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A hacker built a tool to track police officers. Then he tried to warn them (www.abc.net.au)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 6 points 6 months ago (9 children)

Couple of sensationalized things. Undercover cops aren't carrying a body cam or taser. That would be easy to spot in person.
Next bluetooth is short range. You gotta be decently close. Like 25 feet give or take.
Commentary, of course the company was lazy. It costs money to add the feature to rotate mac addresses.

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  • [–] 6 points 6 months ago (2 children)

    With a proper custom antenna you can track bluetooth devices from larger distances

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago (4 children)

    Depends on the situation. They might not carry it into undercover situations but may have one sitting at home or in their take home vehicle. That's just as dangerous if a criminal follows them and has the app.

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  • [–] 3 points 6 months ago

    Guaranteed, you'll be able to drive neighborhoods with a detector rig in a car and find Axon devices that have been taken home - next thing you do is lookup those addresses on the property appraisers' website and confirm "identity withheld" on the ownership...

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (2 children)

    I dunno, if you are that kind of undercover cop, and you are living in your normal home with your family... and the criminals follow you to that home. I think we have bigger problems. The neighbors surely know the person is a cop, don't need fancy bluetooth anything to figure that out.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (1 child)

    I wouldn't answer the kind of questions someone would likely ask if they wanted to know what my neighbor does for a living.

    But either way there are several echelons of "undercover". Not every cop who is under cover is in deep covers for years on a RICO case.

    And while it's unlikely they'd be wearing a body cam home, its more likely they might have a police issued taser stashed somewhere. Cops aren't smarter than your average individual and they absolutely will do things that aren't in keeping with SOP.

    One of my friends works for a police department as a mechanic and their chief literally shot up her own police car by accident. Loaded service pistol in her purse. She was riffling through it and the gun went off (she claims). It's definitely not outside the realm of possibility especially if they didn't know.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago

    I totally agree that not all undercover cops are deep cover. But the ones that aren't basically aren't hiding it all day everyday. They hide it to do a simple sting like to bust a prostitute. Once the bust happens, they don't care who kmows. And the relatively small time criminals they are busting aren't getting all techy to try and find them.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago

    Ordinary bluetooth 25-30 feet in ordinary conditions, up to 100' or more "in the open."

    Using a high-gain directional antenna, a Bluetooth "base station" can detect and identify an ordinary consumer device (like a smartphone or earbuds) at distances ranging from 175 meters to approximately 450 meters (1,476 feet) under optimal line-of-sight conditions.

    So, if you've got a "secret meeting point" you could conceivably setup checkpoints on all the access roads and detect police travelling along those roads within 200-300 meters OF THE DETECTOR - the detectors can be setup miles from the meeting point...

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