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How Cartographers For the US Military Inadvertently Created a House of Horrors in South Africa (gizmodo.com)
Kashmir Hill, reporting at Gizmodo: The visitors started coming in 2013. The first one who came and refused to leave until he was let inside was a private investigator named Roderick. He was looking for an abducted girl, and he was convinced she was in the house. John S. and his mother Ann live in the house, which is in Pretoria, the administrative capital of South Africa and next to Johannesburg. They had not abducted anyone, so they called the police and asked for an officer to come over. Roderick and the officer went through the home room by room, looking into cupboards and under beds for the missing girl. Roderick claimed to have used a "professional" tracking device "that could not be wrong," but the girl wasn't there. This was not an unusual occurrence. John, 39, and Ann, 73, were accustomed to strangers turning up at their door accusing them of crimes; the visitors would usually pull up maps on their smartphones that pointed at John and Ann's backyard as a hotbed of criminal activity.
[...] The outline of this story might sound familiar to you if you've heard about this home in Atlanta, or read about this farm in Kansas, and it is, in fact, similar: John and Ann, too, are victims of bad digital mapping. There is a crucial difference though: This time it happened on a global scale, and the U.S. government played a key role. [...] Technologist Dhruv Mehrotra crawled MaxMind's free database for me and plotted the locations that showed up most frequently. Unfortunately, John and Ann's house must have just missed MaxMind's cut-off for remediation. Theirs was the 104th most popular location in the database, with over a million IP addresses mapped to it.
[...] The outline of this story might sound familiar to you if you've heard about this home in Atlanta, or read about this farm in Kansas, and it is, in fact, similar: John and Ann, too, are victims of bad digital mapping. There is a crucial difference though: This time it happened on a global scale, and the U.S. government played a key role. [...] Technologist Dhruv Mehrotra crawled MaxMind's free database for me and plotted the locations that showed up most frequently. Unfortunately, John and Ann's house must have just missed MaxMind's cut-off for remediation. Theirs was the 104th most popular location in the database, with over a million IP addresses mapped to it.
Works for the ship and planes, but what about all the human cargo? It's not easy feeding that many refugees.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I heard China will pay premium over scrap.
Which is the best use for aircraft carriers nowadays. If sent into battle they would take thousands of decent sailors down with them.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
"Roderick claimed to have used a "professional" tracking device "that could not be wrong,"
Isn't it strange how many people nowadays know things like that, with absolute certainty. How could he possibly know that it "could not be wrong"? Because he paid a lot of money for it? Or because some shyster salesman sold him a bill of goods?
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
According to TFA, this was caused by stolen devices being in areas without a cell signal, and falling back on WiFi access point geolocation. Further, the area in question has very few access points, so phones can potentially pick up these residential access points from thousands of feet away. Then they are geolocated to the exact position of the access point.
A solution is to disable SSID on your home router(s) so that these data-grabbing sniffers won't see it and try to geolocate off of it.
Better known as 318230.
1. Cartographers for a U.S. intelligence agency published coordinates for the center of the populated area of Pretoria, South Africa.
2. An IP location service provided those coordinates, along with an uncertainty radius, for Pretoria IP addresses.
3. Other IP location services threw away the uncertainty radius.
4. South African government officials, bounty hunters, etc. used the IP location services that threw away the uncertainty radius.
5. The U.S. intelligence agency changed the coordinates to the center of the town square after being apprised of the issue.
That seems like fairly thin gruel for Slashdot's "U.S. sux" article du jour.
Problem solved.
I had this same issue because I live in Rural America, and my house is within 100 yards of where most mapping software pins my zip code, and within a mile of the nearest Interstate. To cover my entire property, I have an outdoor AP with an omni antenna on top of my 90 foot ham radio tower, so my Wifi network is visible from that Interstate.
Once I disabled SSID broadcasting, people stopped showing up. I suspect that people were driving by on the Interstate, where there is poor cell coverage because it's rural, on their way to the city. At some point they would lose their phone and do a "find my phone" on their way home (along the same stretch of poorly-covered highway) and it would turn up with a pin in my back yard. Hence, unsolicited trespassers banging on my door drunk at 3 in the morning.
I'm glad I don't have to put up with that anymore. It's just a little inconvenient to set up new wireless clients without SSID broadcasting turned on.
Seriously, any company that causes so much distress and harm deserves to be put out of business. Unless it has enough money to pay appropriate damages to all of its victims - whether they complain or not - and to fix its utterly insane software decisions.
The CEO actually didn't know what to do about IP addresses that couldn't be located more precisely than "the USA"? I can do that one instantly. Tell the user that the IP address can't be located more precisely than "the USA". I know it rankles to big business, but when all else fails you can always try telling the truth.
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Many mapping systems give specific latitude and longitude coordinates and an accuracy radius for an IP address. When the accuracy radius is inaccurately large (like searching for a city, or a country) the coordinates arrow points in the middle, which can be someone's house. Someone using location services (like "Find My Lost Phone", and even police) often get these coordinates without understanding the accuracy sucks.
This particular case in South Africa happened because of a mapping service created by "National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency", which is part of the US Dept of Defense.
I'm not sure why useful information like this wasn't in the summary, but... I guess it made me read the article, so the jokes on me.
My favorite quote was from a guy that lives in this house. Right after the article says, "a team of police commandos stormed the property, pointing a huge gun through the door at Ann, who was sitting on the couch in her living room eating dinner", a few sentences later he says, "The Apple customers seem to be the worst."
MaxMind can be a boon to test geolocation.
Now, believe it pinpoint to exact locations in some cases can be quite far fetched.
I was once tracking someone that was harassing me via skype; managed to get his IP however the location was to...an hairdresser....and on the other side of the street of the ISP that person was using.
I already new the provider from whois data, so MaxMind did not allow me to narrow it more than the city.
As usual, tools can be quite useful, but part of the craft is knowing until which point you are able to trust the data they spew out.
Just take the US government to court, and the next time an aircraft carrier stops in Capetown, have it impounded to collect on your line.
Is it possible for an aircraft carrier to dock at a port in Capetown?
Does the entire South African military have enough firepower to take on a US Navy carrier group? It's not like those go anywhere alone. I would guess that the airplanes on a single carrier outmatch the entire SA air force. The carrier group also has at least a missile cruiser, and at two destroyers.
While carriers are ineffective in conflicts against Russia or China, South Africa is the type of military that they are very effective against.
Maybe I just haven't had my caffeine yet, but have there been any naval battles between equal-ish powers since WW2?
I heard China will pay premium over scrap.
Which is the best use for aircraft carriers nowadays. If sent into battle they would take thousands of decent sailors down with them.
Carriers aren't meant for conflicts against countries with a modern military these days. Countries with a military similar to what South Africa has is a different story.
I'd guess that a single carrier group has about as many personnel as the entire South African Navy. A Nimitz class carrier air wing has at least 40 F-18 super hornets. The South Africa airforce has 26 Gripen fighters.
People have always attributed unreasonable properties to things they don't understand, including technology. My internet provided kindly called me up to tell me that if I didn't pay my bill dire consequences would ensue. I mentioned that I had just checked that day and my account showed a balance of zero. Sir, that can't possibly be true! Okay, check it yourself. Here's the account number. Oh.
And I remember my father having almost identical conversations when I was a kid.
The vast majority of IP addresses can be traced to either a relatively small space - a dot on map surrounded by an uncertainty radius - or a fixed "shape" such as a country or ISP service area, perhaps surrounded by its own "radius of uncertainty" around that area if the IP address is mobile.
MaxMind, one of the companies in the story, already takes the first approach.
Adding links to computer-readable map data of political entities and ISP service areas along with a "boundary of uncertainty" and providing these instead of an actual latitude and longitude is a good next step.
For IP addresses that are known to be proxy addresses - think companies that funnel all outbound web searches through their corporate firewall on one hand and consumer VPN, TOR exit nodes, and related services on the other - explicitly flag them as such so people know that any geolocation efforts are unreliable.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Is it possible for an aircraft carrier to dock at a port in Capetown?
No. They may have to stop in Cape Town.
Have gnu, will travel.
I don't want to know what part of our country you live in, but please just stay there.
If you look at the past 20 years the few times our ships have been attacked they've successfully shrugged off multiple hits that should have sunk them in 1 (first gulf war) and in the case of the yemanese lobbing missiles at our ships we successfully employed countermeasures. I forget the ship and the missiles but they're simulated at something like an 80% chance of hitting the ship. All of our planning assumes that the first one to get off their missiles will be the victor but we've seen from our few real life data points that in actuality for whatever reason us warships still seem to have a massive advantage.
Just a typical intimidation tactic used by police and detectives, really. They figure if people really were hiding an abducted kid there, they could rattle them a bit by acting 100% confident.
How could he possibly know that it "could not be wrong"? Because he paid a lot of money for it? Or because some shyster salesman sold him a bill of goods?
This is very often the same thing.
Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
reanjr goes to house to ask directions, he's lost:
reanjr: Can you give me directions to blop.
gun owner: Oh yeah, take that...BLAM...and that....BLAM....
reanjr: (in dying breath) but all I wanted was directions....THUNK.
gun owner: That'll learn ya to ask directions in America!!
How could he possibly know that it "could not be wrong"?
Because it's been printed with a computer. Here, let me show you my green-bar printout.
People have been that way for decades (plural), it's nothing new.
I suspect some people are too pedantic, but that's also part of some people's stress now-a-days: things are so complicated and interwoven that they want SOME simple, absolute stuff, whether it be locations, facts, or even ideologies.
There's weird noises in an abandoned house after dark? It couldn't be animals or rot or heat expansion, it's got to be GHOSTS or GNOMES, one of the two. And you know that garden gnomes keep going missing, don't you? They're gathering for something.
Don't Blink.
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
Is it possible for an aircraft carrier to dock at a port in Capetown?
The Theodore Roosevelt stopped there, but I'm not sure if it docked or just stationed offshore.
Yeah pointing guns at police and bail bondsmen always goes well in the US.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
And you know that garden gnomes keep going missing, don't you? They're gathering for something.
Beautiful!
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Maybe I just haven't had my caffeine yet, but have there been any naval battles between equal-ish powers since WW2?
The closest was India vs Pakistan in 1971. 15 naval ships and 18 cargo ships sunk. Decisive Indian victory.
Several Arab-Israeli conflicts involved ships.
The Falklands War could be considered equal-ish if you include attacks on British ships by Argentina's land based aircraft.
I'm assuming the only evidence they had was an IP address it was last connected to. With that they were able to secure a warrant to search a house half way around the world. That seems to be the bigger problem. Someone needs to tell them that an IP address does not directly relate to physical address; it also does not directly relate to a single person/computer.
Also how hard would it be to run a query to group common gps coordinates and order them by instances. Then looking at the highest instances first, check if the data was based on a town location. If it was then change that coordinate to the local police station. You would kill two birds with one stone. People would show up at the police station looking for kidnapped people or lost devices. Plus warrants would be issued to local law enforcement to search their own building.
And if that doesn't work, we switch them to the nearest local elected representative.
The company claims that about half the time, it is accurate to within 50 Km.
https://www.maxmind.com/en/geo...
What about Wudolf's fwiend? Biggus Dickus.
Maybe I just haven't had my caffeine yet, but have there been any naval battles between equal-ish powers since WW2?
That depends on how you classify "naval battle". If you mean a battle in which warships participated then there's probably a few that you can point out in which naval forces were only employed by one side but air or ground assets on the other did provide a risk to the warships. The Falklands War had one or two of those if I remember correctly. If you want both sides to have naval vessels then nothing comes to mind.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Please cite any event where this happened.
Ok.
Now, the victim was seeking help after a car accident instead of asking directions, but a pretty similar scenario.
And since some of "these people" were law enforcement, that would quickly result in the death of the homeowner.
This. The entire '70s was filled with CSRs saying "Well, the COMPUTER says...".
Hilarity ensued in the early '80s as increasing numbers of people replied "Well, MY computer says...".
The article goes to great lengths to say that this went on for years. Why didn't they ask the first guy to show up the simple question, "Why did you think you would find your phone here?" They would say, "Because I used this free IP Adress locating website." Contact the website, and you're off to the races. It might not have gotten resolved until the second or third visit from SWAT, but they'd at least KNOW why it was happening. Having to hire a lawyer and then contact a university professor? Why didn't they just ask the people showing up?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Oh, the confidence of an anonymous coward.
Yes, it was my ISP. I was pretty sure it was them, but being naturally paranoid and also a pain in the ass I informed them that I could neither give them nor confirm any personal information because they called me and I had no idea if they were who they claimed to be.
Their computer system cannot conceive of a customer who does not have landline telephone service. So for those crazy ones who don't want it, they create an account with a fake (free) landline and internet. Except in my case they created an account where everything was free, and another account where nothing was, but only told me about the first one.
The REALLY amazing thing is that these same people are usually very comfortable accepting that their computer crashed "for no reason."
The cited Gizmodo article at https://gizmodo.com/how-cartog... clearly indicates that geolocation from IP addresses is not accurate. The article contained a link to a Web page at What Is My IP Address that does geolocation for the IP address of whoever visits that Web page. While What Is My IP Address did get my correct IP address and correctly placed me in California, it also placed me in the wrong county with the wrong ZIP code about 4 miles away from my true location.
I tried three other Web-based geolocation services. GeoIP first placed me in Missiouri; when I reloaded the Web page, it then placed me in New Jersey. Reloading justmyip placed me in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Tokyo, Japan; and La Roda, Spain. Both GeoIP and justmyip repeatedly got my IP address wrong. IP2Location placed me in California with the correct IP address but about 7 miles from my true location, in the same county as reported by What Is My IP Address but an even different ZIP code.
their computer crashed "for no reason."
Well, they do. A computer can't reason
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
SoCal.
If law enforcement shows up to my door more than once for such specious shit, then I'm going to get a multi-million dollar settlement from the police for harassment.
Argentina had an aircraft carrier. It spent the war in port because they were afraid British submarines would sink it.
Aircraft carriers are not really platforms meant for normal intensity warfare between equals. During heavily asymmetrical warfare they're great because they can sit way off shore beyond the defending country's ability to strike and send wave after wave of aircraft against them for days, weeks, months. In really high intensity warfare, like a civilization ending world war a carrier's job is to get all planes off the deck. What happens to the ship (and it's crew) after that is tactically immaterial. But in a war between two more of less equal combatants a carrier is a terrible weapon. Its hugely expensive. The only way to protect it is to have an entire fleet of ships which create a 200 mile exclusion zone around it where any non-friendly ship is diverted or sunk. And the enemy can't have any submarines.
In the real world only the first situation has obtained since the end of WWII. In WWII dozens of carriers on both sides were sunk, usually in battles where fleets were hundreds of miles from each other.
No, you can't file a lawsuit after they've killed you for drawing a gun on them.
Those are different strategies. My point is that if you have an ongoing, recurrent problem with this, then it's not the police, because the police would have been sued already; so anyone coming to the door now gets a gun to the face.
My point is that if you have an ongoing, recurrent problem with this, then it's not the police, because the police would have been sued already
There was an ongoing, recurrent problem with this in the US, on one farm in Nebraska.
No lawsuits.