In my view, Fox has degenerated from providing a legitimate and much-needed outlet for conservative voices to a mere propaganda machine for a destructive and ethically ruinous administration. When prime-time hosts–who have never served our country in any capacity–dismiss facts and empirical reality to launch profoundly dishonest assaults on the FBI, the Justice Department, the courts, the intelligence community (in which I served) and, not least, a model public servant and genuine war hero such as Robert Mueller–all the while scaremongering with lurid warnings of “deep-state” machinations– I cannot be part of the same organization, even at a remove. To me, Fox News is now wittingly harming our system of government for profit. - Col. Ralph Peters, former Fox News analyst
- madman2890 9y agosimmer down
- dang 9y agoWould you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to HN?
- snowpanda 9y agoIt's a tech article, you're overreacting.
- ianamartin 9y agoMeh, I got a good laugh out of the video of Giuliani talking about shit with the title bar calling him a Security Expert.
- dang 9y agoOn HN it's a question of article quality, not site quality. Crappy sites occasionally have good articles (not sure if this counts as one, though) and good sites often have crappy ones.
- Simulacra 9y agoWhat I'm curious about is how they found him through FedEx. The video that has been released is not very good, and he wore a wig. Did they catch a license plate? Unless he was so incompetent he used a credit card.
- wonthegame 9y agoWitnesses saw the vehicle. I’m not sure about the plate. His purchase of foreign batteries online was the piece of info that gave him away. Combined with cell phone records.
- influx 9y agoThey had a package explode while in the packing center, even if they couldn’t get the tracking number from the package itself, surely it would have gotten scanned at least once going through routing. Easy enough to stop the whole warehouse, scan all packages that didn’t explode, get the missing tracking number, time stamp that back to where it came in, look at the video at that time.
- zafka 9y agoMy guess is that they searched all cell phone data on local towers for location data. Then once they had a small enough pool of potentials they searched using humint
- ocfx 9y agoThey knew who it was before FedEx, the FedEx video just verified it for them. They had around 400 fbi agents on the case they were going into stores, checking receipts, footage, etc. He was using local household items.