We pay these people a mountain of money to terrorize us with incompetence.
this post was submitted on 04 May 2026
132 points (98.5% liked)
Technology
84359 readers
4371 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Hacker? Not a hacker. This information is broadcast openly.
TIL if(wireless_signal=OR("tazer","bodycam"),"Police Detected", ) is hacking.
I learned a while ago that clicking around on a web site and accidentally wandering into an area that is supposed to be secure but isn't is hacking as well
That literally is hacking, though. Poking around until you find a vulnerability.
In theory, the difference would be intent. If you proceed to inform others of the vulnerability or exploit it yourself to share secrets, the malicious intent is hard to deny.
If you just click around to see what the site has to offer, it becomes harder to prove. Some places have passed laws banning the mere accessing of content that should not be accessible, thereby putting the burden of proof on the defendant to show that they did not know the link would lead to confidential information, made no attempt to extract it, immediately withdrew upon realisation and so on.
On one hand, brief amd harmless access might not be worth legal action anyway, unless actual damage was done, so the expectation is probably that discretion in enforcement would moderate the heavy-handedness of the law. That isn't exactly unusual: It's easier to let something slide than to punish a transgression there is no law against.
One the other, trusting the fairness of that system might not be a good idea...
I don’t think any jury in the world would call clicking on links literally hacking. When I read poking around, that is what I think of. And their point is that if you click on a link that takes you to a secure area because of bad security, it is defined as hacking by the law in some jurisdictions. This is because those laws don't describe the action, they simply say "accessing" certain data. Which is lame.
Here in Germany clicking links is not hacking. Website owner is responsible for where the link goes to. Remember the link disclaimer on websites?
But typing pageId=2 instead of pageId=1 opened via link is hacking.
Clicking show page source and seeing cleartext passwords left in there is hacking.
On login forgetting to type your password and entering with an empty password is hacking.
What the deutsche fuck
@streetcoder @Modern_medicine_isnt thats funny, I never dig the defenition of hacking here, but everytime I see someone hacking on news they are with a sweatshirt wirh the cmd open making ping to google, i think it must be something like that
So a chess player that exploits an opponent’s weakness is hacking?
A snake that finds an entrance to a gopher burrow is hacking?
“Finding vulnerabilities” is the kind of dangerously overbroad generalization that gave us the DMCA.
A snake that finds an entrance to a gopher burrow is hacking?
And the gopher magistrates are absolutely furious, I tell you!
Reminds me of 15 years ago.
- friend left phone unlocked
- post something insane to their facebook
- "I hacked you!"
"I think it comes down to either incompetence or laziness … it just seems like the engineers who developed this were either ignorant or incompetent," he said"
Nah, I'm sure the engineers knew, or were too incompetent
As per usual, it's management who pushed for such tight development schedules that they didn't have the time to do it right while at the same time offering so little money they could only attract idiots who only know half of what they should.
I fucking guarantee you that is the core of the problem
Standard operating procedure. Every engineer knows the old rule: On time, On Budget, Done right; pick 2. No one ever picks option 3, public or private.
They definitely knew because later on in the article the writer acknowledges that in the fine print of their TOS or EULA or whatever they mention that the fact that you can't turn off the broadcasting is a "security consideration".
It's true and a real thing, but its also just a BS excuse to push for removal of body cameras.
If I’m remembering correctly, the data on body cams actually shows they don’t help with police accountability much at all, and instead just serve as additional surveillance of already over policed communities. Like I’m pretty sure they haven’t reduced rates of police violence. I’ll try to find the paper I read about this, but basically giving police more technology isn’t the solution, abolishing them is.
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.
With a proper custom antenna you can track bluetooth devices from larger distances
Interesting. How far?
Never tried myself, but big boys say 1-2km, depending on ambient noise levels, if no major obstacles in the way.
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...
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
How is it able to get the latitude and longitude of the devices? As far as I’m aware, the bluetooth spec doesn’t provide coordinates as part of its metadata. And you’d need some kind of triangulation method otherwise. I’m certainly not able to get the coordinates of my bluetooth devices. Wish I could, would make finding the remote a lot easier.
You can get RSSI and guesstimate the distance. Since it’s on a phone, you have the phones coordinates.
If the objects are moving in relation to each other, you can attempt a rudimentary triangulation. Its error prone, but you don’t need 100% accuracy.
I worked at a startup where we built industrial grade “apple air tags” and used phones to locate objects. This was like 10 years ago nowadays.
Maybe as a network scanner, because I know for "high accuracy" Android, for example, scans GPS, WiFi, and Bluetooth in combination to help determine better accuracy of location. If it picks up a store WiFi it's going to know you're within 100ft. Or some car has a built-in hotspot that either found. Not 100%sure without looking into it further, just speculation.
Didn't read, is he dead? The term "tried" makes me anxious.
I don't think Australian cops are quite as trigger-happy as those in the USA.