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This is exactly the sort of thing that leads to people getting reincarcerated after their electronic monitoring devices mistakenly report them leaving their hom

• cromka 1mo ago
  Sounds like you could be a convict, have your gang interfere GPS on a local level but enough to have other people in the neighborhood notice, make a quick run for whatever you'd need to, and still claim plausible deniability.
  • john01dav 1mo ago
    Or you could cause such localized things more so to try to get a person sent back to prison or otherwise penalized intentionally
    • cromka 1mo ago
      Also true.
• dataflow 1mo ago
  > This As in, GPS being off by 33 feet? > leads to people getting reincarcerated I'm reading your article and it seems to be about police coming to check and realizing that the reporting of being miles away was in error, not people getting reincarcerted because of GPS incorrectly reporting they moved ~30 feet too far? One of these is much more insane than the other.
  • chaps 1mo ago
    Not sure where your confusion is coming from. Have you never used GPS in a place with bad signal? Where it gets confused and you miss your turn? It's the same failure mode. Just the repercussions are getting arrested instead of getting off on the wrong exit. Also wrote this one, hopefully it helps your confusion: https://chicagoreader.com/news/false-alarms/ https://chicagoreader.com/news/false-alarms/
    • dataflow 1mo ago
      You're claiming that erroneously reported movements by ~33 ft lead to incarceration, yet the article you're linking to reports that erroneously reported movements by ~1mi+ lead to police coming to double-check what's going on. Am I incorrect and do you therefore have examples of ~30ft errors actually leading to their incarceration, or are you struggling to see the disconnect between what you're claiming vs. what is actually happening?
      • deleted 1mo ago
        [deleted]
      • chaps 1mo ago
        If someone's home is 30' by 30' feet, yes, that person's device will report them having left their home and they'll get a visit if GPS suddenly shifts 30 feet to the left. I'm talking about the class of problem. It happens in normal weather conditions and things like this exacerbate the problem. Really not sure what the hostility's about.
        • saaaaaam 1mo ago
          As a neutral participant I think “the hostility” is probably because of your condescending tone when you said “hopefully it helps your confusion”. Your initial article really didn’t say anything about people being re-incarcerated for these sorts of errors. I really want to say “maybe you got CONFUSED and posted the wrong one!” but that would be snotty and condescending too. But maybe you posted the wrong one to begin with. Let’s all be friends and nice to each other.
          • chaps 1mo ago
            That's totally fair, I shouldn't have said it like that!
            • hypfer 29d ago
              You seem to care a lot about these issues, and probably have real face-to-face experience with the victims of that. Problem is though that this feeling type of empathy makes you not the best advocate for them - as you can see here, where (on a platform with worse rules than HN) a flamewar would've broken out over not everyone being as emotionally involved. We definitely need people like you, but we also need people like you to not be everywhere and scare/annoy people into not caring. Though, I also agree that scaring/annoying _into_ caring is also often required. Idk. Activism is weird and hard and all.
  • iamshs 1mo ago
    The story is about GPS errors which end up making life hell for people under monitoring since they end up generating a Police response. If 80% alerts were false, then an error like this can result in a surge of these alerts. It is an important story to tell.
    • zamadatix 1mo ago
      The monitoring device story seems important to tell but the problem seems to be related to monitoring devices, which are supposed to be accurate to 30 meters 90% of the time, being miles off or even reporting the wrong state. That kind of systematic failure does not make a few meters of displacement any more relevant. Saying so really makes it sound like the problem is something significantly less egregious than the devices being incomprehensibly inaccurate - as if we have to solve space weather prediction to a new level of science to not have them report someone in Chicagoland as being in Delaware.
    • deleted 29d ago
      [deleted]
    • hypfer 29d ago
      [flagged]
      • saltwatercowboy 29d ago
        They're already being punished. I don't agree with being punitive to make observers feel good. It's an error. What else do you need?
      • inigyou 29d ago
        [dead]
  • leptons 1mo ago
    >This You're cherry-picking a single word to start a pointless internet argument? Calm down. Nobody claimed this exact event lead to problems for anyone. This is what OP actually said: >>This is exactly the sort of thing Yes, this absolutely is the sort of thing. No, 33 feet isn't "the thing" but GPS glitching is the sort of thing at a different increment.
    • altmanaltman 1mo ago
      Okay but the claim is people are being re-arrested because of this "sort of thing". But I read the linked article, and it doesn't mention anyone getting re-arrested. There is only one situation described where the person is arrested and then let go after the cops got proof the alert was faulty. So yes, it absolutely sucks that this technology is so inconvenient and bad but at the same time, the author and GP claims are not proved or truthful in totality (even in the article they posted). We can agree GPS tracking sucks but also question claims that are not true. Also telling people to "calm down" over text when they are not even talking to you is very passive aggresive for no reason.
      • chabska 1mo ago
        Consider that, from the justice system's point of view, there's no distinction between between someone breaking house arrest for a drug fix versus due to GPS error. They don't have the resource to investigate every single violation, so they always just assume that the device is infallible and that the human is lying. That's why there's no data for someone getting rearrested due to GPS, and why the few instances where someone do prove an error is concerning.
      • leptons 29d ago
        >Also telling people to "calm down" over text when they are not even talking to you is very passive aggresive for no reason. Your "This" quote was the least genuine comment I've seen on HN in a very long time. You took a comment and removed all context to complain about how it's wrong, when it wasn't wrong at all. There should be no doubt that GPS glitches can cause people with ankle monitors a lot of needless trouble, and "the system" likely won't believe it, and simply won't care. If you had an ankle monitor, and someone wanted to fuck with you, it would be trivially easy to block or spoof GPS signals to put you back in jail. All it takes is an SDR and some software you can find on github. Think about that before you quip "This" again. This time the glitch was 33 feet, who's to say next time it couldn't be 3300 feet?
  • skywhopper 29d ago
    It’s the same category of error, is the point he was making. Relax a bit.
    • deleted 29d ago
      [deleted]
• Aurornis 1mo ago
  Geofence monitors have buffer zones because a small GPS on someone’s ankle inside a house, potentially a high rise, isn’t going to be that precise. 33 feet is well within the allowances IIRC. Varies by state.
  • chaps 1mo ago
    That might be true for a place in the middle of nowhere with no features, the same device model managed by the same company and the same call center person and same sheriff and judges and prosecutor. But with GPS in an urban environment where many homes are over 100 years built from many different materials, 33 feet is a lot.
    • Aurornis 1mo ago
      Urban environments have larger buffer areas due to multipath interference. The story you linked has examples about false alerts triggering in a different state. Do you have any actual examples of 33 feet getting someone arrested? I’ve worked enough with GPS that I could tell you that any system with thresholds that low would result in everyone getting false triggers
      • chaps 1mo ago
        Yes, everyone on the devices received false alarms. It's why there was a call center that managed the false alarm flows. I highly suggest you read the articles I've shared. I fought tooth and nail to get access to the data showing how often devices reported "invalid" status (where the device's specs said it was something like, within 150 feet of inaccuracy it reported "invalid"). They initially told me they couldn't get me that data because it'd crash their database running that query. Basically threatened to sue them and over the next 6mo or so I got two 100GB MSSQL dumps. Hundreds of millions of rows of devices reporting back that their GPS signal was invalid. It would take a lot of time to make it sharable because they included the actual GPS location infos.
  • qlte 1mo ago
    According to this firm selling them, this model has <15ft error, usually 3-4 ft. Given the permissible area is entirely up to what the judge orders, it seems eminently plausible that someone confined to their apartment could be placed outside with a 33ft jump causing a false alarm. At the very least, it's not enough evidence provided to claim the scenario is inherently impossible based on undefined "allowances" without any actual numbers for something completely dependent on the jurisdiction, monitoring software implementation, and attitude of the police officer/judge. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/o0sPXL9C53g https://www.youtube.com/shorts/o0sPXL9C53g I also found Reddit anecdotes of getting alert texts stepping outside onto the street from their yard, or false alarms while still inside but not enough details were provided to be sure they were actually GPS and not RF so not as helpful.
• userbinator 1mo ago
  I misread that as "people getting reincarnated" and was momentarily very confused.
  • wetoastfood 1mo ago
    Probably more beneficial than "people getting reincinerated" which is how I almost read it but thought that couldn't possibly be it.
• fleroviumna 29d ago
  [dead]
• amelius 29d ago
  I mean, you had the chance to leave the house, compensating for the GPS error. Why didn't you take that chance?
• fhn 29d ago
  There's always someone who roots for the criminals
  • qingcharles 29d ago
    It's mostly pretrial detention on GPS, so unconvicted.