Battle Brews Over FBI's Warrantless GPS Tracking 259
fysdt writes "The FBI's use of GPS vehicle tracking devices is becoming a contentious privacy issue in the courts, with the Obama administration seeking Supreme Court approval for its use of the devices without a warrant, and a federal civil rights lawsuit targeting the Justice Department for tracking the movements of an Arab-American student. In the midst of this legal controversy, Threat Level decided to take a look at the inside of one of the devices, with the help of the teardown artists at iFixit."
God damn Republicans (Score:5, Funny)
Damn Republicans passing laws and continuing abuses like this stripping away our rights. . .
Re:God damn Republicans (Score:5, Insightful)
Damn Republicans passing laws and continuing abuses like this stripping away our rights. . .
Yeh, no crap. The difference is, if it WAS a Republican, the media and the left wing would be up in arms...
Now, all we hear are the echos of silences.
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Too bad Flight 93 didn't drill Congress. One set of scumbags taking out the other = win.
That was the original plan, but Al-Qaeda was afraid of getting sued by Tom Clancy [wikipedia.org].
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In seriousness, I think the main reason it didn't happen was more that the passengers on the plane were heroes. Or, that's the most pausible explanaiton to me. :)
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You should learn physics sometimes, and maybe a map.
the crash of flight 93 was spread out over an area of less than a mile. The miles part comes from people using bad maps near a town border.
This was throughly debunked 9.5 years ago. please try again.
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Bah! Don't let facts get in the way of a perfectly good conspiracy theory!
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Thats real classy, because you differ with some folks on policy means they should be killed.
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What do you call it when you advocate the killing of civilian legislators in cold blood?
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Honestly I doubt that most of them are scumbags at all. Not really anymore than the general population. The problem is that to get past the primary you must play to the base which tends to be extreme. Only the real fanatics are willing to go out and beat the bushes and they are the majority that vote in the primary.
And then you have the population as a whole. The majority of people care most about their family. It is human nature after all. So that in large means caring about their job so they provide for
Re:God damn Republicans (Score:4, Insightful)
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A) A SWOOSH.
Oppression, not violation of privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
Violation of privacy is something committed by a party of equal power to yourself. When government commits injustice, the correct term is oppression. We aren't talking about a nosey neighbor peeking out the window at you, or even a dedicated stalker. We are talking about the organization holding the special right to employ coercion against you as their means -- the most dangerous force that could possibly exist. Needless to say, the situation is completely, utterly different.
Re:Oppression, not violation of privacy (Score:5, Interesting)
Be glad you can even do something about it. In the UK all vehicles are tracked all the time by automatic numberplate recognition using images from traffic cameras. They don't have them quite everywhere yet but they are working on that.
It seems that it is easier to get away with oppression if you do it to everyone all the time. The FBI's mistake was to target individuals.
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Be glad you can even do something about it. In the UK all vehicles are tracked all the time by automatic numberplate recognition using images from traffic cameras. They don't have them quite everywhere yet but they are working on that.
Most people don't know this, but Houston's red-light cameras also do that. EMS and Police have live access to the database, and can issue queries along the lines of "Which intersection last observed license plate XXX-YYY?" whenever they wish.
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the most dangerous force that could possibly exist.
You don't know the power of the dark side. ;)
So... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Osama bin Laden
Who??
I Wonder Why They Would Do That (Score:2)
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Re:I Wonder Why They Would Do That (Score:5, Insightful)
It's limitless and they're accountable to nobody.
No, they are always accountable to the people. Except it takes something like Egypt or Libya to get rid of them once they gain so much power. But eventually the people always wake up and shake off the yoke when it bothers them too much. It's a repeated lesson throughout human history
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I'm not sure the Syrians would agree with you at the moment. Libyans neither for that matter. The people can *try* to make the gov't accountable but it's not always possible.
Re:I Wonder Why They Would Do That (Score:5, Insightful)
pesky "due process of law" thing
I was in Pune, India about ten years ago when one police precinct in the city got assigned a new chief inspector. It was the Deccan area, where there's a huge number of colleges and universities.
The newspaper had an interview with the new chief inspector (it was a big deal because she was the first woman in the position) and one of the questions they asked her was what factors complicated policing that precinct. Her answer was "there's a lot of educated people who know their rights."
Re:I Wonder Why They Would Do That (Score:4)
Electronic Counter Measures.... (Score:4, Insightful)
So would it be ok to place a GPS tracker on every police car you find, I bet not and while betting I bet that if you were caught trying to put such a thing on a police car you would get shot.
My advise on this is quite simple, if you find a little black box, an antenna and a battery pack on the underside of your car, call the local police and tell them you found exactly what you found under your car, a bundle with wires coming out of it (the battery pack) a black box attached to it (the GPS receiver) and an antenna and your afraid to touch it. Make certain your insurance is paid up.
Call the local news as well, its a bomb threat for certain but this is an economics game, they can't afford to follow everyone with agents so its cheaper to track everyone of interest and sort it out later, make this cost them as much as possible, PR spin isn't cheap, nor is replacing GPS devices that keep 'falling' off the car (rip the wires, leave parts of it on the car) at some point it becomes cheaper to either follow you with Agents, or stop following you.
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PR spin isn't cheap, nor is replacing GPS devices that keep 'falling' off the car (rip the wires, leave parts of it on the car) at some point it becomes cheaper to either follow you with Agents, or stop following you.
Based on what I read in Wired's breakdown, the devices themselves are pretty cheap. Mostly decade old COTS parts with a little custom assembly. The expense would come, as you say, with the cost of sending Agents out to stick another one to your vehicle.
But certainly if I found one of these under my car my first call would be to the police, describing exactly what it is I'm looking at. It might be a GPS tracker, it might be a bomb. I don't know what it is other than it is black, has antennas, and I hav
Re:Electronic Counter Measures.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Send them on a wild goose chase (Score:5, Funny)
If I found one of these attached to my car I think I'd simply throw it in a box and mail it somewhere. Perhaps to an FBI office on the other side of the country. Let the FBI blindly trace the path it takes through the USPS, UPS, FedEx, etc.
Either that or I'd let a dog run around the neighborhood with it.
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If I found one of these attached to my car I think I'd simply throw it in a box and mail it somewhere. Perhaps to an FBI office on the other side of the country. Let the FBI blindly trace the path it takes through the USPS, UPS, FedEx, etc.
Either that or I'd let a dog run around the neighborhood with it.
If I found one of these on my car - I would put it on hackaday for a bit of reverse engineering fun.
Valuable info (Score:2, Informative)
How long until the FBI starts selling this info? Hell, it works for Google.
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thats what i was thinking (kinda of) we know it transmits.. but question is how well did the FBI do it? is it blind?? can you spoof it.. can you start broadcasting and send false data - maybe start listening and see other cars being tracked? spoof that?
Another fun one is calling the FCC on the Agents.. i really doubt they have a licence for it.. yea sure they won't get find or anything like that but it's just another hassle.. if your bored - i can't thing of anything better than making the FBI waste i
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Government agencies are not beholden to the FCC - that's for us peons. They have the NTIA [doc.gov], which does essentially the same thing as the FCC, but for the federales. In the rest of the world, 433MHz is an ISM band. Here in the US we see importers trying to get the FCC to allow those ISM devices into the US - no thanks! They will crush the Amateur 70cm band.
That frequency is smack-dab in the middle of an Amateur Radio band (secondary allocation), and is also used by the feds for 'radiolocation'. See page 491 o
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If I found one of these attached to my car I think I'd simply throw it in a box and mail it somewhere. Perhaps to an FBI office on the other side of the country. Let the FBI blindly trace the path it takes through the USPS, UPS, FedEx, etc.
Either that or I'd let a dog run around the neighborhood with it.
Keep in mind, the current generation of GPS tracking devices look NOTHING like the model they dissected for FTA. The FBI said so when the device was first found on that poor student's car -- a statement along the lines of "If it was one of our modern units, he never would've found it". The guy who said that probably got a reprimand afterwars, too.
Well (Score:4, Funny)
They said that if I voted Republican, we'd get warrantless wiretapping. I voted Republican, and what do you know, we did!
It's hardly even a joke any more. Obama's just as bad as his opponents, except we also get Obamacare added on top.
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I meant tracking, of course. Though we did get warrantless wiretapping as well.
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May I remind you that you're at war. You should be happy that your house is not under bombardment.
Re:Well (Score:4, Insightful)
We've always been at war with Eastasia
Re:Well (Score:5, Informative)
The second you try to make this a partisan issue is the second you've proven you're drank the kool-aid. Both sides pander to those who give them money, which is everyone with profits on the line who also has enough money to "buy" someone.
Democrat or Republican, same shit, different piles.
Well... there are slight differences, but the end result still tastes crappy.
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"The second you try to make this a partisan issue is the second you've proven you're drank the kool-aid. "
I agree but did you say the same thing when the other party was in power? Silence is consent.
That being said "To track or to wire-tape should require a warrant". I do not feel that is extreme at all. I will even go slight more permissive and say that international communications could be legally tapped without a warrant. After all there is no requirement of a warrant to search anything at a boarder cros
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Damn you George Bush! (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, wait a sec...........
Never mind.
That Patriot Act... (Score:2)
Any way to detect tracking devices? (Score:2)
Or disable them, other than jamming GPS or cell phone?
DIY alibi kit! (Score:2)
These will become more common in many countries...
The way to exploit being followed is to provide the enemy with the data you wish them to have. Take digital pics of its position on the vehicle so you can replace it, then use it as an alibi!
It can be moving when you are in-place, or in-place when you are moving. It can be moving elsewhere, states away if you like.
You can state you were at X location and KNOW that matches their data without revealing that you know this.
One doesn't "hide" by turning off parts
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If you don't relocate this to the neighbor's van, (Score:2)
standard household 120v AC, hooked to each antenna for a few seconds should modify the unit to the desired operating status.
The neighbor's van solution *is* funnier, however, although placing it in the middle of a raw sewage processing facility, a rural outhouse or a porn theatre has some appeal.
Re:so (Score:4, Interesting)
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This is the answer if you get tagged with a device like this. at night in a obscured location, remove it and install it on someone else car. Preferably a car that is the same color and make.
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I'd probably build an EMP generator over the weekend with the kids. "Hey kids, you want to know why your dad's not allowed near the microwave or the toaster?"
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Ooh ooh, is it something to do with his hilariously poor cookery skills?
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Ooh ooh, is it something to do with his hilariously poor cookery skills?
To be fair, I thought toasting a pork chop would be a real time saver.
Re:so (Score:4, Interesting)
No need to do that, just watch the video feed [theregister.co.uk] from the cop cars instead. Although I suspect in the USA, either could probably get you a jail term.
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Drill a hole into the casing, fill the damn thing with butyric acid and seal it again.
Should provide for some fun once those goons try to find out what's wrong with their toy.
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Well, not only would they get you for mucking about with government property (that you couldn't have known was actually there) ... but, I suspect if you laid such a trap, you might find yourself running afoul of several other laws.
I suspect you might get yourself a couple of felony charges out of the deal.
Throw it away, stick it to ano
Re:so (Score:4, Funny)
Soooo... go with dogshit?
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Well, that will let you make a statement without running the risk of inflicting bodily harm and having to pay the legal price for it.
Dogshit sounds like a nice "FU" without too much in possible ramifications.
Re:so (Score:4, Insightful)
Scared of what will happen if you resist the governments attempts to track you? Does this sound healthy to you?
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
- Thomas Jefferson
Re:so (Score:4, Informative)
But, really, I think if you leave something with acid in it to be "discovered" by these guys you will have likely entered into territory you might live to regret.
Although the name contains "acid", butyric acid [wikipedia.org] isn't a dangerous corrosive acid. It just smells really bad.
Re:so (Score:4, Insightful)
No, they would find some other charge to make against whoever did the planting and tracking. For example, they probably live behind electric gates and would charge the planter with criminal trespass. What they might charge the tracker with can be left to the imagination... not mine -- I can't think of anything, but potentially anything from "conspiracy" to "terrorism" is quite likely. (Government is immune to charges of terrorism, but if you act in any way against government, guess what you are?)
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For example, they probably live behind electric gates and would charge the planter with criminal trespass.
I'm sure they have to stop at red lights eventually. (Or the grocery store, or any old place.)
Heck, except for the magnets, it's probably fairly inexpensive to build mock trackers and just start spamming them around rich neighborhoods. Let the local cops explain that one away...
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Screw that, I would head down the the nearest marina and attach it to someone's boat lol. Or another car.... maybe a truck trailer....
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OK, so it was a 2011 Bentley. But I was tired of it. So I took it down to the local car recycler and they put the whole car into the crusher. Sorry About that GPS box you folks stuck on it.
Re:Ebay, Here We Come (Score:4, Funny)
just get the FBI to provide proof of ownership.. you know a receipt or something :).
Re:Find one? Call it in as a suspected car bomb (Score:5, Funny)
Bomb squad will just come out, evacuate the neighborhood, and blow up your car
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Clearly the solution to finding one of these is to report it as a suspected car bomb. After all, if people can decide that a giant Lite-Brite is a bomb [wikipedia.org] then surely a bunch of metal boxes magnetically attached to a car should merit the same level of attention and freak-out...
Getting the bomb squad to blow up your car "safely" is probably not the best way to deal with a GPS tracker.
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...the FBI is held accountable for the loss in wages / productivity and the expense of replacing the destroyed vehicles.
Let us know how that works out for you.
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Where are my mod-points? :)
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The form factor WOULD make a perfectly reasonable one for a vehicle bomb.
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Anyways, if the FBI had been monitoring Brad Cooper, they could have just pulled the records tracking where his car was, and show if he actually drove it to the site his wife's body was found or not. If he did it, there wouldn't have been an expensive trial, and if he were innocent, then he wouldn't have been indicted. Well, maybe. I suppose the Cary police department would just say that Brad "must have" hacked the FBI tracking device or used a GPS jammer...because he technically knew how to do such a th
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Many are just pessimistic enough to believe this would happen.
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The prosecution must reveal all evidence to the defence as in all the location logs for the tracker. It happens all the time. One of the best ways to get a charge dropped is to find evidence that the prosecution knew about but did not reveal. It does not have to be important evidence as hiding any evidence is grounds for dismissal. I realize it may be a difficult task but showing that some of the location logs are missing should be pretty easy. At worst all location logs would be thrown out.
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Thats so cute... you actually trust them.
The device malfunctioned.
The logs were lost.
The logs get tampered with.
Etc.
They cant loose a case, it doesn't matter if the wrong person gets put away as long as the win to loss ratio is high enough to make that run for governor.
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You are assuming that the FBI would admit to having data that exonerated you and would be willing to turn it over. I find it more likely that they would deny it existed for as long as possible and then slap "State Secrets" on it so you can't have it anyway.
Tracking a car is inefficient... (Score:2)
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Are you part of a group that it doesn't like? Even if there's no evidence whatsoever that anyone in that group has ever committed a serious crime? Then they can and will follow you around for years with one of these.
To be fair, this is hardly new for the FBI. Remember COINTELPRO? You know, the FBI program after such dangerous and violent people as Martin Luther King and John Lennon. And there's some evidence that they continue to infiltrate and try to control numerous protest movements to ensure that their ideas are easily discredited.
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That doesn't invalidate his questions.. I mean I wouldn't want one of these things on my car either, but only because it adds weight, drag, and is pretty damn cheeky. It would be a complete waste of government time to monitor me anyway.
*wink wink*
Irrelevant (Score:5, Insightful)
First: who knows? Even if you're not cynical about government convicting or even prosecuting innocent people all the time, surely you admit they investigate innocent people all the time. They have to in order to do their job, rule out suspects, etc. This is why the we try to limit them taking extra more-invasive steps against people to only when they can show they have a good reason. If they only looked at people who are doing things that really warrant their attention, we would assume them to have godlike infallibility and wouldn't even bother with a justice system at all; just have them pass sentence on the bad guys.
But aside from that...
If it is legal for law enforcement to do this without a warrant, that suggests that legally the activity of putting a bug on someone else's care isn't special; i.e. it is not something that is considered to be a violation of privacy for which we sometimes permit government to do it as part of their rightful monopoly on force. In other words, if government can do this without invoking its special government-y powers, then anyone should be legally allowed to do it.
So your question becomes:
Might the neighborhood burglar like realtime updated reports on when you're home and when you're not? Might your insurance carrier want to know if your daily patterns are outside the median? Might your stalker want to know where you are? Might your ex-wife's private investigator want to know who you're visiting? Might ClearChannel want to know which billboards you drive by most often? And so on. Draw on your paranoia and imagination and I think you'll see that Big Brother is just one of many brothers to be concerned about.
If Just Anyone is not allowed to bug your car, then that suggests it is a special power reserved for government, and you're going to have a hard time arguing it's not a violation of privacy (if it's not, then why can't I bug your car?) or that it doesn't require any sort of balances or limits of power for which the 4th amendment was intended to provide protection.
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Might the neighborhood burglar like realtime updated reports on when you're home and when you're not? Might your insurance carrier want to know if your daily patterns are outside the median? Might your stalker want to know where you are? Might your ex-wife's private investigator want to know who you're visiting? Might ClearChannel want to know which billboards you drive by most often? And so on. Draw on your paranoia and imagination and I think you'll see that Big Brother is just one of many brothers to be concerned about.
If Just Anyone is not allowed to bug your car, then that suggests it is a special power reserved for government, and you're going to have a hard time arguing it's not a violation of privacy (if it's not, then why can't I bug your car?) or that it doesn't require any sort of balances or limits of power for which the 4th amendment was intended to provide protection.
Lets see, burglary and stalking are illegal acts while investigating a suspect is not. If an insurance company has the resources to follow all their clients I would be surprised. For an ad agency to track a single person it must be a pretty important person. Probably the wife would want to know where you are rather than the ex-wife and, in my opinion, don't commit adultery.
In my mind a tracking device is just another means of tailing someone. Since I do not do anything illegal and do not associate with peop
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Following somebody all day and night isn't necessarily stalking. It all depends on your intent.
Re:If I had a car... (Score:5, Insightful)
and what are you doing that you do not want law enforcement to know?
Well, drove my car to work on the usually route, parked it at work for the day, drove back home, went to my local petrol station. And all of that I don't want law enforcement to know, because it is none of their f***ing business.
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If there is no reason to search me why do it?
If there is no reason to track me then why do it?
If I am a suspect, then please feel free to get a warrant. Otherwise fuck off.
Your comment was the worst I read today.
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and what are you doing that would warrant the FBI's eye, and what are you doing that you do not want law enforcement to know?
I'm visiting clients. But one of my competitors (a big national franchise) isn't above slipping a crooked FBI agent a few bucks to track me and give them a list of people I visit.
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and what are you doing that would warrant the FBI's eye, and what are you doing that you do not want law enforcement to know?
The sheriff's wife for starters.
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and what are you doing that would warrant the FBI's eye, and what are you doing that you do not want law enforcement to know?
Hey, we're not talking about warranted searches here. If the FBI suspects something, they should present their evidence to a magistrate, and get a proper Warrant. Otherwise, they should piss off.
Re:If I had a car... (Score:5, Insightful)
what are you doing that you do not want law enforcement to know?
Living my life. I do not want law enforcement agencies knowing what I do over the course of a day. Who knows what sort of surprise laws, bizarre readings of the law, or overzealous cops and prosecutors one can wind up facing? Better safe than sorry; the point of the 4th amendment, like the rest of the bill of rights, is to protect us from tyranny, and we need that sort of protection these days.
Re:If I had a car... (Score:4, Informative)
The mechanics weren't looking very hard. IAAM (I Am A Mechanic).
Of course the quick way to find trackers would be to use a freq counter with an antenna and scan you car with the car battery disconnected to eliminate any interference from powered automotive circuits.
Time for a cheap open source RF sniffer?
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These trackers can probably operate passively. Simply sitting there, collecting location information until an agent with the proper equipment activates it and dumps the data.
Re:If I had a car... (Score:4, Informative)
It's unlikely they can run the GPS receiver without leaking the local oscillator frequency. So a frequency counter should be able to find it.
If I found one of these on my car, I'd consider it my patriotic duty to place it on a vehicle I spend more time on. Namely, the train I ride to work.
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Taking apart your car means entering the car and they do need a warrant for that
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paid for by sharing location information with corporations and advertisers so there is no tax burden to the American people.
Yeah because those corporations just invent the money to pay for ads, right? It's not like the American people are paying for the ads when they buy products from those companies... /sarcasm
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Don't worry. Universal vehicle GPS tracking is coming [slashdot.org].
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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(Yes, like the article this comment is very USA centric.)
To be fair, pretty much anything concerning the FBI tends to be pretty USA centric.
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Yes, but we're a secondary allocation over most if not all of the 70cm band, and must accept 'interference' from primary allocation users. Jamming them is illegal. If you were in the rest of the world, 433 MHz is an ISM band.