Is the FBI's Tracking Device on This Student's Car an Epic Fail?

[Pythagorean]

http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/08/student-says-he-found-an-fbi-tracking-device-on-his-car/

I mean really... are they trying to look incompetent to deceive us or do they really think that such a device would go unnoticed?

 

[cronxeh]

Ha! You should look up how much those things cost! I made an APRS GPS Beacon for $90 and those losers paid over 5 grand for each one!

Not to mention I would've used LiFePO4 battery pack and a much, much smaller sized device. Truly pathetic engineering.

They act and look sily to me, and very competent indeed.
I don't live in the US, but US as I have heard is not a safe good place to live; if you have a big house there, you can have it for rent and return to your peaceful fatherland to grow a business, for example. In the US, it's better to call an ambulance in an emergent case of robbery broking into one's house than to call the police station, because the ambulance and fire fighters should always come hours sooner than the police troops

Hey! Speak English.

 

[lisab]

They act and look sily to me, and very competent indeed.
I don't live in the US, but US as I have heard is not a safe good place to live; if you have a big house there, you can have it for rent and return to your peaceful fatherland to grow a business, for example. In the US, it's better to call an ambulance in an emergent case of robbery broking into one's house than to call the police station, because the ambulance and fire fighters should always come hours sooner than the police troops

Not sure where you're getting your information - what you have heard is false. You have a misunderstanding of life in the US.

 

[Monique]

Apparently the FBI spewed racist questions, such as asking the friend whether he is a terrorist. In fact that is not an unusual question, I was asked the same question when going through the boarding process on my way to the US.

On the device: they probably only use the fancy devices for the really interesting people and the old stuff that they have lying around for less interesting cases?

 

[Evo]

Yes, that might be wrong, I heard some Californian people said so. But what is my misunderstanding of life in the US ?

Everything you said is false about the US, in general.

My youngest daughter was tutoring an Egyptian student and he was writing about his expectations of coming here. His mother was crying and begging him not to go to America to study because Americans walk around with guns and shoot at everyone. That there is so much violence, police chases and shootings, etc... he said that he hasn't seen any of that. We're in the middle of the US, you can leave your purse with your car keys sitting on top of your car all night and it will all still be there the next morning. I've done it. I can't tell you how many times I went to look for my keys and found them the next day still in the door lock outside. Larger cities are not as safe and you need to lock things up, but the US is huge and most of the country is not the big cities

I'm not saying there aren't pockets of gangs in bad areas, but smart people avoid going into those areas.

 

[rootX]

Americans have similar problems in understanding ME culture so I believe ME people misunderstanding American culture is fair enough ..

 

[Proton Soup]

Everything you said is false about the US, in general.

My youngest daughter was tutoring an Egyptian student and he was writing about his expectations of coming here. His mother was crying and begging him not to go to America to study because Americans walk around with guns and shoot at everyone. That there is so much violence, police chases and shootings, etc... he said that he hasn't seen any of that. We're in the middle of the US, you can leave your purse with your car keys sitting on top of your car all night and it will all still be there the next morning. I've done it. I can't tell you how many times I went to look for my keys and found them the next day still in the door lock outside. Larger cities are not as safe and you need to lock things up, but the US is huge and most of the country is not the big cities

I'm not saying there aren't pockets of gangs in bad areas, but smart people avoid going into those areas.

all this is entirely dependent on where in the country you live, and what sort of income you have. we're not nearly so Canadian as this.

 

[Monique]

Generalizations generally don't work

in generalibus latet dolus: in generalities lurks deception.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

What Musahem said is true about some places, like Watts, or Compton California, and some if not all major inner city areas. There are many Americans who live in fear every day.

When I was a kid, the walk to school every day was a risky venture. You didn't worry about getting mugged. You worried about being killed for some gang member's initiation. I had two friends who dropped out of high school because it was just too dangerous. During my sophomore year, I hardly went to school for the same reason. I specifically remember missing 90 days in one semester. The next year we left for Northern California. The next year I was on the honor roll.

 

[lisab]

What Musahem said is true about some places, like Watts, or Compton California, and some if not all major inner city areas. There are many Americans who live in fear every day.

When I was a kid, the walk to school every day was a risky venture. You didn't worry about getting mugged. You worried about being killed for some gang member's initiation. I had two friends who dropped out of high school because it was just too dangerous. During my sophomore year, I hardly went to school for the same reason. I specifically remember missing 90 days in one semester. The next year we left for Northern California. The next year I was on the honor roll.

But what percentage of the population lives like that? It's very, very small, not even *close* to being representative of the entire US population.

And it's not true for the 'average' inner city. The top 20 US cities, from Wiki:

New York
Los Angeles
Chicago
Houston
Phoenix
Philadelphia
San Antonio
San Diego
Dallas
San Jose
Detroit
San Francisco
Jacksonville
Indianapolis
Austin
Columbus
Fort Worth
Charlotte
Memphis
Boston

In how many of those cities would you have to wait "hours" for the police?

It's true that most cities have bad areas, that's the case in nearly all big cities around the world. But the poster heard something from someone somewhere, maybe read something on the innerwebs or saw something about it in a movie, about how dangerous life is in the US...ugh I'm tired of hearing that kind of BS and no, it doesn't pass the smell test.

 

[Monique]

In how many of those cities would you have to wait "hours" for the police?

I don't think that the statement is so strange. I've seen many times that the police doesn't treat an incident as a priority, while with an ambulance they are obliged to show up at an incident within 10 (or so) minutes from the time that assistance was requested. That I no way means that you call an ambulance when police assistance is needed though.

The mistake of the poster was to extrapolate the experience of people living somewhere in California to a larger group.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I don't think that the statement is so strange. I've seen many times that the police doesn't treat an incident as a priority, while with an ambulance they are obliged to show up at an incident within 10 (or so) minutes from the time that assistance was requested. That I no way means that you call an ambulance when police assistance is needed though.

Yes. This is esp true if there happens to be a lot of gang activity that night.

I grew up near a housing project that the fire dept refused to enter without a police escort, even in an emergency. They got tired of people shooting at them.

The mistake of the poster was to extrapolate the experience of people living somewhere in California to a larger group.

And I would bet it was something from L.A. gangland. However, what percentage of the population this affects is another issue. The inner cities have the highest population density. And there is no doubt that we have many inner city areas that are extremely dangerous. In fact, the gang problem is now deep into rural America as well.

 

[cronxeh]

Well since we are derailing this, I might as well chip in. Living in NYC is a lot like that movie I Am Legend with Will Smith. You pretty much try to get home before the sunset, and lock your doors, windows, etc.

On the device: they probably only use the fancy devices for the really interesting people and the old stuff that they have lying around for less interesting cases?

More interesting than terrorism suspects?
[PLAIN]http://www.memedepot.com/uploads/0/207_not_sure_if_serious.jpg

 

[Ivan Seeking]

[Jan 2005] There are at least 21,500 gangs and more than 731,000 active gang members in the United States. Gangs conduct criminal activity in all 50 states and U.S. territories. Although most gang activity is concentrated in major urban areas, gangs also are proliferating in rural and suburban areas of the country as gang members flee increasing law enforcement pressure in urban areas or seek more lucrative drug markets. This proliferation in nonurban areas increasingly is accompanied by violence and is threatening society in general.

According to a 2001 Department of Justice survey, 20 percent of students aged 12 through 18 reported that street gangs had been present at their school during the previous 6 months. More than a quarter (28%) of students in urban schools reported a street gang presence, and 18 percent of students in suburban schools and 13 percent in rural schools reported the presence of street gangs. Public schools reported a much higher percentage of gang presence than private schools.

http://www.justice.gov/ndic/pubs11/13157/index.htm

[Jan 2009]...Criminal gangs in the USA have swelled to an estimated 1 million members responsible for up to 80% of crimes in communities across the nation, according to a gang threat assessment compiled by federal officials...

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-01-29-ms13_N.htm

 

[Monique]

More interesting than terrorism suspects?

Is that a serious question? These people were not on the top-10 wanted list, anyone can be a suspect.

 

[Andre]

I don't think that listing the terror of inner cities of the USA doesn't make much sense if you don't compare it with other parts of the worlds. Maybe that living in Colombia or the North West Territories is more dangerous than living in New Orleans

 

[The Geoff]

Back to the original post, if I found a strange device attached to my car I'd call the bomb squad, let them fight it out with the FBI :D

 

[bassplayer142]

Ha! You should look up how much those things cost! I made an APRS GPS Beacon for $90 and those losers paid over 5 grand for each one!

Not to mention I would've used LiFePO4 battery pack and a much, much smaller sized device. Truly pathetic engineering.



Hey! Speak English.

We don't know what the FBI device did besides track the car. It probably communicated wireless when available and had some type of encryption. I could easily see the price getting high quickly.

 

[Evo]

We don't know what the FBI device did besides track the car. It probably communicated wireless when available and had some type of encryption. I could easily see the price getting high quickly.

Communicated witreless? You don't mean cellular phone, because that's not possible.

 

[cronxeh]

We don't know what the FBI device did besides track the car. It probably communicated wireless when available and had some type of encryption. I could easily see the price getting high quickly.

Obviously the most efficient solution would've been to use SMS messaging of GPS location at regular intervals, but that would make the device even cheaper! You can get a model just like that for 80 bucks on ebay. They can send commands to it via SMS to update the interval, etc. No encryption is necessary as the cellular messages are already encrypted. If the concern is being able to read the tracking data from device directly, its easily solved by not keeping cache stored, which really nobody would bother with anyway.

No. The bottom line is, this could've been made much smaller. Even added an external solar panel for trickle charging, this thing could still work for a few days. Or forget the transmitting and just use it as a logger, at 50mA gps logger this would run for 2 weeks on a 2Ah battery pack.

Matter of fact why don't we build one for them?

GPS+GPRS - Telit GM862 $160 http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=7917
Arduino main board = $25 http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=666
2Ah battery = $17 http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=8483

The GPS/GPRS module draws on average 250 mA, Arduino main board is 50 mA, so your total draw is around 300 mA, which should last you for 6 hours, or 360 minutes, with average acquisition time of 30 seconds and parsing delay and SMS text message sending, I'd say you can set this to beacon mode for 1 minute poweron intervals. So you can send updates for 300+ times. If you space the intervals for once every 30 minutes that is 6 days, and if you go for once every hour, that's 12 days of operation. Stap 2 of these battery packs and it can last a month. Add accelerometer to reset the timer for only when the car moves and you can have even better battery time and tracking patterns

Total budget: $202 + shipping. And this is all for off the shelf parts from an overpriced store.

Better yet, add a few more battery packs, a detonator and a pack of C4 and strap this bad boy on the gas tank. Tracking + remote termination in one