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Comment by rdtsc | Hacker News Reader

Wonder if someone suspected Feds would do this, they could ask their accomplice to take their phone and walk around with it in a different part of town. They would then have a alibi and be discarded as a potential suspect.

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GPS spoofers already exist, so why not a GPS mirroring app. Keep your phone on, but have it reporting the location of your friend's phone. Or maybe a history based AI synthesis of where you supposedly went. The problem is going to be that you supposedly drove down the 405 but none of the scanners saw your car.

(Edit: That and Google wouldn't agree with T-Mobile on your location. Oh well.)

> The problem is going to be that you supposedly drove down the 405 but none of the scanners saw your car.

Does it have to be your car?

It is interesting how people think in the context of their own lifes, I highly suspect that 13of40 is American, where you can't live a functioning life without a car.

Half the people in New York City don't own a car.

https://www.nycedc.com/blog-entry/new-yorkers-and-their-cars

A rare exception doesn’t change or invalidate the norm.

For the sake of our European friends, I'm perfectly willing to say, "...you supposedly took the metro, but none of the scanners saw your face."

FYI massively scanning and recording faces this way in a public place is not ok in most of Europe. Recording the raw security footage sure, but no deeper processing.

Not even raw security footage, that includes for private individuals.

https://www.dataprotection.ie/en/guidance-landing/guidance-d...

GPS and carrier triangulation will be inconsistent which will be a big red flag, if anyone notices.

Strap your phone to a drone and let it fly around in walking speed so where remote.

... for 20-30 minutes. Plus this requires accomplice, which can already take the phone for a walk (with cap, glasses and generic body-covering clothing to fail facial recognition)

Leave in the backseat of a taxi

Or they could just, you know, leave the phone at home...

Or turn it off.

EDIT: Yes, that creates a data point that police could also search for — "give me all the phones in the vicinity that were turned off and then back on surrounding the incident." Okay, how far away? That would be a massively larger search, geographically, wouldn't it? How far before and after is your window for turning off and back on events?

That's still an additional search. It's also probably got a far worse signal:noise ratio than proximity to the incident — assuming the robbers were dumb enough to have their phones on them (and on) in the first place.

Turning it off could leave a trace: "this phone was turned off 15 minutes before the robbery started, and was turned on 15 minutes after the robbery ended, both events in a location which is 15 minutes by car from the bank".

Leaving it at home, without turning it off, leaves no such trace; it's consistent with "this phone's user simply stayed at home today".

"Let's check their car's infotainment data connection."

"We got 'em!"

You gotta walk/take busses with masks and hats on. Change clothes in a tunnel.

Maybe a good thing that pre-infotainment cars exist? ;)

And public transport, bicycles, roller skates, stolen vehicles and feet.

And after you've robbed the bank, you have huge duffel bags of cash and the cops are after you, you're gunna roller skate away?

Or perhaps just bike away. https://historythings.com/choir-boy-bandit-robbed-26-banks-9...

Google could probably detect atypical usage patterns. If you’re always on your phone and suddenly there is no accelerometer delta then you’re likely not at home with your phone but somewhere away from it.

or it is charging

Is it possible to auto answer a call? In that case you could call the phone and there would be proof not only that you were at home, but that you were having a conversation.

Better to use normal behaviour than unusual. Unless of course you turn your phone off often during x time of the robbery.

But most people don't unless it runs out of battery and rarely when they are at home (people just plug it in when they are home).

Not that this is useful in court but it could point detectives in your direction.

Better to just have the kid play with it all night. And, of course, tell the wife (assuming she's in on it) to watch a lot of Jackie Chan movies on Netflix all night.

Well, who in their right mind would bring a cellphone to a bank robbery? And yes, creating an alibi would be good. But not with a knowing accomplice, because that'd be a vulnerability.

So, one problem here is that the police could look for co-travelers. I.e., two or more people being shown to take the exact same route.

Spies would look for this to see if they are being tailed. If they can see a pattern of people who are co-travelers on their same path, then that’s a pretty bright signal.

It would be more work for the police to look for these kinds of signals in the location data, but not companies like Google.

This was how Paula Broadwell was identified as part of her affair with Gen. Petraeus.

Essentially, they cross referenced list of hotel guests at three different hotels on three different dates and she was the only one at all three.

https://www.businessinsider.com/how-fbi-caught-paula-broadwe...

There are simpler options:

"Employee used crisp packet as 'Faraday cage' to hide his whereabouts during work"

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/11/27/australian-sacke...

It is sure enough? Bank robbery is a major felony, up to 20 years...

Just FYI, you would have to have an exceedingly clever accomplice. They would need to walk around in a part of town where there are no cameras, and preferably very few witnesses. (If someone remembers seeing him alone, or cameras verify he was alone, or God forbid, if one of his buddies sees him and strikes up a conversation, the gig is up.)

Your accomplice would have to take possession of the phone at a comfortable distance from the target bank. (Again, in a place that no one, and no camera can observe the arrival of either party.) And the co-conspirator actually robbing the bank would have to make his/her way to said bank without being observed leaving the phone drop site. (And without being observed traveling in a direction inconsistent with his/her phone's location data.)

All of that is not as easy as it sounds. One traffic camera on a stoplight and they got you, in your car, heading towards the bank, in the opposite direction of your phone. Now your co-conspirator is in trouble too. (Aiding and Abetting at minimum.)

We're creeping towards an age of ubiquitous gaze, and only people who are way smarter than I really know if there's any averting it at this point. I think the only real defense against ubiquitous, 24/7 surveillance right now is to live life in a remarkably unremarkable fashion.

Or they could just leave their phone at home, or at work, where they probably spend most their time.

It's not yet illegal to walk around without phone.

"Show me your papers citizen"

Go hiking?

In addition to your concerns, I don't think there's even anything to be gained by intentionally trying to create a false trail since the warrant only looked for phones in the area of the bank around the time of the robbery. The robbers could just as easily leave their phones at home (or any other place far away from the bank) and they would not be flagged by the reverse location search.

You could also mail your phone via ground. It wouldn't hold up to intense scruitiny because your locations would all coincide with package delivery places but it might help.

So this tactic works best if you're a bank robber that happens to be employed by UPS.

The point is to exclude you from suspicion in the first place, not verify your alibi.

You've got it all back to front. They won't check the CCTV outside the robbery area against non-suspects outside the robbery area.

You're basically saying they'll check the whole of the world that they weren't in Wisconsin.

It's possible (especially if you're in a criminal database) that this might actually paint a bigger target on your back - if a traffic camera caught you going toward the bank and facial recognition picked it up in an automated sweep... then the fact that your phone was broadcasting as being in a different location might be a red flag on it's own.

While humans are doing the piecing together this tactic will probably be pretty decent, but it wouldn't be super hard to marry those datasets after you've seen it happen a time or two.

And now everyone who forgets their phone on their way to work gets flagged.

I’m not even disagreeing with you. It makes me sad, however, that this sort of automated surveillance is mostly accepted by wider society. We will force everyone into a Brave New World styled life, where being entirely unremarkable is the only way to avoid suspicion, no matter how innocuous the behaviour.

I bet hardly anyone travels without their phone on them. Even in a large city...maybe tens or hundreds of people.

You forget all the senior citizens.

Co-conspirator leaves his phone at home, dresses and puts make up on to look like you, takes your phone to a couple of spots with a digital trace of your phone but only low tech cameras, and builds an alibi for you. Their alibi would be being home sick. Could even meld the two stories by buying yourself some DayQuil.

I feel like we're making this far more complicated than it needs to be. Just leave your phone at home and use a 2-way radio for comms.

In that case, you can scan all license plates in an area, and compare with all mobile users in the same area, and investigate all who don’t match.

Obviously don't bring your own car to the robbery! Even just watching Hollywood movies one would know that.

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