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/
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.
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.
FWIW I enjoyed your articles. You write very clearly.
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?
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.
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.
That's totally fair, I shouldn't have said it like that!
GPS is not that accurate even on a good day. A small device attached to someone’s ankle with a small antenna and an obstructed view of the sky will frequently be registering locations outside of the footprint of someone’s house.
A single 33 foot anomaly is already within the geofence buffer zones used. In dense urban areas the geofence buffer allowance may be 10X that already.
It should be treated that way but we’re talking about elected prosecutors who are itching for an excuse to put people in prison rather than looking “soft on crime” by allowing people to live under house arrest.
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).
"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.
> To answer your question
Looking forward!
> motions by prosecutors
Motion ≠ incarceration. So, not an answer (yet?)...
Did defendants get incarcerated as a result of these motions, or no?
You've kind of spoiled my day with this. Its like an angry chess game when you've got momentum, you POUNCE! But nobody else here appears to have chosen violence. really I get that he "maybe snarked you". But you should be reminded of the beautiful rules of hn discussions.
They did, yes. I hope you have a better day.
Okay thanks, so here's what I don't understand. When there is video evidence that someone was in their house the whole time, and given that everyone who has used a GPS knows it can easily be inaccurate by 30ft, why in the world would the judge trust the ankle monitor accuracy over video footage they see with their own eyes that directly contradicts it?
Something about this just doesn't seem very plausible, especially if this kind of thing is happening more than once in a blue moon. Either the video evidence is not as convincing as we're being led to assume (thus leaving more doubt in the judge's mind than ours, even if the person is innocent), or there should be some other explanation.
I don't know what to tell you besides yes, it's really that bad. A lot of it is just people passing the buck down the road, a lot of it (at the time) was covid, a lot of it was the difficulty of people on EM to publicly talk about their situation. Defense attorneys just want to get their clients out of jail and a lot of the EM stuff is a distraction to that. It's very much a, "we'll put in a ticket" sort of situation across many moving parts.
Lawyers began telling their clients to film themselves in their homes at all times so that they could prove to judges that they were in their homes when the devices went off. That's advice they give because the risks of not doing that are going back into jail. And to prove all that, you still have to go through all that process, filming yourself, etc. It's truly bad.
> Btw, the courts are public and you should try some criminal courts watching. Pick a random day and just go.
So you could find an example easily but you don't want to? Or you're suggesting court watching in general and not to find an example?
"I have an example I won't share" is better than nothing, I guess. But you were being snarky before you even said that much, when you were just linking your article and not saying if examples existed at all.
I'm curious why they're not yours to share, though. Did someone give them to you under private circumstances, or can people get there from public information but you think you shouldn't spread the word?
It wasn't easy to find, heh. Lots of FOIA requests to even get to a point of where I could go through court records at the Clerk of Courts. Obstinate lawyers for months and months. But after all that, I can find the court documents at the Clerk of Courts. I printed them there and I don't have them anymore. I would need to redact even if I had them. But they were all the same form, but with the actual violations largely hand-written notes written by a prosecutor in a hurry. It was usually a list of like, ten instances that they seemingly picked from random of the GPS rlogs. The best glance I had into what was by FOIA'ing the GPS records of someone who died much later but had a lawyer who fought tooth and nail to show he didn't leave his home. GPS is truly all over the place in these logs. I validate a lot of that against call center records that themselves took months to get but show when alarms and calls are made to the devices, plus when dispatch is done.
A lot of this stuff is hard to talk about because it's about real people in real pending (at the time) cases.. and I'm also not a criminal defense attorney by any means. There's a reason the first article I posted had their identity completely removed. There's weird liability and believe me I want to say more.
Very honestly, I wish I could have done more reporting on how fucked up those devices were. I put a lot of time and effort into reporting that couldn't make it to print, largely because I was doing freelance work at the time. The first offer I got for that piece was $50. Wasn't sustainable.
Do you have any questions about these EM programs?
Well, don’t commit crimes and you won’t get a gps tracker attached to you, I guess. So that’s easy.
Not really sure what it has to do with tech though. That’s a problem with how certain humans behave, not ancillary technology.
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.
> 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.
Your heuristic is flawed. The pool of defendants with pending charges who were granted pre-trial home detention are going to be disproportionately non-violent, first-time offenders compared to those denied bail or with prohibitively large amounts.
Meaning an error like this harms innocent people wrongly accused more than the stereotypically hardened repeat offenders you imagine to be undeserving of your sympathy and presumed guilty.
> non-violent, first-time offenders
Non-violent, first-time offenders don't get ankle monitors. But thank you for highlighting my point.
They absolutely can, depending on the jurisdiction. I saw plenty of cases out of Atlanta with drug possession cases with no prior history getting an ankle monitor, back when they were live streaming bond hearings from Rice street.
You do not get an ankle monitor for misdemeanour possession as a first time offender, in Atlanta or anywhere else.
Like, actual lol mate.
Right, because only guilty people become involved with the justice system.
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.
They are innocent until they’re proven guilty.
Don't live in the US.