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> This As in, GPS being off by 33 feet? > leads to people getting reincarcerated I'm reading your article and it seems to be about police coming to check and

> This As in, GPS being off by 33 feet? > leads to people getting reincarcerated I'm reading your article and it seems to be about police coming to check and realizing that the reporting of being miles away was in error, not people getting reincarcerted because of GPS incorrectly reporting they moved ~30 feet too far? One of these is much more insane than the other.

chaps 14d ago
Not sure where your confusion is coming from. Have you never used GPS in a place with bad signal? Where it gets confused and you miss your turn? It's the same failure mode. Just the repercussions are getting arrested instead of getting off on the wrong exit. Also wrote this one, hopefully it helps your confusion: https://chicagoreader.com/news/false-alarms/ https://chicagoreader.com/news/false-alarms/
- dataflow 14d ago
  You're claiming that erroneously reported movements by ~33 ft lead to incarceration, yet the article you're linking to reports that erroneously reported movements by ~1mi+ lead to police coming to double-check what's going on. Am I incorrect and do you therefore have examples of ~30ft errors actually leading to their incarceration, or are you struggling to see the disconnect between what you're claiming vs. what is actually happening?
  - deleted 14d ago
    [deleted]
  - chaps 14d ago
    If someone's home is 30' by 30' feet, yes, that person's device will report them having left their home and they'll get a visit if GPS suddenly shifts 30 feet to the left. I'm talking about the class of problem. It happens in normal weather conditions and things like this exacerbate the problem. Really not sure what the hostility's about.
    - saaaaaam 14d ago
      As a neutral participant I think “the hostility” is probably because of your condescending tone when you said “hopefully it helps your confusion”. Your initial article really didn’t say anything about people being re-incarcerated for these sorts of errors. I really want to say “maybe you got CONFUSED and posted the wrong one!” but that would be snotty and condescending too. But maybe you posted the wrong one to begin with. Let’s all be friends and nice to each other.
      - chaps 14d ago
        That's totally fair, I shouldn't have said it like that!
        hypfer 13d ago
        You seem to care a lot about these issues, and probably have real face-to-face experience with the victims of that. Problem is though that this feeling type of empathy makes you not the best advocate for them - as you can see here, where (on a platform with worse rules than HN) a flamewar would've broken out over not everyone being as emotionally involved. We definitely need people like you, but we also need people like you to not be everywhere and scare/annoy people into not caring. Though, I also agree that scaring/annoying _into_ caring is also often required. Idk. Activism is weird and hard and all.
    - dataflow 14d ago
      Do you have any examples of someone getting thrown behind bars due to a GPS error on the order of ~30ft like you're claiming? That's all I'm asking. Really don't understand why you keep avoiding it. You've essentially claimed police/judges are doing something rather stupid and terrible. I'm asking you to show example(s) of what you claimed (~30ft error → thrown behind bars), not something significantly different (~1+ mi error → only-police-visit-but-not-thrown-behind-bars).
      - chaps 14d ago
        "You've essentially claimed police/judges are doing something rather stupid and terrible." Yes, yes I am. You really need to realize just how unbelievably fucking arbitrary the criminal courts are. At every level. They're not tech people. To answer your question, I have examples of motions by prosecutors to suspend people from the EM program where they specifically cite specific data points just barely out of their homes, where video footage provably shows they were inside the whole time. They're not mine to share. Btw, the courts are public and you should try some criminal courts watching. Pick a random day and just go.
  - skywhopper 13d ago
    The point is that the enforcement agencies make the assumption that GPS data is always correct. But there are any number of issues that can cause problems with it. People making decisions about how to enforce house arrest or design autonomous farm equipment need to take GPS flakiness into account. Differences in scale are not the point.
- avazhi 14d ago
  [flagged]
  - boomboomsubban 14d ago
    The trackers are part of CCSO’s pretrial house arrest program, so presumably a number of them are attached to people who did no crimes.
    - zx8080 14d ago
      Don't live in the US.
    - avazhi 14d ago
      > so presumably a number of them are attached to people who did no crimes. You and I have very divergent views of the type of person likely to be charged or prosecuted for a crime or indeed to participate in a diversion program that involves GPS trackers, my friend.
      - deleted 13d ago
        [deleted]
      - ryandrake 14d ago
        Right, because only guilty people become involved with the justice system.
        deleted 14d ago
        [deleted]
      - crtified 14d ago
        Not at all. They're remarkably similar. What differs is our cost:benefit analysis of closing off this errata. Yours (inferred) is "Too Much : Zero". Given that those are terminal values it would challenging for literally-any-other-view not to diverge from yours, on this.
- saaaaaam 14d ago
  I think the confusion is probably coming from the fact that the one reference to people being potentially re-incarcerated is buried right down the story. > Harkins said that since last October, she has seen 30-40 people ordered back into custody based on these progress reports. When asked what can be done to improve CCSO’s EM program, Harkins said that the sheriff’s office needs to “properly and fully” investigate alleged violations before writing reports or taking actions.
  - chaps 14d ago
    Ah. That's probably just a result of the pasted article being part of a series. To be explicit: yes, many, many, many people were reinarcerated because of faulty GPS.
    - saaaaaam 14d ago
      FWIW I enjoyed your articles. You write very clearly.
iamshs 14d ago
The story is about GPS errors which end up making life hell for people under monitoring since they end up generating a Police response. If 80% alerts were false, then an error like this can result in a surge of these alerts. It is an important story to tell.
- zamadatix 13d ago
  The monitoring device story seems important to tell but the problem seems to be related to monitoring devices, which are supposed to be accurate to 30 meters 90% of the time, being miles off or even reporting the wrong state. That kind of systematic failure does not make a few meters of displacement any more relevant. Saying so really makes it sound like the problem is something significantly less egregious than the devices being incomprehensibly inaccurate - as if we have to solve space weather prediction to a new level of science to not have them report someone in Chicagoland as being in Delaware.
- deleted 13d ago
  [deleted]
- hypfer 13d ago
  [flagged]
  - saltwatercowboy 13d ago
    They're already being punished. I don't agree with being punitive to make observers feel good. It's an error. What else do you need?
  - inigyou 13d ago
    [dead]
leptons 13d ago
>This You're cherry-picking a single word to start a pointless internet argument? Calm down. Nobody claimed this exact event lead to problems for anyone. This is what OP actually said: >>This is exactly the sort of thing Yes, this absolutely is the sort of thing. No, 33 feet isn't "the thing" but GPS glitching is the sort of thing at a different increment.
- altmanaltman 13d ago
  Okay but the claim is people are being re-arrested because of this "sort of thing". But I read the linked article, and it doesn't mention anyone getting re-arrested. There is only one situation described where the person is arrested and then let go after the cops got proof the alert was faulty. So yes, it absolutely sucks that this technology is so inconvenient and bad but at the same time, the author and GP claims are not proved or truthful in totality (even in the article they posted). We can agree GPS tracking sucks but also question claims that are not true. Also telling people to "calm down" over text when they are not even talking to you is very passive aggresive for no reason.
  - chabska 13d ago
    Consider that, from the justice system's point of view, there's no distinction between between someone breaking house arrest for a drug fix versus due to GPS error. They don't have the resource to investigate every single violation, so they always just assume that the device is infallible and that the human is lying. That's why there's no data for someone getting rearrested due to GPS, and why the few instances where someone do prove an error is concerning.
  - leptons 13d ago
    >Also telling people to "calm down" over text when they are not even talking to you is very passive aggresive for no reason. Your "This" quote was the least genuine comment I've seen on HN in a very long time. You took a comment and removed all context to complain about how it's wrong, when it wasn't wrong at all. There should be no doubt that GPS glitches can cause people with ankle monitors a lot of needless trouble, and "the system" likely won't believe it, and simply won't care. If you had an ankle monitor, and someone wanted to fuck with you, it would be trivially easy to block or spoof GPS signals to put you back in jail. All it takes is an SDR and some software you can find on github. Think about that before you quip "This" again. This time the glitch was 33 feet, who's to say next time it couldn't be 3300 feet?
skywhopper 13d ago
It’s the same category of error, is the point he was making. Relax a bit.
- deleted 13d ago
  [deleted]

chaps 14d ago

Not sure where your confusion is coming from. Have you never used GPS in a place with bad signal? Where it gets confused and you miss your turn? It's the same failure mode. Just the repercussions are getting arrested instead of getting off on the wrong exit. Also wrote this one, hopefully it helps your confusion: https://chicagoreader.com/news/false-alarms/ https://chicagoreader.com/news/false-alarms/

dataflow 14d ago
You're claiming that erroneously reported movements by ~33 ft lead to incarceration, yet the article you're linking to reports that erroneously reported movements by ~1mi+ lead to police coming to double-check what's going on. Am I incorrect and do you therefore have examples of ~30ft errors actually leading to their incarceration, or are you struggling to see the disconnect between what you're claiming vs. what is actually happening?
- deleted 14d ago
  [deleted]
- chaps 14d ago
  If someone's home is 30' by 30' feet, yes, that person's device will report them having left their home and they'll get a visit if GPS suddenly shifts 30 feet to the left. I'm talking about the class of problem. It happens in normal weather conditions and things like this exacerbate the problem. Really not sure what the hostility's about.
  - saaaaaam 14d ago
    As a neutral participant I think “the hostility” is probably because of your condescending tone when you said “hopefully it helps your confusion”. Your initial article really didn’t say anything about people being re-incarcerated for these sorts of errors. I really want to say “maybe you got CONFUSED and posted the wrong one!” but that would be snotty and condescending too. But maybe you posted the wrong one to begin with. Let’s all be friends and nice to each other.
    - chaps 14d ago
      That's totally fair, I shouldn't have said it like that!
      - hypfer 13d ago
        You seem to care a lot about these issues, and probably have real face-to-face experience with the victims of that. Problem is though that this feeling type of empathy makes you not the best advocate for them - as you can see here, where (on a platform with worse rules than HN) a flamewar would've broken out over not everyone being as emotionally involved. We definitely need people like you, but we also need people like you to not be everywhere and scare/annoy people into not caring. Though, I also agree that scaring/annoying _into_ caring is also often required. Idk. Activism is weird and hard and all.
  - dataflow 14d ago
    Do you have any examples of someone getting thrown behind bars due to a GPS error on the order of ~30ft like you're claiming? That's all I'm asking. Really don't understand why you keep avoiding it. You've essentially claimed police/judges are doing something rather stupid and terrible. I'm asking you to show example(s) of what you claimed (~30ft error → thrown behind bars), not something significantly different (~1+ mi error → only-police-visit-but-not-thrown-behind-bars).
    - chaps 14d ago
      "You've essentially claimed police/judges are doing something rather stupid and terrible." Yes, yes I am. You really need to realize just how unbelievably fucking arbitrary the criminal courts are. At every level. They're not tech people. To answer your question, I have examples of motions by prosecutors to suspend people from the EM program where they specifically cite specific data points just barely out of their homes, where video footage provably shows they were inside the whole time. They're not mine to share. Btw, the courts are public and you should try some criminal courts watching. Pick a random day and just go.
- skywhopper 13d ago
  The point is that the enforcement agencies make the assumption that GPS data is always correct. But there are any number of issues that can cause problems with it. People making decisions about how to enforce house arrest or design autonomous farm equipment need to take GPS flakiness into account. Differences in scale are not the point.
avazhi 14d ago
[flagged]
- boomboomsubban 14d ago
  The trackers are part of CCSO’s pretrial house arrest program, so presumably a number of them are attached to people who did no crimes.
  - zx8080 14d ago
    Don't live in the US.
  - avazhi 14d ago
    > so presumably a number of them are attached to people who did no crimes. You and I have very divergent views of the type of person likely to be charged or prosecuted for a crime or indeed to participate in a diversion program that involves GPS trackers, my friend.
    - deleted 13d ago
      [deleted]
    - ryandrake 14d ago
      Right, because only guilty people become involved with the justice system.
      - deleted 14d ago
        [deleted]
    - crtified 14d ago
      Not at all. They're remarkably similar. What differs is our cost:benefit analysis of closing off this errata. Yours (inferred) is "Too Much : Zero". Given that those are terminal values it would challenging for literally-any-other-view not to diverge from yours, on this.
saaaaaam 14d ago
I think the confusion is probably coming from the fact that the one reference to people being potentially re-incarcerated is buried right down the story. > Harkins said that since last October, she has seen 30-40 people ordered back into custody based on these progress reports. When asked what can be done to improve CCSO’s EM program, Harkins said that the sheriff’s office needs to “properly and fully” investigate alleged violations before writing reports or taking actions.
- chaps 14d ago
  Ah. That's probably just a result of the pasted article being part of a series. To be explicit: yes, many, many, many people were reinarcerated because of faulty GPS.
  - saaaaaam 14d ago
    FWIW I enjoyed your articles. You write very clearly.

iamshs 14d ago

The story is about GPS errors which end up making life hell for people under monitoring since they end up generating a Police response. If 80% alerts were false, then an error like this can result in a surge of these alerts. It is an important story to tell.

zamadatix 13d ago
The monitoring device story seems important to tell but the problem seems to be related to monitoring devices, which are supposed to be accurate to 30 meters 90% of the time, being miles off or even reporting the wrong state. That kind of systematic failure does not make a few meters of displacement any more relevant. Saying so really makes it sound like the problem is something significantly less egregious than the devices being incomprehensibly inaccurate - as if we have to solve space weather prediction to a new level of science to not have them report someone in Chicagoland as being in Delaware.
deleted 13d ago
[deleted]
hypfer 13d ago
[flagged]
- saltwatercowboy 13d ago
  They're already being punished. I don't agree with being punitive to make observers feel good. It's an error. What else do you need?
- inigyou 13d ago
  [dead]

leptons 13d ago

>This You're cherry-picking a single word to start a pointless internet argument? Calm down. Nobody claimed this exact event lead to problems for anyone. This is what OP actually said: >>This is exactly the sort of thing Yes, this absolutely is the sort of thing. No, 33 feet isn't "the thing" but GPS glitching is the sort of thing at a different increment.

altmanaltman 13d ago
Okay but the claim is people are being re-arrested because of this "sort of thing". But I read the linked article, and it doesn't mention anyone getting re-arrested. There is only one situation described where the person is arrested and then let go after the cops got proof the alert was faulty. So yes, it absolutely sucks that this technology is so inconvenient and bad but at the same time, the author and GP claims are not proved or truthful in totality (even in the article they posted). We can agree GPS tracking sucks but also question claims that are not true. Also telling people to "calm down" over text when they are not even talking to you is very passive aggresive for no reason.
- chabska 13d ago
  Consider that, from the justice system's point of view, there's no distinction between between someone breaking house arrest for a drug fix versus due to GPS error. They don't have the resource to investigate every single violation, so they always just assume that the device is infallible and that the human is lying. That's why there's no data for someone getting rearrested due to GPS, and why the few instances where someone do prove an error is concerning.
- leptons 13d ago
  >Also telling people to "calm down" over text when they are not even talking to you is very passive aggresive for no reason. Your "This" quote was the least genuine comment I've seen on HN in a very long time. You took a comment and removed all context to complain about how it's wrong, when it wasn't wrong at all. There should be no doubt that GPS glitches can cause people with ankle monitors a lot of needless trouble, and "the system" likely won't believe it, and simply won't care. If you had an ankle monitor, and someone wanted to fuck with you, it would be trivially easy to block or spoof GPS signals to put you back in jail. All it takes is an SDR and some software you can find on github. Think about that before you quip "This" again. This time the glitch was 33 feet, who's to say next time it couldn't be 3300 feet?

skywhopper 13d ago

It’s the same category of error, is the point he was making. Relax a bit.

deleted 13d ago
[deleted]