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Comment by mdhb | Hacker News Reader

What on earth are you talking about… that is not even a little bit true. I think you’re over complicating this in your head quite a bit.

Here’s something [1] that’s was public almost 20 years ago at this point. Things have advanced a lot since then. I don’t think you quite understand just how much of a pipeline there was for this kind of technology that went almost directly from quite classified SIGINT stuff in the GWOT to casual LEO / domestic stuff.

I know the whole no phone thing sounds like a real high speed operator move but it’s very literally a signal they go looking for when trying to sift through large amounts of data.

[1] https://www.pnnl.gov/main/publications/external/technical_re...

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They can detect the presence of phones, yes. But that doesn’t automatically mean being able to detect people that aren’t carrying phones. To do that, you’d need to integrate the phone detection data with some other source of data on people present in the area in question. I’m saying there’s no evidence of such a system actually being used in practice. The paper you linked doesn’t address that at all.

Btw, to help understand the technical challenges involved with this, the whole reason Tesla focused on vision-only for its self-driving was the difficulty of integrating sensor data from multiple sources, e.g. lidar + vision would be significantly more difficult to achieve. It’s not that this isn’t possible in theory - it’s just that there’s no evidence of anyone having done it for “lack of phone” detection, and that’s probably because it’s not really a requirement that’s in high demand.

I’m not looking to argue with you here. You can take the advice or leave it but I will leave you with one quick tale to say that around the late 90s / early 2000s employees at GCHQ used to have a rule that when they were on their way to work they had to turn off their phones when they were I forget exactly how far but something like 30km of arriving to work.

They realised that technology had changed for them even that long ago that all it was doing was just making a really clear signal for the opposition as to who they were and that they were someone interesting.

I think the advice you have is very literally decades out of date.

If you have an hour or two to kill I’d recommend taking a look at this for a real no bullshit modern way of thinking about this problem space: https://youtu.be/0_04-lTu2wg?feature=shared

In a tightly targeted situation like entering the GCHQ building, sure. Because it’s essentially a target-poor environment with a known point of interest that possible targets are visiting. Those constraints make the problem much simpler.

But the OP article is about a Stingray operation covering 30 blocks, and other discussion in this thread is about protests such as the anti-ICE protest which gathered cellphone info from the protestors. In those kinds of environments, if you don’t want to show up on surveillance, you’re much better off not carrying a phone.

Being more specific, this comment of yours is not supported by evidence:

> No phone actually stands out a lot in real life surveillance systems and will very quickly get you a bunch of additional attention because it’s so unusual.

But, if you’re getting your information from videos like the one you linked, I can see why you have these beliefs.

It’s very clear that you just started thinking about this topic in the last hour but for some reason you’ve got a real unearned confidence in what you’re saying.

I have very good reasons to know what I’m talking about here but again, I’m not here to argue with you.

>I have very good reasons to know what I’m talking about here but again, I’m not here to argue with you.

You are exactly right!

Because the gub'mint can track the nasal implant inserted when I was anally probed by the aliens!

You're making a ridiculous claim that makes exactly zero sense.

If folks are tracking cell phones, they can track yours just as well as everyone else's. Which means they can identify you.

If you don't have a pocket surveillance device on you, unless you're broadcasting RF waves with your (tiny) penis, you cannot be tracked via radio/cell. Full stop.

You not having a phone is absolutely not a meaningful barrier towards identifying you in a crowd when things like ClearView exist. It will only make you stand out as someone who’s trying not to be known and get you towards the top of the list of people they are now interested in.

Your chance of even being able to move from your home to a protest and back completely anonymously is close to zero without you standing out very quickly. Honestly, do what you want but I’m telling you with a great deal of certainty that the only thing you’re are doing in reality is inviting a greater deal of scrutiny and your security situation is actually worse as a result of it.

I've been following your responses in this thread. I do agree with you but you make it seem that it's almost impossible to blend in now. Based on this, wouldn't it be almost impossible for intelligence agencies to develop human sources in modern countries? They could just trace the case officer back to their home base or just classify them as a spy based on other patterns? Doesn't this mean that human intelligence is practically dead in 1st world countries?

No not at all, it is done completely differently though.

Before when I was talking about the needle in a haystack problem which is the biggest weakness of the modern big data era.

So to give a really concrete example imagine you need to meet a source clandestinely in the past it’s lots of sneaking around doing surveillance detection routes and meeting in hotel rooms and things like that. Those days are completely dead. You stand out immediately.

Instead you’re looking to have very normal and plausible reasons to be in the same space together while remaining in a large crowd and not having contact usually outside of that.

So imagine you and I both get season tickets to the local sports team and we go there to watch a game just as regular fans and we find a way to communicate in that crowd.

Even the best data analysis / ML algorithms are only ever going to see two people going to a sports match every few weeks. There’s nothing interesting about either one of them that stands out.

It’s just a very different way of doing business basically but hopefully that’s an illustrative example to show you what I mean.

> track the nasal implant inserted when I was anally probed

That's a reach. Literally.

Those were separate insertions done in parallel.

The aliens are very efficient!

The trust me bro argument is always a convincing one.

Perhaps if I read you my last comment in a voice lowered a few octaves like in that video, you’d believe me.

fwiw, that video does describe a threat model for more casual individuals, but does describe some overall good protections mentioned elsewhere (e.g. lockdown mode). the guest also does tacitly admit that the government is much more like the eye of Sauron, and is a wholly different beast.

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