6 ms·

Very, very much yes. Criminal courts really, really aren't a good place to address technical matters. For example, ankle electronic monitoring (obviously) doesn

by chaps 3y ago

Very, very much yes. Criminal courts really, really aren't a good place to address technical matters. For example, ankle electronic monitoring (obviously) doesn't work well in faraday-cage like apartment complexes. And yet time and time again, GPS skew is used to argue that someone left their home -- sometimes even months after the fact. I've read emails from a local sheriff's office that said that they consider a sufficiently weak signal to be a result of "foiling", period. Through FOIA though, I've been able to get over 100 million instances where a GPS device didn't have a strong enough signal. There are even criminal trials where an EM company will send a sales person to testify and to claim that they're not aware of any technical faults with the system. https://thetriibe.com/2022/11/many-on-house-arrest-in-cook-county-bombarded-with-texts-from-sheriffs-contractor/ https://thetriibe.com/2022/11/many-on-house-arrest-in-cook-c... (disclaimer: I'm the author)

qingcharles 3y ago
Also wrote the previous one which ended with me serving five months in jail for retweeting the public defender's Tweet about it (not your fault): https://chicagoreader.com/news-politics/false-alarms/ https://chicagoreader.com/news-politics/false-alarms/ This might have been the Tweet I reposted: https://twitter.com/CookCoDefender/status/1539705862230376448 https://twitter.com/CookCoDefender/status/153970586223037644... https://nitter.net/CookCoDefender/status/1539705862230376448 https://nitter.net/CookCoDefender/status/1539705862230376448
- oooyay 3y ago
  Correct me if I'm off base here, but this seems to be absolute nonsense: > Like many on EM, Ross was never granted movement outside his home even once, not even to buy food. His sister, a manager at Securitas, helped when she could, but work got in the way sometimes, he said. So, they replaced the box you sit in with a box that you pay for and provide no additional services with all the same restrictions. What the fuck is the point of these programs? I can understand wanting to use EM to ensure someone shows up to a trial, but this geofencing stuff is absolute madness. It just reintroduces the problem that made prisons and jails problematic in the first place. If someone is a non-threat enough to let them live in society with a bracelet then let them live.
  - qingcharles 3y ago
    I wasn't allowed to leave for food. The judge told me he would not grant my request to leave for food. "Have you heard of Amazon? Order it online." he said. Then when I ordered it online he gave me five months in jail saying he never gave me permission to use the Internet :D
    - oooyay 3y ago
      > "Have you heard of Amazon? Order it online." That's textbook entrapment given that collecting an Amazon order, much less the occasionally misplaced one, would require stepping outside of your apartment.
      - qingcharles 3y ago
        Yes. I once stepped onto my front step to let my dog out and the police saw me and went bat-shit crazy about it. They told me I needed to hire someone to come to my house each day and open my front door to let my dog out.
        treebeard901 3y ago
        People in general do not seem to understand that the Govt more and more is not sending people to prison. They are bringing the prison to everyone instead. That ankle bracelet works the same way as the smartphones as far as location data. We all have ankle bracelets. Our cities are concrete surveillance prisons... It goes on and on and is another failure of the Justice system. I am dealing with a corrupt Judge as well so I know frustrating it can be.
    - incahoots 3y ago
      I've gone through the system in a similar fashion, but with no where near the same outcome as you did. If I hadn't gone through a similar situation I would almost believe that you were making it up, that's how ridiculous this is. For context I got stopped in a car with a friend who had weed (unknown to me at the time), had a really old warrant for something like a missed child support payment (also didn't know), and we were both removed from the car. Mind you, I was not driving, and the car did not belong to me, I was simply a passenger. Cops claim they have cause to search the car, I can't argue otherwise, car gets searched, weed was found, we both get hit with the charge. I was expected to pay $6000 for possession, spent a week in jail, lost my job, and had to travel 3 hours to the court house to "appear" in front of a judge with no means of getting there because every waking moment needed me to find a job and save any money I had to pay upcoming rent and needs, in addition to paying child support and not missing a payment otherwise I would end up in jail. That's how quickly this shit escalates, had I not found a ride to get to the court house at least twice, I would've been arrested for bail jumping, and lost my new job, and my apartment. Apologizes if I'm taking away from your experience, not my intention. I feel like that if others don't come to share similar stories, people are quick to dispel your situation as a one off, and accuse of not being responsible.
- chaps 3y ago
  Maybe not, but [without going into it on HN], we could have done much more. For the texts article, we took a much more aggressive approach to pseudonyms to avoid something like that happening again. Hope you're doing well.
  - qingcharles 3y ago
    Yeah, lesson learned. I wasn't bitter about it. We both knew what could happen and I accepted the risk. You were doing absolutely the right thing. You did nothing wrong. You saw the transcripts, the judge was a piece of shit all the way to the end. I'm doing good. Almost all the charges were dismissed a couple of weeks ago. Last ones on appeal now. Hope everything is good with you.
- RetpolineDrama 3y ago
  >which ended with me serving five months in jail for retweeting the public defender's Tweet about it Um, what? You served 5 months in jail for a retweet? Care to elaborate?
  - qingcharles 3y ago
    Yes. Here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38603663 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38603663 Basically judge told me I was allowed to use the Internet while on bail and joked with me that as long as I didn't use it for anything illegal. Then when I retweeted the article "chaps" above wrote about EM not working etc, and I also tweeted about police misconduct (I was getting arrested every single day), it angered the local Sheriff's dept and they locked me up. The judge then basically made the most strained argument in history that he never gave me permission to use the Internet and that I was a bad person for Tweeting about the police under an assumed name (my Twitter account is also my name??). "Chaps" did his level best to help my lawyer, and we were 110% in the right, but the judge was days away from retirement, so fuck me lol
    - RetpolineDrama 3y ago
      https://thecivilrightslawyer.com/about/ https://thecivilrightslawyer.com/about/ Send this guy your story, he might be able to help you
Buttons840 3y ago
Sounds like grounds for a lawsuit against the company. They are stating false things about their product and causing people harm. An official and highly paid representative sent to testify in court couldn't just be dismissed as "well, one salesman misspoke, not our fault". This would be the just recourse, but I'm aware that probably nobody can afford this justice.
- willy_k 3y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38602914 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38602914
- soerxpso 3y ago
  Saying you're "not aware of" something that is real but that you've managed to avoid awareness of, isn't illegal. The individual representative sent to testify probably really was unaware, and the company probably does a good job of making itself as a whole mostly unaware. As long as all knowledge of something routinely goes straight to the shredder before anyone important hears about it, unawareness is achieved.
  - xkcd-sucks 3y ago
    Yeah but those kinds of games have been standard practice in courts since time immemorial. Should it not be standard practice by now to clearly establish the QA/QC process, bugs opened and closed, roles and key people responsible for product features etc. during court proceedings?
- pdonis 3y ago
  The problem is not the company per se but the fact that the government is allowed to get away with having an "expert witness" testify in court with no supporting evidence about something like this. The government should be required to produce, and keep up to date, positive evidence about the accuracy of such systems, collected independently of the manufacturer.
  - chaps 3y ago

by chaps 3y ago

qingcharles 3y ago

Also wrote the previous one which ended with me serving five months in jail for retweeting the public defender's Tweet about it (not your fault): https://chicagoreader.com/news-politics/false-alarms/ https://chicagoreader.com/news-politics/false-alarms/ This might have been the Tweet I reposted: https://twitter.com/CookCoDefender/status/1539705862230376448 https://twitter.com/CookCoDefender/status/153970586223037644... https://nitter.net/CookCoDefender/status/1539705862230376448 https://nitter.net/CookCoDefender/status/1539705862230376448

oooyay 3y ago
Correct me if I'm off base here, but this seems to be absolute nonsense: > Like many on EM, Ross was never granted movement outside his home even once, not even to buy food. His sister, a manager at Securitas, helped when she could, but work got in the way sometimes, he said. So, they replaced the box you sit in with a box that you pay for and provide no additional services with all the same restrictions. What the fuck is the point of these programs? I can understand wanting to use EM to ensure someone shows up to a trial, but this geofencing stuff is absolute madness. It just reintroduces the problem that made prisons and jails problematic in the first place. If someone is a non-threat enough to let them live in society with a bracelet then let them live.
- qingcharles 3y ago
  I wasn't allowed to leave for food. The judge told me he would not grant my request to leave for food. "Have you heard of Amazon? Order it online." he said. Then when I ordered it online he gave me five months in jail saying he never gave me permission to use the Internet :D
  - oooyay 3y ago
    > "Have you heard of Amazon? Order it online." That's textbook entrapment given that collecting an Amazon order, much less the occasionally misplaced one, would require stepping outside of your apartment.
    - qingcharles 3y ago
      Yes. I once stepped onto my front step to let my dog out and the police saw me and went bat-shit crazy about it. They told me I needed to hire someone to come to my house each day and open my front door to let my dog out.
      - treebeard901 3y ago
        People in general do not seem to understand that the Govt more and more is not sending people to prison. They are bringing the prison to everyone instead. That ankle bracelet works the same way as the smartphones as far as location data. We all have ankle bracelets. Our cities are concrete surveillance prisons... It goes on and on and is another failure of the Justice system. I am dealing with a corrupt Judge as well so I know frustrating it can be.
  - incahoots 3y ago
    I've gone through the system in a similar fashion, but with no where near the same outcome as you did. If I hadn't gone through a similar situation I would almost believe that you were making it up, that's how ridiculous this is. For context I got stopped in a car with a friend who had weed (unknown to me at the time), had a really old warrant for something like a missed child support payment (also didn't know), and we were both removed from the car. Mind you, I was not driving, and the car did not belong to me, I was simply a passenger. Cops claim they have cause to search the car, I can't argue otherwise, car gets searched, weed was found, we both get hit with the charge. I was expected to pay $6000 for possession, spent a week in jail, lost my job, and had to travel 3 hours to the court house to "appear" in front of a judge with no means of getting there because every waking moment needed me to find a job and save any money I had to pay upcoming rent and needs, in addition to paying child support and not missing a payment otherwise I would end up in jail. That's how quickly this shit escalates, had I not found a ride to get to the court house at least twice, I would've been arrested for bail jumping, and lost my new job, and my apartment. Apologizes if I'm taking away from your experience, not my intention. I feel like that if others don't come to share similar stories, people are quick to dispel your situation as a one off, and accuse of not being responsible.
chaps 3y ago
Maybe not, but [without going into it on HN], we could have done much more. For the texts article, we took a much more aggressive approach to pseudonyms to avoid something like that happening again. Hope you're doing well.
- qingcharles 3y ago
  Yeah, lesson learned. I wasn't bitter about it. We both knew what could happen and I accepted the risk. You were doing absolutely the right thing. You did nothing wrong. You saw the transcripts, the judge was a piece of shit all the way to the end. I'm doing good. Almost all the charges were dismissed a couple of weeks ago. Last ones on appeal now. Hope everything is good with you.
RetpolineDrama 3y ago
>which ended with me serving five months in jail for retweeting the public defender's Tweet about it Um, what? You served 5 months in jail for a retweet? Care to elaborate?
- qingcharles 3y ago
  Yes. Here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38603663 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38603663 Basically judge told me I was allowed to use the Internet while on bail and joked with me that as long as I didn't use it for anything illegal. Then when I retweeted the article "chaps" above wrote about EM not working etc, and I also tweeted about police misconduct (I was getting arrested every single day), it angered the local Sheriff's dept and they locked me up. The judge then basically made the most strained argument in history that he never gave me permission to use the Internet and that I was a bad person for Tweeting about the police under an assumed name (my Twitter account is also my name??). "Chaps" did his level best to help my lawyer, and we were 110% in the right, but the judge was days away from retirement, so fuck me lol
  - RetpolineDrama 3y ago
    https://thecivilrightslawyer.com/about/ https://thecivilrightslawyer.com/about/ Send this guy your story, he might be able to help you

Buttons840 3y ago

Sounds like grounds for a lawsuit against the company. They are stating false things about their product and causing people harm. An official and highly paid representative sent to testify in court couldn't just be dismissed as "well, one salesman misspoke, not our fault". This would be the just recourse, but I'm aware that probably nobody can afford this justice.

willy_k 3y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38602914 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38602914
soerxpso 3y ago
Saying you're "not aware of" something that is real but that you've managed to avoid awareness of, isn't illegal. The individual representative sent to testify probably really was unaware, and the company probably does a good job of making itself as a whole mostly unaware. As long as all knowledge of something routinely goes straight to the shredder before anyone important hears about it, unawareness is achieved.
- xkcd-sucks 3y ago
  Yeah but those kinds of games have been standard practice in courts since time immemorial. Should it not be standard practice by now to clearly establish the QA/QC process, bugs opened and closed, roles and key people responsible for product features etc. during court proceedings?
pdonis 3y ago
The problem is not the company per se but the fact that the government is allowed to get away with having an "expert witness" testify in court with no supporting evidence about something like this. The government should be required to produce, and keep up to date, positive evidence about the accuracy of such systems, collected independently of the manufacturer.
- chaps 3y ago