Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones
insidenova.com
insidenova.com
The problem here is the judges granting the warrants.
Judges in Virginia are chosen by legislatures [1], which means they're accountable to political establishment who in turn have good political cover from being responsible for judicial actions.
Judicial oversight and judicial elections are needed.
These aren’t a panacea.
I’ve helped get judges elected in Manhattan. The primaries swung by tens of votes in some cases, usually no more than a few hundred. A few clubs, or one large tenant association, could decide the vote. (Counterfactual: judicial elections attract disproportionately-informed voters if they happen off cycle and without party affiliations, which in the context of primaries, applies.)
This generally means very-police-friendly judges that will issue warrants without any cause, and will deny any attempts to later fight the illegality. These judges then move up to the appeals courts and support the same policies by the friends they left behind in the lower courts.
Warrants to get a third party to take actions to make your devices do things that can be logged is another.
There is, at the very least, a very significant difference between the two cases. Whether we can all agree to pretend that there is non is certainly a political question.
Even if it isn’t that bad now, and a warrant is absolutely required without proving the case in court, a warrant could still obtain historical data. So the end result is the same. We are being tracked all of the time and it is stored and sold, sometimes illegally.
Finally, consider the pratice of parallel construction in law enforcement and how easily this entire process can take away your basic constitutional rights.
Good luck proving any of this by the way. Gaslighting is becoming the norm when rights are violated.
If you think judicial elections will produce less authoritarian judges, you probably fail to realize that most of the people who care deeply about electing judges are a tough-on-crime light-on-civics bloc.
On the flip side, if you want to commit major felonies, don’t take your phone!
Doesn’t the crime they were pursuing, dealing heroin in connection with an overdose, rise to that level? (No comment on the merits of the law. Just the facts of the investigation.)
That's not how it works. Sometimes the police suspect people who are innocent, and they work hard to get them on technicalities if need be, and meanwhile, the risk of inadvertently and unintentionally committing obscure crimes is substantially higher than zero, so...
And to add to that, a lot of jurisdictions have cracked down massively on forfeitures (technical term: civil in rem forfeiture) because of how badly abused the system has been in the past by prosecutors and police departments.
It works with big providers albeit I feel like this parlour trick becomes tougher if your target is using a resell carrier like mint or cricket.
And if you run your own cellular service using OpenBSC you can try it out...
> RRLP is not just a theoretical feature specified in the GSM/3GPP specs. It is implemented by numerous high-end smartphones. There is no authentication of the network. There is no notification of the user. There is no way for the user to disable this [mis]feature.
> Impact: Public debate about this feature is needed. Operators probably need to consider working on some terms about how they use this feature in their privacy policy.
https://web.archive.org/web/20160106074623/http://openbsc.os...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_9-1-1#Wireless_locati...
In any case, I would like my device to report whenever the network does something unusual, like request my location or put in a no-ring call. I wonder if you can make a pinephone or Android do that.
Edit: I am specifically referring to the e911 ability to without owner interaction or knowledge send GPS coordinates, not to network-side triangulation, or even to sending GPS coordinates when the owner initiates a 911 call.
E911 can also use triangulation which is isn’t “in” your phone anyway. It’s possible with any type of radio transmission due to plain old physics.
(As others have noted there may be some confusion here between GPS data and cell tower triangulation.)
Reader can get the digits by simply copying them underneath.
How can someone miss this?
Next, some manner of heightened threshold for more than N consecutive tracking requests or M requests in a twelve-month period. Maybe probable cause? This will be harder, politically, particularly in a law & order cycle. (Maybe it could be accomplished through rulemaking at the FCC.)
I like the idea of motivating cell companies to be less of a pushover, but reducing cost does _directly_ reduce the disincentive to the police to make these requests.
> Next, some manner of heightened threshold for more than N consecutive tracking requests or M requests in a twelve-month period. Maybe probable cause?
These requests already have a warrant, so meet probable cause.
That seems like way too low of a bar.
The bar/basis to successfully receive a search warrant is hilaribad. It's pretty close to a rubber stamp. The courts just believe whatever crap the cops spew out.
Interpreted precisely, this sentence doesn't rule out the possibility that they use unlawful tools too.
But it also is just a statement about something else.
Edit: not sure the reason for the downvotes, this fact is useful context and first-hand
The lesser of either 20 over the speed limit or any speed over ~80~ 85 miles an hour (thanks jmisavage) in Virginia is a misdemeanor, and at least one auto journalist has been jailed in Virginia. https://jalopnik.com/never-speed-in-virginia-lessons-from-my...
It's also the only state to prohibit radar detectors.
Affluence also factors in significantly both on a community level and personal level.
Driving 80mph through a small town with significant environmental debris on the roads where everyone is driving trucks from the 60s? That should be a felony.
Driving 80mph on a clean, straight highway where everyone is driving a relatively modern car? There should be _no problem_.
Separately, IMO, vehicle should factor in at the judgement level of law enforcement. My car can stop from 60mph in <100ft, will pull >1g on skidpad, has a full bevvy of features to alert me of surrounding conditions and will intervene in certain dangerous scenarios. The idea that such a vehicle should be equally treated as a 1992 unmaintained civic is ridiculous. Yes, the laws should be consistent in a given area, but the application of those laws should be just not blindly applied. There's clearly a boundary to be crossed, but my car going 10mph over is SIGNIFICANTLY less dangerous to the public than that hoopty going the speed limit.
My one hope for self driving vehicles is that it normalizes efficient traffic flow.
To the driving public, specifically. Pedestrians and cyclists will still be goop on your windshield 50 feet into your 100 foot braking.
(There is no such thing as a road where people "don't want" to go fast, because "fast" is disjointed in meaning: there's the legal speed that drivers regularly and unsafely exceed, and there's the "fast" speed at which drivers perceive how unsafe they're being.)
1. Expressways, where pedestrians and cyclists are not allowed. They are walled off with specific entrances and exits.
2. Country highways, where pedestrians and cyclists are nearly unheard of, and are typically very easy to spot from a distance and adjust accordingly.
There is a third area where these speeds are sometimes reached in urban areas that Strong Towns calls "stroads", and these have a whole host of problems. Going 10mph over the speed limit in these areas probably doesn't make a huge difference, because the are already so pedestrian and cyclist unfriendly to begin with. Not Just Bikes has a great video about them here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORzNZUeUHAM
Edit: The upstream thread even has an article where the author describes doing 93 on a 55 backroad in VA and subsequently getting arrested[1].
[1]: https://jalopnik.com/never-speed-in-virginia-lessons-from-my...
The comment that this thread branched off of is about the relative difference in danger of 10mph with a modern vehicle, not 20, 30, or 40mph. I don't think I agree with that user's overall point, but I also didn't think your response to it was particularly on point either.
I think our transportation infrastructure needs a massive overhaul to be more pedestrian, bike, and even motor-vehicle friendly, but I think speeds limits are such a poor answer to that problem that arguing about +10mph is merely a distraction.
An old pickup trick will still be going 35mph at 100ft. I will be completely stopped.
The severity of injury at 80ft for the two is quite different as well.
Of course... I'd never be driving at 60mph if there was a chance of pedestrians. However, the 30-0 difference is even more staggering between older mass market vehicles and modern sportscars.
There should be punishments for exceeding reasonable limits. There should not be punishments for "these speeds" as they exist in Virgina compared to another location. Heck, even just across virginia it doesn't make sense to have a single set of speed limits.
So it doesn't really seem like Virginia's insanely restricting laws are actually helping.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/fatal-car-a...
(Full disclosure: have never driven in the USA), but without wishing to sound like a know-all, how about sticking to the speed limit?
I've been dinged exactly twice for speeding since getting my licence almost exactly 30 years ago this month. No points in either case. It's not hard, honest. My wife might disagree, but her licence, her problem :)
The only improvement would be that the car always knew the speed limit for any stretch of road.
Others use a speed limit database and GPS/accelerometer system to establish the speed limit.
When I get adaptive cruise control--presumably when I eventually get a new car--I may well change my tune.
Mercedes have had this feature as an option for many years.
Not to be a know-all but why not stick to the speed limit?
You'll get 18-wheelers harassing you, even if you stick to the slow lane and don't mind paying extra attention to the on-ramps every mile. And those semi trucks almost never get pulled over; their job is hard enough.
Where I live (Aotearoa) trucks do not act like that. They are heavily policed and drive to the speed limit.
It is very common to see a truck stopped on the side of the road with a police officer checking it.
Good
Remove speed limits on the highways and you have a deal sir.
Because the speed limit in much of the US is below the “natural” speed of that roadway. We have highways where 80+mph is the norm, but the posted limited can be anywhere from 55-70mph (I-95 along the east coast). Driving the speed limit actually becomes dangerous. At this point, speed enforcement becomes a hit-or-miss affair, where you’re at the mercy of the police officer. Better hope he’s having a good day and you don’t “look suspicious”, etc. Making it even worse, that same interstate (I-95) has the limit vary from 55-70 depending on state/town - the highway itself didn’t change, just the jurisdiction. And yes, the states with the lower limits are notorious for ticketing out-of-state drivers.
And that’s just the highway. Secondary roads through small towns are just a racket. https://www.newsweek.com/police-chief-quits-after-report-rev...
In some places, you may be able to use the lack of an up-to-date speed study as a defense against a speeding charge.
The fact is that there are plenty of laws we somewhat violate on a daily basis. This has its own set of problems but it's the way things are essentially everywhere.
We have speed limits because trusting people to "go a safe speed" doesn't work, in general.
It's based on both safety and perceived safety, and it's not perfect, but it works out pretty well.
If the road is designed properly it's the top few percentile that you need to restrain, not the masses.
If you make a super wide straight shot of asphalt down a residential neighborhood, and people go too fast, that's the road designer's fault.
And how do you propose to "restrain" them, if not by enforcing a speed limit?
I was objecting to the idea that there is no natural speed, and that the group will "just escalate". Nothing else.
I-495 in VA is a prime example. It’s posted at 55mph and traffic regularly flows faster (or slower, during rush hour). It really needs variable limits based on traffic volume instead of a dumb 55.
> If you replace speed limits with "go a safe speed"...
sounded to me like a suggestion that speed limits could be abolished in favour of a "use your judgement" rule, which I don't think is a sensible idea.
Most times you’re on a road and traffic is flowing significantly faster than the posted limit, either the limit is wrong or the road is poorly designed and not fit for purpose. And that happens a lot in the US.
Speed limits are supposed to be set to the 85th percentile of natural flow speed for the road.
The very few people racing on public streets are well above the 85th percentile, so that's a straw man argument.
Edit, some links: https://beyondtheautomobile.com/2021/02/08/what-is-design-sp...
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2021/8/6/the-key-to-slow...
Usually, when people talk about the topic, they’re trying to calm local traffic. But the concept applies to highways where speed limits can be pretty arbitrary. Plenty of interstate where 80+mph feels safe, but is posted at 55 or 65.
You'd be wrong. If you remove all speed limits and all enforcement, people won't be driving 180mph on small roads.
Turns out for the vast majority of the drivers, a combination of awareness and experience will lead them to correctly judge a highest actually safe speed and they'll just drive that and no more.
This is codified in the rules that state that speed limits are supposed to be set to 85th percentile of natural traffic flow, not lower. That way for nearly everyone on the road the speed limit will make sense and not be oppressively low (laws are supposed to make sense, not just be arbitrary enforcement).
That's the rule on paper. Of course, if the speed limit matches the natural speed, it means hardly anyone will ever be speeding, which cuts the revenue source of speeding tickets. So jurisdictions play all kinds of games to set the posted speed limit far below the 85th percentile, which increases ticket revenue.
I've lived in VA for decades and have driven all over the state. There is no highway where driving the speed limit is actually dangerous and there certainly isn't a highway where the norm is 20 over.
That's only true if you're oblivious to other traffic to the point of being dangerous to said traffic.
I used to zip down I95 in my personal car, get in a commercial vehicle and then proceed to get in a commercial vehicle and be a rolling obstruction at 55-60. The latter was way less safe than just being another ant in line like I was in my personal vehicle.
Sure, if someone clipped me while I was driving the truck it would have been their fault but I was though my actions still creating a bunch of unnecessary danger. There was a constant stream of people having to merge to go around me. It was all the problems you get at an on-ramp with merging traffic. I will cut some slack to heavily laden vehicles, big slow trucks and shitboxes that can't maintain traffic speed. But some self-righteous jerk in his Camry or whatever has no excuse.
>There is no highway where driving the speed limit is actually dangerous and there certainly isn't a highway where the norm is 20 over.
I95, literally every weekday morning and evening just before and just after rush hour clogs things up. Sign says 55. Most traffic goes 75+/-5 with the occasional fast and slow vehicles well above/below that speed.
Australia on the other hand is very strikt about speed limits and even being 10% over can be a significant fine, so people gereally adhere much closer to the limits. Having to stick to the limit is actually liberating, I just stopped trying find some extra time by e. g. overtaking yet another car, and instead my driving experience is much more relaxed, I just put on cruise control and that's it. I seriously encourage you to think if you really need to be speeding, because the time you save is miniscule, while the driving is significantly more stressful.
I have zero sympathy for this. If you're doing 20 mph over the limit, you shouldn't be driving, whether it comes from taking away you car, or from putting you in a cage for a few weeks.
Either build better humans, better automobiles, or slow down.
Perhaps you are in Europe, where speed limits are generally just the natural speed for the roads they're posted on, and the roads are designed for natural speeds that are appropriate for their uses. Lucky you, if so. Here in the U.S., speed limits are set to give police probable cause to stop anyone, any time.
What are you talking about? With the exception of Germany all countries in Europe have maximum speed limits and I have no idea what you mean by natural speeds. Sweden which has highways that are in better condition than pretty much all US roads I've driven on has a maximum speed of 110 km/h (as has Australia btw) , Spain has 120 km/h, France 130 km/h. All lower than the US 85 miles/h.
I'm actually not aware of any roads without a specific lane separator (like highways) that have speed limits above 100km/h in Europe (I certainly could be wrong though).
Everything else is 80 (~130 km/h, actually a little slower) or less, and even 80 only applies to western roads with pretty much nothing around. But if you drive in the parts of the US where most people live, you're looking at 70 (a bit over 110), or 65 (~105) in rural areas. But those 105-112 km/h limit roads are in most states, even when the European example would suggest that 75 (which is almost exactly 120 km/h) would be far more appropriate.
One time I was driving on the NJ turnpike, passing a car at about 100mph, and far behind me, on my rearview mirror, I saw cars gaining rapidly on me and flashing their highbeams almost desperately. I barely managed to get in the right lane ahead of the car I was passing, and those cars that had been far behind passed me at what must have been 150mph. They were all beemers and such. Now, I wouldn't do that, but apparently that was a common sight at the time -- young drivers driving rich New Yorkers cars between NY and FL when their owners were flying to FL to spend the winter or back to NY for the summer. I've driven on quite a few highways in the U.S. where 80mph wasn't breaking a sweat and where I believe 100mph would have been perfectly safe weather and traffic allowing. I'm quite certain that our highways are simply designed for much higher speeds than posted.
Which is arguably outside of the state’s jurisdiction. Only the FCC has the authority to regulate the airwaves and specifically transmitters and receivers.
I bet that cop’s radar gun has an FCC sticker on it.
The police even have radar detector detectors.
I'm no RF guy, so I'm clueless on this stuff. But my understanding is that SDRs aren't radio receivers in the traditional sense. That's the whole "SD" part of it, the device scoops up everything and FFTs it or something.
A modern radar gun operates in the Ka-band, Google says between 33.4 and 36 GHz. Assuming 12 bit samples, your proposed solution needs to process a minimum 3.9 gigabits per second, or ~500 megabytes per second. To do this work in software would require a workstation.
Not to mention I'm not even sure if you can operate most ADCs above the 1st Nyquist zone like would be needed here.
These days hardware capable of that throughput can be had for less than $500 and draws less than 50W. 3.9 gigabits really isn't all that much by modern standards.
But they are suffering from the chip shortage. I was interested in using it as an X-band and K-band capable SDR receiver, which is a supported use case according to their media. But we'll see when it ships.
There are Radar Detectors that have VG-2 (Radar detector detector) detectors on them.
I haven't heard of a radar detector detector detector detector. Such a thing would be pretty useless for a cop's intent and purposes.
All efficient radio receivers....
It is possible to build radio receivers without such. I built a crystal set as a child that could power an air piece without a battery using only the AM signal.
My friend once got a ticket for going 81mph downhill on highway 81 in the middle of nowhere southwest VA and had to trek out there for a court date.
I don’t ever miss living in Virginia
Most of Virginia has 65 mph as the stated speed limit which usually drops to 55 mph around cities. There are stretches of I-95 and I-81 were the speed limit is 70 mph.
But anyone who drives here knows that the speed limit is generally considered the slowest you should go on the road. Speeding around here is common. And for anyone who lives in Richmond people run red lights all the time even in front of cops. We're all just practicing for the next Mad Max movie.
That said, many things are a class 1 misdemeanor. Usually reckless driving is a fine similar to that of speeding. I've seen judges with stances like "1 day in jail for every mph over X" where X is usually 90,95, or 100. I think the most I've ever heard of was like 3-5 days for 100mph+, and even that was served on weekends.
Well, I heard of one guy who was given 3 months for 76 in a 55 by a very old substitute judge, much to the defendant's, Trooper's, and clerk's shock. The Trooper made it a point talk to the defendant and inform he could talk to the court clerk about the appeal process. The defendant appealed it down to a fine of around $150.
[1]https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/title18.2/chapter1/secti...
Death.
But it will be enforced by the velocity squared proportionality of kinetic energy and chronically underfunded highway maintenance coupled with old highways, not the police.
At over 100, you would have a pretty high chance of spending a weekend in jail.
VA only cares about the money. Individual cops will stop people they see doing stuff that warrants a "that's seriously unsafe, I can't just let that slide" response but the courts just see it as a revenue stream and will gladly let people plead down as long as the total shakedown is about the same. They don't care if a large chunk winds up in the lawyer's pockets because it's a giant revolving door.
Speeding is the normal, definitely. And funny that I have seen traffic flowing faster during rush hour, when everyone is going well over. And then mid day you have someone from out of state passing through slowing everyone else down.
"• Under federal law, the use of radar or laser speed detectors is illegal in all commercial vehicles over 10,000 pounds.
• Radar detectors are illegal to use in any vehicle in the District of Columbia.
• Radar detectors are illegal to use in any vehicle in the state of Virginia.
• Radar detectors are illegal to use in any vehicle while on any military installation."
Should he have been sent to jail for it? I don't think so. But it's remarkable how acceptable that behavior seems to be.
In the realm of ego orientated commenting, this one really stands out.
I do not want to put my life in your unregulated hands. I want you regulated to hell and back when you operate a tonne of steel at thirty metres per second heading in my general direction.
Actually: Can you, especially you warning26, catch a bus?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autobahn
Parts of highway with unrestricted speed are not only possible, they're not particularly dangerous either.
From the speeding journalist's article:
>These roads weren’t anywhere near schools or towns, and have lots of curves and very little traffic.
This is hardly like the Autobahn (except for the schools and towns bit). The parts of the Autobahn with speed restrictions are exactly the parts that are most dangerous, meaning parts with curves, or hilly parts (as you cannot see what's going on on the other site of a hill). The unrestricted parts are basically straight lines. And the Autobahn very much only goes in one direction only (with the other direction physically barricaded off), so oncoming traffic is practically not an issue - except for the rather rare cases of "ghost drivers". You have no pedestrians or cyclists and no wildlife crossings (thanks to barricades); only vehicles which can do at least 60 km/h (~37 mph) are allowed. Trucks and other large vehicles, as well as vehicles with trailers do have speed limits. The Autobahn has a lot fewer crashes and fatalities than rural motorways in Germany, because of that.
As the poster you're responding remarked: "I want you regulated to hell and back when you operate a tonne of steel at thirty metres per second heading in my general direction." That's just not a thing on Autobahn.
The person who was responded to initially also advocated to design "slow roads" instead of having regulations. That's basically the opposite of the Autobahn, which was designed for fast travel. My guess would be that if you designed roads to be slow, a lot of people just wouldn't go slow, but cause crashes. We see that already on roads which just happen to be relatively "slow" without being specifically designed to be that.
Aside from that, German drivers got to have a lot more certified training by law (compared to the US), pass a lot more strict and comprehensive theoretical and practical exam (compare to the US) before getting a license, and cars have to be inspected every two years for road-suitability (including working safety features).
I wouldn't want some reckless driver coming at me on a curvey, rural road at 93 miles per hour, some 35 mph over the limit. Because that's literally what is is: reckless and dangerous, with disregard for anybody else who might be on the road. Jail time, however, seems too harsh, as there was no victim (this time). If I did the same on a German road as the journalist did on that Virginia road, I'd have to pay 600 EUR, have my license suspended for 2 months, and get 2 points in the register. Which I find rather fair and justified.
>I do not want to put my life in your unregulated hands.
It takes an impressive amount of cognitive dissonance to insult him and then drivel about "putting your life in unregulated hands" when the regulation in question is speed limits, a type of regulation to which compliance is low to the point of it almost being comical. If the regulation were something like standards of cleanliness for canned food or something else that's pretty much always adhered to you might have a point but it's not and you don't.
It's not the regulation that's keeping your naive self safe. Your life is pretty much already in unregulated hands because pretty much nobody is minding the regulation. It's that most people are reasonable and drive reasonably that keeps you as safe as you are. People are driving the speeds they drive because those speeds are reasonable to them. They are not whizzing by you at triple digit speeds because those speeds to not feel reasonable to them. It has nearly nothing to do with the number on the sign.
Edit: To be clear, the 45mph sign was not obvious at all. Most cars assumed it it was a 55 or 65 zone, and went at about 70. I drove the road two dozen times before noticing the speed limit dropped so far down. Going 45 on that stretch would have been dangerous.
Anyway, I can imagine a road that should be 75 in some other state being posted at 55, and also for going 15 mph over to be common in that state.
It's like walking along a rail line. When traffic does show up you stay well out of its way.
One state likes speed traps for out of towners, so the speed limit is 55mph (and not enforced) on 1.5 lane gravel country roads, but 35 for four lane divided roads just outside city limits.
The other state decided to upgrade the roads in affluent cities/towns so existing speed limits would be 10-20 mph too low, but then didn't raise speed limits afterwards. So you need to know what the road budget was a few decades ago in order to compute safe speed from the speed limit signs. (Or, just use common sense...)
It was a very specific road near where I grew up. Nice and flat. Looked like you could do any speed you wanted. People routinely did 55. Posted was 30.
Near one end of the road was a tree slowly pushing a tree root underneath the road. This followed into a sharp curve bordered by a second, ancient tree.
The neighborhood lost about one person every 6 months who got complacent driving that road faster than speed limit and then got decapitated when they hit that tree root, their car went airborne, rotated 90°, and the top half of the passenger space intersected the ancient tree down the road.
DOTs get no budget to reshape a bad road and do the best they can to try and keep us from killing ourselves out there.
Funny thing about governments by, for, and of the people.
The group that petitioned most consistently not to reshape the road were the people who lived in that neighborhood. They didn't want their main thoroughfare shut down and they didn't want people driving that road faster.
Eventually, two volunteer firefighters died when a fire truck flipped doing lights-and-sirens down that road. Then the county stepped in, declared eminent domain on the tree, and cut it down to remove the root and reshape the road.
Democracies don't always vote in everyone's best interest. Or plenty of Americans are comfortable with one vehicular death every six months. Many possible explanations.
If an ambulance has to go that way, you'd want that to be able to drive fast.
Also, people can drive poorly on any type of road.
If you care about the time to get to an emergency room, get hospitals closer to people?
People can drive poorly on any road, but they'll do it more if the road guides them to misbehave.
So they could set up some arbitrary obstacles to slow people down prior to the natural contour of the terrain, or, you know, throw up a sign which indicates a safe speed for the upcoming section of highway.
What a hideous person.
Who drives so fast on country roads? Very selfish people who do not care about their own lives let alone the lives of others.
What a good punishment! Much better than a fine. We should use short prison sentences much more for the sorts of crimes rich privileged reprobates like this do.
Then the winging! It seems gaol is not pleasant. Does the writer want sympathy? None from me!
I so wish the officer had impounded the car and left these two people on the side of the road. The officer did not. But still the winging!
Judging by your writing you sound British, IMO speed limits in a lot of Europe are ridiculously low; our highway speeds shown in MPH are often a larger number than your highway speeds shown in KPH.
Here’s an example of a random British B road with a 60mph speed limit: https://goo.gl/maps/2jetrMeoWbuTvShN9
No need to go on the offensive though. "Gaol" is a pretty dead giveaway of Britishness.
Some of the other exceptions, such as motorcycles and hybrids (but not exceptionally efficient cars with conventional gasoline engines) are less rational.
I suppose the way I handle the situation is to not break the law and not treat them like we inherently have an adversarial relationship. From my perspective, having the local community support first responders is a good thing and works very well for us here.
This is rural Texas, btw.
If you needed to make a u-turn while driving on the highway, you could pull into special areas in the median of highways to make those turns. The same places highway patrol often use to sit, wait, and monitor traffic.
Both of those things are illegal in Virginia.
Been that way for at least a decade.
Make things. Let people figure out how to use them. Keep semiconductors neutral.
But I do agree with you about Virginia (from personal experience as well), and there should be a firewall between the police and actual trial judges.
tl;dr: they do delete them, but Verizon said it has a 5 year retention
I know a thing or two about GDPR but it's still complex enough that I don't know what my rights / their obligations are in this case.
The best I could figure, my virtual operator was lying to me about not having my location data 24/7 recorded, but I'd be interested if anyone can tell me more.
For instance, I am on 24/7 GPS/cell tower surveillance because I am poor. The police regularly (3 times this week) come to my home, pull me out onto the street, cuff me up and arrest me because they believe (from the GPS data) that I am not in my home. Then they will have me stand on the street corner in handcuffs until the GPS matches what they see with their eyes.
Those of us who are under constant surveillance for our poverty have taken to installing cameras that record onto the cloud so that we can later prove in court we were where we said we were (not where the GPS thinks we are):
https://news.wttw.com/2022/03/16/designed-reduce-cook-county...
Sampling bias in the extreme.
Also even using these apps you are still on the cell network and there are methods for determining your phone number / IMSI. You wouldn't be immune to this type of tracking.
Oooh, wait until they hear about CCPA... (but anyway, I'm sure the 'secret GPS pings' are just plain-old stealth SMS, and we're all better off not reading TFA in any case)
Actually Virginia has its own data privacy law now, modelled on CCPA.
> I'm sure the 'secret GPS pings' are just plain-old stealth SMS
Worse: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28991641 (depending on the carrier)
And look who takes the cake again this time: "Sprint offered the cheapest prices to report locations back to law enforcement, charging a flat fee of $100 per month."
If there was a US law stating something similar for people connecting connecting to my French site from the US I would just smile and live on. I do not expect the CIA to kidnap me and bring me in front of a US court.
Or it’s just a low-effort CYA move recommended by a lawyer.
This is a possibility though I have usually seen these blocking pages on small, local web sites.
I can't think of any other reason that so many local news sites would be affected, and so few other sites.
It is only an alerting mechanism, nothing avoidance there (as far as I can read of their marketing papers go).
Also, separately, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS#Silent_SMS
This is frightening.
This…has always been the case? It’s a raison d’être for SCOTUS.
RFRA is an Act of Congress. Looking just the quote above, what SCOTUS found isn't a constitutional right but a statutory right, which means the statue can be amended or repealed, for example, and also that the statutory right is limited to whatever the statute says (or SCOTUS read in it). Without reading the rest of the opinion or the Act itself, I am probably justified in imagining that the right doesn't extend to violations of any constitutional rights so much as to violations of constitutional rights relevant to "religious freedom", which is mainly 1st Amendment rights, and maybe some others. I wonder, for example, whether RFRA would protect one's right to refuse a mandatory vaccine for religious reasons -- it might, though I don't have time to go read it (and related case-law) and find out (plus IANAL).
It appears to be a lower standard; reasonable suspicion, perhaps.
> Officers simply have to attest in an affidavit that they have probable cause that the tracking data is “relevant to a crime that is being committed or has been committed.”
The term "reasonable suspicion" doesn't appear in the article at all.
Probable cause for believing the target has information “relevant to a crime” sounds like something else, perhaps even lower than reasonable suspicion.