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>Working with Grindr data, Yeagley began drawing geofences—creating virtual boundaries in geographical data sets—around buildings belonging to government agenci

>Working with Grindr data, Yeagley began drawing geofences—creating virtual boundaries in geographical data sets—around buildings belonging to government agencies that do national security work. Are you seriously telling me that government phones of national security employees allow for the installation of apps that track your location and/or these employees are allowed to bring personal cell phones into these buildings?

Jtsummers 3y ago
Employees are generally allowed to bring phones into federal buildings. There are areas within the buildings they may not be able to take them to, and there are some buildings with a total ban. In that case, though, the phones would still be left somewhere nearby, like the parking lot.
schaefer 3y ago
There are buildings that do not allow cell phones. For these buildings, it's common to leave your phone in your car. So... still close enough?
- AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  Yes, close enough.
voxic11 3y ago
Even if not allowed in the building people will still want to carry a personal phone so it likely just stays in their car right outside the building in the parking lot.
mandevil 3y ago
When we had to go into SCIFs, generally phones went into lockers. At some locations, phones stayed in cars. But that doesn't make it any harder to figure out. But this isn't the first time people are encountering this problem. Strava has given away plenty of US military bases: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/28/fitness-tracking-app-gives-away-location-of-secret-us-army-bases https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/28/fitness-tracki... Russia has the same problem, VKontakte has given away plenty of secret Russian military bases and troop positions over the past few decades. I've never read of this on Weibo or WeChat, but my guess is they have the same problem, just English language open source accounts are keeping it more discrete for now. The WashPost about a week ago had an article about how at a recent NTC rotation out at Fort Irwin the OPFOR was trying to figure out how an Apache had gotten past their air defenses, so they looked up commercial cell phone tracking data and were able to spot how a phone had gone across the desert at 120 mph and plug the hole in their air defenses.[1] Adtech on the cell phone we all carry in our pocket is better at surveillance than the best tools a military has. And it's one of those things where not being part of the surveillance can make you stand out too. Think about a spy operating under a real cover, how long is their Facebook (or Weibo or VK or TikTok or whatever is appropriate for the person they are trying to be) account history? If you found someone claiming to be a 45 year old woman living in an American suburb and she had a Facebook account that was three months old, wouldn't you investigate further? 1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/02/22/ukraine-war-pentagon-lessons-learned/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/02/22/...
- nradov 3y ago
  Supposedly a Ukrainian agent was able to assassinate a Russian military officer by tracking his regular running route on Strava. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66162502 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66162502 Strava actually has extensive privacy controls that work well. Users can keep activities private by default and hide their tracks near sensitive locations. But of course if you don't use the privacy control and make everything public then obviously everyone can see exactly where you were.
  - HenryBemis 3y ago
    It brought this to mind: Fitness tracking app Strava gives away location of secret US army bases https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/28/fitness-tracking-app-gives-away-location-of-secret-us-army-bases https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/28/fitness-tracki...
    - pests 3y ago
      This was linked in the GP comment.
  - baybal2 3y ago
    [dead]
- Aerbil313 3y ago
  This is a scary thought. Not because I think I'm worthy of being targeted, but because I think in the future there'll be enough compute and incentives to automatically scan everyone for out-of-the-ordinary behavior via neural models.
  - CatWChainsaw 3y ago
    The killer drones will remind you of what ordinary behavior is so you aren't tempted to deviate.
- ok_dad 3y ago
nova22033 3y ago
Personal phones, not government phones. Bringing your personal phone to Langley and leaving it in your car doesn't do much.
XorNot 3y ago
Whether they take it into the building or not is irrelevant. If they drive nearby and leave it in the car, you can find them. If they drive nearby and turn it off then, you can find them (improve it by bracketing by the average 9-5 workday, add correlation of world events to late-night anomalies - i.e. the Washington pizza index[1]). If they leave their phone at home and switch it off, then you can still find them by that data. If they leave their phone at home, switched on, then this also applies - you filter by public holidays. The key is that the "phone policy" is effectively public information - so you don't have to guess, you can just go find out what it is to set your search parameters. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/pizza121998.htm https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clint...
- kyboren 3y ago
  Absolutely. Here's my proposal: - Prohibit all Federal employees from bringing a personal cellular radio to work. - Build many parking structures for DC Federal employees across the region. - Assign each employee a particular parking structure, ideally selected at random. - Ensure each parking structure is served by public transportation infrastructure, dedicated shuttles, and a USGOV-run black car service to bring people to their workplace, potentially via an extra obfuscating hop to a different parking structure. In an ideal world, all Federal employees would behave indistinguishably. That's impractical, but we can do a lot better than the status quo.
  - XorNot 3y ago
    These would be the only people with movement patterns like that. They wouldn't blend at all: they'd stick out like a sore thumb on any type of large scale statistical analysis as anomalies. "being really secret" doesn't work because the attempt to do so means you're doing a whole lot of stuff that no ordinary person does. That's a statistical anomaly - that's easy to find. And again: all this information is public. It would be widely and well known that this is what is done, so what to look for would be well advertised. The locations of these buildings would then be well known. And since you've now added multiple intervening steps, nailing down who's going where is also easier - i.e. if someone drives into a known parking structure at time X, then you can draw a circle around that which is the mean transport time to get to any interesting federal buildings in the area before the work day starts. Map this across a few months and you'll pin down exactly which one they work at (I mean, you wouldn't bother if you were a foreign government though - a couple days worth of casual surveillance work would also grab every number plate and face you can see). This is quite aside from the why of doing this: it would be a huge pain in the ass for the employees, who are not paid nearly enough to bother with it and become a hiring problem, for...what gain?

Jtsummers 3y ago

Employees are generally allowed to bring phones into federal buildings. There are areas within the buildings they may not be able to take them to, and there are some buildings with a total ban. In that case, though, the phones would still be left somewhere nearby, like the parking lot.

schaefer 3y ago

There are buildings that do not allow cell phones. For these buildings, it's common to leave your phone in your car. So... still close enough?

AndrewKemendo 3y ago
Yes, close enough.

voxic11 3y ago

Even if not allowed in the building people will still want to carry a personal phone so it likely just stays in their car right outside the building in the parking lot.

mandevil 3y ago

When we had to go into SCIFs, generally phones went into lockers. At some locations, phones stayed in cars. But that doesn't make it any harder to figure out. But this isn't the first time people are encountering this problem. Strava has given away plenty of US military bases: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/28/fitness-tracking-app-gives-away-location-of-secret-us-army-bases https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/28/fitness-tracki... Russia has the same problem, VKontakte has given away plenty of secret Russian military bases and troop positions over the past few decades. I've never read of this on Weibo or WeChat, but my guess is they have the same problem, just English language open source accounts are keeping it more discrete for now. The WashPost about a week ago had an article about how at a recent NTC rotation out at Fort Irwin the OPFOR was trying to figure out how an Apache had gotten past their air defenses, so they looked up commercial cell phone tracking data and were able to spot how a phone had gone across the desert at 120 mph and plug the hole in their air defenses.[1] Adtech on the cell phone we all carry in our pocket is better at surveillance than the best tools a military has. And it's one of those things where not being part of the surveillance can make you stand out too. Think about a spy operating under a real cover, how long is their Facebook (or Weibo or VK or TikTok or whatever is appropriate for the person they are trying to be) account history? If you found someone claiming to be a 45 year old woman living in an American suburb and she had a Facebook account that was three months old, wouldn't you investigate further? 1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/02/22/ukraine-war-pentagon-lessons-learned/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/02/22/...

nradov 3y ago
Supposedly a Ukrainian agent was able to assassinate a Russian military officer by tracking his regular running route on Strava. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66162502 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66162502 Strava actually has extensive privacy controls that work well. Users can keep activities private by default and hide their tracks near sensitive locations. But of course if you don't use the privacy control and make everything public then obviously everyone can see exactly where you were.
- HenryBemis 3y ago
  It brought this to mind: Fitness tracking app Strava gives away location of secret US army bases https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/28/fitness-tracking-app-gives-away-location-of-secret-us-army-bases https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/28/fitness-tracki...
  - pests 3y ago
    This was linked in the GP comment.
- baybal2 3y ago
  [dead]
Aerbil313 3y ago
This is a scary thought. Not because I think I'm worthy of being targeted, but because I think in the future there'll be enough compute and incentives to automatically scan everyone for out-of-the-ordinary behavior via neural models.
- CatWChainsaw 3y ago
  The killer drones will remind you of what ordinary behavior is so you aren't tempted to deviate.
ok_dad 3y ago

nova22033 3y ago

Personal phones, not government phones. Bringing your personal phone to Langley and leaving it in your car doesn't do much.

XorNot 3y ago

Whether they take it into the building or not is irrelevant. If they drive nearby and leave it in the car, you can find them. If they drive nearby and turn it off then, you can find them (improve it by bracketing by the average 9-5 workday, add correlation of world events to late-night anomalies - i.e. the Washington pizza index[1]). If they leave their phone at home and switch it off, then you can still find them by that data. If they leave their phone at home, switched on, then this also applies - you filter by public holidays. The key is that the "phone policy" is effectively public information - so you don't have to guess, you can just go find out what it is to set your search parameters. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/pizza121998.htm https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clint...

kyboren 3y ago
Absolutely. Here's my proposal: - Prohibit all Federal employees from bringing a personal cellular radio to work. - Build many parking structures for DC Federal employees across the region. - Assign each employee a particular parking structure, ideally selected at random. - Ensure each parking structure is served by public transportation infrastructure, dedicated shuttles, and a USGOV-run black car service to bring people to their workplace, potentially via an extra obfuscating hop to a different parking structure. In an ideal world, all Federal employees would behave indistinguishably. That's impractical, but we can do a lot better than the status quo.
- XorNot 3y ago
  These would be the only people with movement patterns like that. They wouldn't blend at all: they'd stick out like a sore thumb on any type of large scale statistical analysis as anomalies. "being really secret" doesn't work because the attempt to do so means you're doing a whole lot of stuff that no ordinary person does. That's a statistical anomaly - that's easy to find. And again: all this information is public. It would be widely and well known that this is what is done, so what to look for would be well advertised. The locations of these buildings would then be well known. And since you've now added multiple intervening steps, nailing down who's going where is also easier - i.e. if someone drives into a known parking structure at time X, then you can draw a circle around that which is the mean transport time to get to any interesting federal buildings in the area before the work day starts. Map this across a few months and you'll pin down exactly which one they work at (I mean, you wouldn't bother if you were a foreign government though - a couple days worth of casual surveillance work would also grab every number plate and face you can see). This is quite aside from the why of doing this: it would be a huge pain in the ass for the employees, who are not paid nearly enough to bother with it and become a hiring problem, for...what gain?