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FBI agents track cell phones that pinged near the Capitol

369 points by danso 6y ago

sneak 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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.
  - throwoutttt 6y ago
    Thank God the maga shaman didn't get his hands on the magic lecturn and legislate an election audit
  - hcurtiss 6y ago
    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.
    - Denvercoder9 6y ago
      You assume that competency is a requirement for insurrection. It is not.
    - api 6y ago
      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 6y ago
        Look into the burning of the Reichstag...
        api 6y ago
        That was later. I’m talking about the early stuff.
    - caseysoftware 6y ago
      "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 6y ago
        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.
        maxerickson 6y ago
        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-trump-rally-dc-january-6-protest-pro-trump-demonstrators-event-details/65-2e019324-7861-48fa-8d78-d99b9617558b 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 6y ago
        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 6y ago
        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
    - stonecraftwolf 6y ago
      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.
      - hobs 6y ago
        Dont forget all the explosives that were removed.
        gwright 6y ago
        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 6y ago
        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.
      - caseysoftware 6y ago
        > 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.
    - shakna 6y ago
      > 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-arrest-pelosi-desk/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/08/politics/us-capitol-riots...
      - jandrewrogers 6y ago
        FWIW, those aren't explosives. Flammable, yes, but definitely not explosive. Spreading gross misinformation like this is part of the problem.
        pnw_hazor 6y ago
        It is not part of the problem, it is part of the plan. How else are we going to get bi-partisan support for the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2021
        shakna 6y ago
        > The court documents said that those items and the explosive-filled mason jars "in close proximity to one another constitute a combination of parts" that could be used as a "destructive device." I used "explosive" because that was how it appeared in the court filings. Without knowing the precise mixture, it could result as either something to cause a conflagration, or a detonation. Calling it misinformation is somewhat disingenuous when not all the information is publicly available.
        jandrewrogers 6y ago
        Your quote literally calls it a "destructive device", not an explosive, which is a term of art including mostly non-explosive things. The material in question is specified in the article. It is not explosive in any configuration as an incontrovertible matter of elementary chemistry. It does meet the criteria for being a destructive device in law. Calling this "misinformation" is an accurate characterization. You are not responsible for what CNN reports but it should lead you to question the credibility of that news source.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - sneak 6y ago
    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.
    - maxerickson 6y ago
      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 6y ago
        The US government has publicly admitted that they assassinate people based solely on metadata. https://www.justsecurity.org/10318/video-clip-director-nsa-cia-we-kill-people-based-metadata/ https://www.justsecurity.org/10318/video-clip-director-nsa-c... https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2014/05/10/we-kill-people-based-metadata/ 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.
    - 6y ago
  - tiziniano 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      Pretty sure you have veered into being a bit more than just a grammar nazi.
      - tiziniano 6y ago
        Still, little content to these claims including the one above.
  - VoodooJuJu 6y ago
    >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.
    - Thorrez 6y ago
      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 6y ago
        What was the worst part of the event at the capitol? What do you think would make a fair comparison?
        ForHackernews 6y ago
        > 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-homemade-napalm-read-some-of-the-documents-from-arrests-after-the-capitol-riot/ https://www.washingtonian.com/2021/01/11/guns-brass-knuckles...
  - defen 6y ago
    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".
- SantalBlush 6y ago
  Right now, I'm more concerned about the people who broke into the Capitol and tried to take away my voting rights.
  - NDizzle 6y ago
    They were reacting to their voting rights being taken away. Seems like a better response than vandalizing a Starbucks.
    - hobs 6y ago
      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?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - pen2l 6y ago
      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 6y ago
      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 6y ago
        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!
- mindslight 6y ago
  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.
- trident5000 6y ago
  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.
  - DennisP 6y ago
    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.
  - vehemenz 6y ago
    Yes. It is possible to believe in law enforcement and the curbing of privacy-invading legislation at the same time.
    - trident5000 6y ago
      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 6y ago
        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 6y ago
        How were a bunch of crazies in the capitol going to take control of the US surveillance infrastructure?
      - asutekku 6y ago
        The world is not black and white. You absolutely can pick both.
danso 6y ago
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 6y ago
  I didn't catch this! Good point.
DebtDeflation 6y ago
>"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.
- emteycz 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    Who the hell has a 5G device?
    - scsilver 6y ago
      Alot of people buy new Iphones.
Zenst 6y ago
I just get: "Access Denied You don't have permission to access "http://www.wusa9.com/article/features/producers-picks/fbi-tracks-cell-phones-that-were-near-capitol-insurrection-and-riot/65-ca268165-a5c5-46a4-8b88-943a8517343a http://www.wusa9.com/article/features/producers-picks/fbi-tr..." on this server."
- po1nter 6y ago
  Might be GDPR related if you are in Europe.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  Another company that doesn't understand the first principles about data privacy and the GDPR.
  - fennecfoxen 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      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 6y ago
        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.
foolfoolz 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    Can one track/log how often a phone gets pinged?
    - tinus_hn 6y ago
      Only with a specially prepared phone. There was a talk about this a few years back at ccc
    - itsnot2020 6y ago
      There are a few CCC talks of interest around this: https://media.ccc.de/v/ARMP3D https://media.ccc.de/v/ARMP3D https://media.ccc.de/v/rc3-11406-spot_the_surveillance https://media.ccc.de/v/rc3-11406-spot_the_surveillance
  - secfirstmd 6y ago
    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
pjc50 6y ago
"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 6y ago
  outline.com to the rescue: https://outline.com/sf9LfV https://outline.com/sf9LfV
- fennecfoxen 6y ago
  GDPR'd?
nabla9 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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.
  - bilbo0s 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      Like with any other form of surveillance, if it's a bad practice, then it shouldn't be used on anyone, regardless of race.
breck 6y ago
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.
- grayhatter 6y ago
  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 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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.
- syshum 6y ago
  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-Trust/Debunking-a-myth-If-you-have-nothing-to-hide-you-have-nothing-to-fear https://www.computerweekly.com/blog/Identity-Privacy-and-Tru... [2] https://www.wired.com/2013/06/why-i-have-nothing-to-hide-is-the-wrong-way-to-think-about-surveillance/ https://www.wired.com/2013/06/why-i-have-nothing-to-hide-is-... [3] https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/secrecy/you-may-have-nothing-hide-you-still-have-something-fear https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/secrecy/you-may-...
olah_1 6y ago
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 6y ago
  > 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 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      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.
- suifbwish 6y ago
  The way to disable WiFi on your device to change the password in the access point
  - olah_1 6y ago
    It will still try to connect to wifi points that you happen to pass by, though.
chasd00 6y ago
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)
ForHackernews 6y ago
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 6y ago
  >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 6y ago
  Because no one was there for an insurrection. Thats a conspiracy theory by mainstream media and the democrats
  - ForHackernews 6y ago
    What euphemism do you prefer for trying to overturn the result of democratic election using violence?
    - guilhas 6y ago
      Overturn by peacefully protest, showing Pence that there is popular support to investigate the election inconsistencies. The biggest act of violence was a policeman shooting a protester point blank in the neck, after being let through by 6 other policeman. I mean can you elaborate how exactly would it work with violence? What was their plan? And how would that be accepted by the every authority and the people?
hourislate 6y ago
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.
- trident5000 6y ago
  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.
  - syshum 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - trident5000 6y ago
      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 6y ago
        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:)
tamaharbor 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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.
daneel_w 6y ago
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.
- sangnoir 6y ago
  > 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. This hardly matters if your appearance is captured by no less than 4 live streams, an additional 6 videos and 21 pictures posted by third parties to social media. Not bringing your phone is the bare minimum, but not close to being enough to cover your tracks. Once someone with wide-enough information sources suspects you were at a location of interest, you are toast: it's the attack/defense scenario where defender has to get every step right. Any mistake by the defender (or their ally or even an npc), no matter how small, means the attacker wins.
throwawy4rzn 6y ago
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 6y ago
  > I socially engineered them to believe You lied, which is totally fine, but trying to obfuscate that behind word salad is just silly.
  - hehetrthrthrjn 6y ago
    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.
    - mhh__ 6y ago
      Obscuring information from Law Enforcement is still probably perjury if they find out and can prove you knew
      - jessaustin 6y ago
        The requests themselves were probably illegal, sidestepping standard procedure as they were. I don't think one could be charged with perjury for refusing unlawful requests. IANAL!
      - NoSorryCannot 6y ago
        Perjury is for courtrooms after you take an oath. Lying to law enforcement is categorically not perjury.
sam_goody 6y ago
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.
- louthy 6y ago
  > 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 6y ago
  > 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 6y ago
    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 https://youtu.be/_6uSYhyFao4
jzer0cool 6y ago
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 6y ago
Access Denied You don't have permission to access "http://www.wusa9.com/article/features/producers-picks/fbi-tracks-cell-phones-that-were-near-capitol-insurrection-and-riot/65-ca268165-a5c5-46a4-8b88-943a8517343a http://www.wusa9.com/article/features/producers-picks/fbi-tr..." on this server.
- lol768 6y ago
  All European visitors, I take it? Mirror: https://web.archive.org/web/20210120062149/http://www.wusa9.com/article/features/producers-picks/fbi-tracks-cell-phones-that-were-near-capitol-insurrection-and-riot/65-ca268165-a5c5-46a4-8b88-943a8517343a https://web.archive.org/web/20210120062149/http://www.wusa9....
LatteLazy 6y ago
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.
tonetheman 6y ago
Idiots who are worried about vaccines with chips ... you are willingly carrying it.
jariel 6y ago
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.
pyronik19 6y ago
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
williesleg 6y ago
Oregon?
seany 6y ago
This is terrifying. I swear the tech community would have been universally against this just a few years ago. What happened?
- tyleo 6y ago
  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.
- jdbernard 6y ago
  I think there are still just as many of us who are against it as there were years ago, we're just no longer as vocal about it. A lot of us have given up being perceived as "doomsday" prophets. Mainstream culture doesn't really believe or care about mass surveillance until it personally affects them negatively.
quercusa 6y ago
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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
- MichaelApproved 6y ago
  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 https://youtu.be/_rVsRmcE-u8
- sn_master 6y ago
  Unrelated, but when I saw this first comments were still allowed. Everywhere on YouTube it seems comments are being disabled on new and old videos :/
  - barkingcat 6y ago
    It's because leaving comments enabled invites the worst of humanity to post excrement on your videos. It's a well known issue. Unless you have time to devote to deleting offensive comments (and many comments are just swear words copied and pasted a few hundred times), just disable comments.
    - sn_master 6y ago
      Often case it's the author disagreeing with a good number of the viewers, and not any spam or vulgar content.
      - sn_master 6y ago
        YouTube already has moderation like Facebook if someone says Report, it's not like the channel author isn't responsible for every single comment.
- javajosh 6y ago
stevespang 6y ago
Lying to a Gov't agent is by far the most common way they put charges on you. Don't talk to them at all, other than uttering: "with all due respect, my attorney speaks for me on all matters". Refuse to say anything else. You go to the bottom of the heap because you are the hardest to gather evidence on, so they twist you around in a conversation to get a lie, then they arrest and prosecute.
roywiggins 6y ago
For what it's worth, the FBI isn't the only entity keeping tabs on cellphones around the Capitol. The place is probably one of the more heavily surveilled spots on the planet: https://gizmodo.com/israel-allegedly-installed-stingray-devices-around-d-c-1838061036 https://gizmodo.com/israel-allegedly-installed-stingray-devi... It will be interesting to learn how the FBI got this information, if the story is true. The government has been brushed back on requests for geofence warrants before: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/08/new-federal-court-rulings-find-geofence-warrants-unconstitutional-0 https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/08/new-federal-court-ruli... That said, if a phone pinged from inside the Capitol during the riot, that seems like it could be probable cause in and of itself. Most phones that pinged that day inside the Capitol were being carried by people committing criminal trespass sort of by definition. It's almost a perfect argument for a geofence warrant.
SQL2219 6y ago
I watched the summer riots on youtube live streams, I don't recall the FBI using this technique for the tens of thousands of man-hours spent looting, burning and rioting in Portland, LA, Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago, NYC or Atlanta.
- AtlasBarfed 6y ago
  In Minneapolis for the George Floyd riots they tracked down the right-wing agitator "umbrella man": https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/28/us/umbrella-man-associated-white-supremacist-group-george-floyd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/28/us/umbrella-man-associated-wh... Maybe they used the same techniques there. Does that make you feel better?
- joefife 6y ago
  Yes, that's because they weren't trying to stage a coup.
- madenine 6y ago
  I don't think its the FBI's job to figure out who smashed up a Target or looted a Footlocker. Its definitely the FBI's job to figure out who breached a federal building, let alone the seat of our legislative branch during an active session. That being said... the FBI, DOJ, DHS, and state agencies definitely do shady stuff and track people via their devices at protests. I'm remembering surveillance planes over Baltimore that were traced back to feds.
- ketamine__ 6y ago
  They pursued legislators and the vice president after gaining access to the building. The FBI should be aggressive.
- skeletonjelly 6y ago
  Then you weren't paying attention enough, and just because you don't recall doesn't mean it didn't happen, which it did: https://theintercept.com/2020/07/09/twitter-dataminr-police-spy-surveillance-black-lives-matter-protests/ https://theintercept.com/2020/07/09/twitter-dataminr-police-... Know where I recalled I read this? Here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23783503 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23783503
djrogers 6y ago
A lot of comments here about ‘overreach’ ‘privacy violations’ and such as if the FBI is showing up and accusing these people of crimes. If you actually read the story, the one person who they quote explains they weren’t suspected of anything but the agents asked for any photos they had of the events. This is straight up classic police legwork...
- throwaway_kufu 6y ago
  classic police work...always starts with contacting a person of interest and saying “your not a suspect, we just want you to come down and answer a few questions.” If you don’t, it’s suspicious and they will continuing investigating you as a person of interest. If you do, they will conclude you were suspiciously nervous and begin building by their case. Now they show up to your house telling you they “pinged” your phone near a suspected crime “but your not a suspect, we just want to see the pictures on your phone”. Refuse to show them, and they already know you posted one or more (maybe subsequently deleted it) and maybe it’s obstruction of justice. Deny you have any, and it’s lying to law enforcement.
  - pnw_hazor 6y ago
    And if you make a mistake on a date or location, you are open to be charged with a making false statements -- a felony if you do it a federal agent.
    - exhilaration 6y ago
      Why is this downvoted? It's completely true.
- akira2501 6y ago
  > This is straight up classic police legwork... Which may be built on the back of a massive privacy violation. Should location data be made available to the government when they don't have a warrant? Should they be allowed to "go fishing" with our data? > they weren’t suspected of anything but the agents asked for any photos they had of the events. There are plenty of other methods available to the FBI to achieve this goal.
peter303 6y ago
The FBI has been hiring advisors from China
asdfthrowawayyy 6y ago
Because that's legal. Totally acceptable under the U.S. Constitution /s
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
throwaway654789 6y ago
People make a big deal about cell phone tower ping data, but compared to the "anonymized" meter-accurate GPS and sensor traces that GLS uploads 10 times an hour and the massive datacenter power that Google has dedicated to storing this location data, this is complete chumpchange. They can track your footsteps and know which room and which floor you are on. They have been quietly building indoor maps of millions of buildings. If you use Android, turn off "high accuracy location" and do not agree to any setting that prompts for sharing "anonymized" data. If you can, just uninstall Google Play Services. If you work for Google, read the GLS privacy design doc and lobby them to improve anonymization and/or shut down this completely dystopian data collection.
- AshWolfy 6y ago
  >If you work for Google, read the GLS privacy design doc and lobby them to improve anonymization and/or shut down this completely dystopian data collection. People who challenge google policy seem to have a bad habit of being fired
2Gkashmiri 6y ago
i will say this: consider from now on, no protester anywhere will have their cellphones on them.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

369 points by danso 6y ago

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 6y ago
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.
- throwoutttt 6y ago
  Thank God the maga shaman didn't get his hands on the magic lecturn and legislate an election audit
- hcurtiss 6y ago
  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.
  - Denvercoder9 6y ago
    You assume that competency is a requirement for insurrection. It is not.
  - api 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      Look into the burning of the Reichstag...
      - api 6y ago
        That was later. I’m talking about the early stuff.
  - caseysoftware 6y ago
    "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 6y ago
      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.
      - maxerickson 6y ago
        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-trump-rally-dc-january-6-protest-pro-trump-demonstrators-event-details/65-2e019324-7861-48fa-8d78-d99b9617558b 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 6y ago
        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 6y ago
        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
  - stonecraftwolf 6y ago
    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.
    - hobs 6y ago
      Dont forget all the explosives that were removed.
      - gwright 6y ago
        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 6y ago
      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.
    - caseysoftware 6y ago
      > 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.
  - shakna 6y ago
    > 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-arrest-pelosi-desk/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/08/politics/us-capitol-riots...
    - jandrewrogers 6y ago
      FWIW, those aren't explosives. Flammable, yes, but definitely not explosive. Spreading gross misinformation like this is part of the problem.
      - pnw_hazor 6y ago
        It is not part of the problem, it is part of the plan. How else are we going to get bi-partisan support for the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act of 2021
      - shakna 6y ago
        > The court documents said that those items and the explosive-filled mason jars "in close proximity to one another constitute a combination of parts" that could be used as a "destructive device." I used "explosive" because that was how it appeared in the court filings. Without knowing the precise mixture, it could result as either something to cause a conflagration, or a detonation. Calling it misinformation is somewhat disingenuous when not all the information is publicly available.
        jandrewrogers 6y ago
        Your quote literally calls it a "destructive device", not an explosive, which is a term of art including mostly non-explosive things. The material in question is specified in the article. It is not explosive in any configuration as an incontrovertible matter of elementary chemistry. It does meet the criteria for being a destructive device in law. Calling this "misinformation" is an accurate characterization. You are not responsible for what CNN reports but it should lead you to question the credibility of that news source.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- sneak 6y ago
  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.
  - maxerickson 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      The US government has publicly admitted that they assassinate people based solely on metadata. https://www.justsecurity.org/10318/video-clip-director-nsa-cia-we-kill-people-based-metadata/ https://www.justsecurity.org/10318/video-clip-director-nsa-c... https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2014/05/10/we-kill-people-based-metadata/ 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.
  - 6y ago
- tiziniano 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    Pretty sure you have veered into being a bit more than just a grammar nazi.
    - tiziniano 6y ago
      Still, little content to these claims including the one above.
- VoodooJuJu 6y ago
  >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.
  - Thorrez 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      What was the worst part of the event at the capitol? What do you think would make a fair comparison?
      - ForHackernews 6y ago
        > 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-homemade-napalm-read-some-of-the-documents-from-arrests-after-the-capitol-riot/ https://www.washingtonian.com/2021/01/11/guns-brass-knuckles...
- defen 6y ago
  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".
SantalBlush 6y ago
Right now, I'm more concerned about the people who broke into the Capitol and tried to take away my voting rights.
- NDizzle 6y ago
  They were reacting to their voting rights being taken away. Seems like a better response than vandalizing a Starbucks.
  - hobs 6y ago
    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?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - pen2l 6y ago
    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 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      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!
mindslight 6y ago
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.
trident5000 6y ago
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.
- DennisP 6y ago
  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.
- vehemenz 6y ago
  Yes. It is possible to believe in law enforcement and the curbing of privacy-invading legislation at the same time.
  - trident5000 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      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 6y ago
        How were a bunch of crazies in the capitol going to take control of the US surveillance infrastructure?
    - asutekku 6y ago
      The world is not black and white. You absolutely can pick both.

danso 6y ago

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 6y ago
I didn't catch this! Good point.

DebtDeflation 6y ago

>"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.

emteycz 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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 6y ago
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 6y ago
  Who the hell has a 5G device?
  - scsilver 6y ago
    Alot of people buy new Iphones.

Zenst 6y ago

I just get: "Access Denied You don't have permission to access "http://www.wusa9.com/article/features/producers-picks/fbi-tracks-cell-phones-that-were-near-capitol-insurrection-and-riot/65-ca268165-a5c5-46a4-8b88-943a8517343a http://www.wusa9.com/article/features/producers-picks/fbi-tr..." on this server."

po1nter 6y ago
Might be GDPR related if you are in Europe.
jacquesm 6y ago
Another company that doesn't understand the first principles about data privacy and the GDPR.
- fennecfoxen 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      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.

foolfoolz 6y ago

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 6y ago
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 6y ago
  Can one track/log how often a phone gets pinged?
  - tinus_hn 6y ago
    Only with a specially prepared phone. There was a talk about this a few years back at ccc
  - itsnot2020 6y ago
    There are a few CCC talks of interest around this: https://media.ccc.de/v/ARMP3D https://media.ccc.de/v/ARMP3D https://media.ccc.de/v/rc3-11406-spot_the_surveillance https://media.ccc.de/v/rc3-11406-spot_the_surveillance
- secfirstmd 6y ago
  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

pjc50 6y ago

"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 6y ago
outline.com to the rescue: https://outline.com/sf9LfV https://outline.com/sf9LfV
fennecfoxen 6y ago
GDPR'd?

nabla9 6y ago

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 6y ago
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.
- bilbo0s 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    Like with any other form of surveillance, if it's a bad practice, then it shouldn't be used on anyone, regardless of race.

breck 6y ago

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.

grayhatter 6y ago
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 6y ago
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 6y ago
  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.
syshum 6y ago
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-Trust/Debunking-a-myth-If-you-have-nothing-to-hide-you-have-nothing-to-fear https://www.computerweekly.com/blog/Identity-Privacy-and-Tru... [2] https://www.wired.com/2013/06/why-i-have-nothing-to-hide-is-the-wrong-way-to-think-about-surveillance/ https://www.wired.com/2013/06/why-i-have-nothing-to-hide-is-... [3] https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/secrecy/you-may-have-nothing-hide-you-still-have-something-fear https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/secrecy/you-may-...

olah_1 6y ago

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 6y ago
> 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 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    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.
suifbwish 6y ago
The way to disable WiFi on your device to change the password in the access point
- olah_1 6y ago
  It will still try to connect to wifi points that you happen to pass by, though.

chasd00 6y ago

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)

ForHackernews 6y ago

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 6y ago
>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 6y ago
Because no one was there for an insurrection. Thats a conspiracy theory by mainstream media and the democrats
- ForHackernews 6y ago
  What euphemism do you prefer for trying to overturn the result of democratic election using violence?
  - guilhas 6y ago
    Overturn by peacefully protest, showing Pence that there is popular support to investigate the election inconsistencies. The biggest act of violence was a policeman shooting a protester point blank in the neck, after being let through by 6 other policeman. I mean can you elaborate how exactly would it work with violence? What was their plan? And how would that be accepted by the every authority and the people?

hourislate 6y ago

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.

trident5000 6y ago
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.
- syshum 6y ago
  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 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - trident5000 6y ago
    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 6y ago
      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:)

tamaharbor 6y ago

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 6y ago
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.

daneel_w 6y ago

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.

sangnoir 6y ago
> 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. This hardly matters if your appearance is captured by no less than 4 live streams, an additional 6 videos and 21 pictures posted by third parties to social media. Not bringing your phone is the bare minimum, but not close to being enough to cover your tracks. Once someone with wide-enough information sources suspects you were at a location of interest, you are toast: it's the attack/defense scenario where defender has to get every step right. Any mistake by the defender (or their ally or even an npc), no matter how small, means the attacker wins.

throwawy4rzn 6y ago

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 6y ago
> I socially engineered them to believe You lied, which is totally fine, but trying to obfuscate that behind word salad is just silly.
- hehetrthrthrjn 6y ago
  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.
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    Obscuring information from Law Enforcement is still probably perjury if they find out and can prove you knew
    - jessaustin 6y ago
      The requests themselves were probably illegal, sidestepping standard procedure as they were. I don't think one could be charged with perjury for refusing unlawful requests. IANAL!
    - NoSorryCannot 6y ago
      Perjury is for courtrooms after you take an oath. Lying to law enforcement is categorically not perjury.

sam_goody 6y ago

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.

louthy 6y ago
> 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 6y ago
> 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 6y ago
  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 https://youtu.be/_6uSYhyFao4

jzer0cool 6y ago

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 6y ago

Access Denied You don't have permission to access "http://www.wusa9.com/article/features/producers-picks/fbi-tracks-cell-phones-that-were-near-capitol-insurrection-and-riot/65-ca268165-a5c5-46a4-8b88-943a8517343a http://www.wusa9.com/article/features/producers-picks/fbi-tr..." on this server.

lol768 6y ago
All European visitors, I take it? Mirror: https://web.archive.org/web/20210120062149/http://www.wusa9.com/article/features/producers-picks/fbi-tracks-cell-phones-that-were-near-capitol-insurrection-and-riot/65-ca268165-a5c5-46a4-8b88-943a8517343a https://web.archive.org/web/20210120062149/http://www.wusa9....

LatteLazy 6y ago

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.

tonetheman 6y ago

Idiots who are worried about vaccines with chips ... you are willingly carrying it.

jariel 6y ago

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.

pyronik19 6y ago

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

williesleg 6y ago

Oregon?

seany 6y ago

This is terrifying. I swear the tech community would have been universally against this just a few years ago. What happened?

tyleo 6y ago
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.
jdbernard 6y ago
I think there are still just as many of us who are against it as there were years ago, we're just no longer as vocal about it. A lot of us have given up being perceived as "doomsday" prophets. Mainstream culture doesn't really believe or care about mass surveillance until it personally affects them negatively.

quercusa 6y ago

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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

MichaelApproved 6y ago
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 https://youtu.be/_rVsRmcE-u8
sn_master 6y ago
Unrelated, but when I saw this first comments were still allowed. Everywhere on YouTube it seems comments are being disabled on new and old videos :/
- barkingcat 6y ago
  It's because leaving comments enabled invites the worst of humanity to post excrement on your videos. It's a well known issue. Unless you have time to devote to deleting offensive comments (and many comments are just swear words copied and pasted a few hundred times), just disable comments.
  - sn_master 6y ago
    Often case it's the author disagreeing with a good number of the viewers, and not any spam or vulgar content.
    - sn_master 6y ago
      YouTube already has moderation like Facebook if someone says Report, it's not like the channel author isn't responsible for every single comment.
javajosh 6y ago

stevespang 6y ago

Lying to a Gov't agent is by far the most common way they put charges on you. Don't talk to them at all, other than uttering: "with all due respect, my attorney speaks for me on all matters". Refuse to say anything else. You go to the bottom of the heap because you are the hardest to gather evidence on, so they twist you around in a conversation to get a lie, then they arrest and prosecute.

roywiggins 6y ago

For what it's worth, the FBI isn't the only entity keeping tabs on cellphones around the Capitol. The place is probably one of the more heavily surveilled spots on the planet: https://gizmodo.com/israel-allegedly-installed-stingray-devices-around-d-c-1838061036 https://gizmodo.com/israel-allegedly-installed-stingray-devi... It will be interesting to learn how the FBI got this information, if the story is true. The government has been brushed back on requests for geofence warrants before: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/08/new-federal-court-rulings-find-geofence-warrants-unconstitutional-0 https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/08/new-federal-court-ruli... That said, if a phone pinged from inside the Capitol during the riot, that seems like it could be probable cause in and of itself. Most phones that pinged that day inside the Capitol were being carried by people committing criminal trespass sort of by definition. It's almost a perfect argument for a geofence warrant.

SQL2219 6y ago

I watched the summer riots on youtube live streams, I don't recall the FBI using this technique for the tens of thousands of man-hours spent looting, burning and rioting in Portland, LA, Seattle, Minneapolis, Chicago, NYC or Atlanta.

AtlasBarfed 6y ago
In Minneapolis for the George Floyd riots they tracked down the right-wing agitator "umbrella man": https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/28/us/umbrella-man-associated-white-supremacist-group-george-floyd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/28/us/umbrella-man-associated-wh... Maybe they used the same techniques there. Does that make you feel better?
joefife 6y ago
Yes, that's because they weren't trying to stage a coup.
madenine 6y ago
I don't think its the FBI's job to figure out who smashed up a Target or looted a Footlocker. Its definitely the FBI's job to figure out who breached a federal building, let alone the seat of our legislative branch during an active session. That being said... the FBI, DOJ, DHS, and state agencies definitely do shady stuff and track people via their devices at protests. I'm remembering surveillance planes over Baltimore that were traced back to feds.
ketamine__ 6y ago
They pursued legislators and the vice president after gaining access to the building. The FBI should be aggressive.
skeletonjelly 6y ago
Then you weren't paying attention enough, and just because you don't recall doesn't mean it didn't happen, which it did: https://theintercept.com/2020/07/09/twitter-dataminr-police-spy-surveillance-black-lives-matter-protests/ https://theintercept.com/2020/07/09/twitter-dataminr-police-... Know where I recalled I read this? Here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23783503 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23783503

djrogers 6y ago

A lot of comments here about ‘overreach’ ‘privacy violations’ and such as if the FBI is showing up and accusing these people of crimes. If you actually read the story, the one person who they quote explains they weren’t suspected of anything but the agents asked for any photos they had of the events. This is straight up classic police legwork...

throwaway_kufu 6y ago
classic police work...always starts with contacting a person of interest and saying “your not a suspect, we just want you to come down and answer a few questions.” If you don’t, it’s suspicious and they will continuing investigating you as a person of interest. If you do, they will conclude you were suspiciously nervous and begin building by their case. Now they show up to your house telling you they “pinged” your phone near a suspected crime “but your not a suspect, we just want to see the pictures on your phone”. Refuse to show them, and they already know you posted one or more (maybe subsequently deleted it) and maybe it’s obstruction of justice. Deny you have any, and it’s lying to law enforcement.
- pnw_hazor 6y ago
  And if you make a mistake on a date or location, you are open to be charged with a making false statements -- a felony if you do it a federal agent.
  - exhilaration 6y ago
    Why is this downvoted? It's completely true.
akira2501 6y ago
> This is straight up classic police legwork... Which may be built on the back of a massive privacy violation. Should location data be made available to the government when they don't have a warrant? Should they be allowed to "go fishing" with our data? > they weren’t suspected of anything but the agents asked for any photos they had of the events. There are plenty of other methods available to the FBI to achieve this goal.

peter303 6y ago

The FBI has been hiring advisors from China

asdfthrowawayyy 6y ago

Because that's legal. Totally acceptable under the U.S. Constitution /s

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

throwaway654789 6y ago

People make a big deal about cell phone tower ping data, but compared to the "anonymized" meter-accurate GPS and sensor traces that GLS uploads 10 times an hour and the massive datacenter power that Google has dedicated to storing this location data, this is complete chumpchange. They can track your footsteps and know which room and which floor you are on. They have been quietly building indoor maps of millions of buildings. If you use Android, turn off "high accuracy location" and do not agree to any setting that prompts for sharing "anonymized" data. If you can, just uninstall Google Play Services. If you work for Google, read the GLS privacy design doc and lobby them to improve anonymization and/or shut down this completely dystopian data collection.

AshWolfy 6y ago
>If you work for Google, read the GLS privacy design doc and lobby them to improve anonymization and/or shut down this completely dystopian data collection. People who challenge google policy seem to have a bad habit of being fired

2Gkashmiri 6y ago

i will say this: consider from now on, no protester anywhere will have their cellphones on them.

deleted 6y ago

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