
Physical location of live stream found using flights patterns and astronomy - tomerv
https://heatst.com/tech/he-will-not-divide-us-livestream-placed-in-middle-of-nowhere-but-4chan-still-found-way-to-troll-it/
======
mabbo
Setting aside the pretty debatable morality of this whole thing (lots of other
good comments here to debate that), I think the real story, the interesting
one, is that this is even possible.

The tools used all exist and are basically free and easily accessible
(gmaps+streetview, flight data maps, the live stream itself, etc). The people
behind this are just random strangers on the internet who agreed on a cause
(as strange as the cause may be). This used to be something only the CIA could
do and they took longer to do it. 15 years ago, 'The Bourne Identity' was
nearly science fiction!

What's this look like in 10 more years, when facial/vocal recog software is
just as easy, when drones are somehow even cheaper and smarter, when 5 new
technologies we hadn't considered exist, when there's even more people
reaching out to each other to find common causes?

I'm excited/terrified to see what that looks like.

~~~
R_haterade
The best free tool here by far is the weaponized autism, as they call it.

Hundreds or thousands of bored, reasonably intelligent people united toward a
common cause. And they're the sort of people who wind up on /pol/, so
generally they're of a sort that develops an obsessive interest in some (or
many) esoteric topic(s).

To your speculation here: > What's this look like in 10 more years, when
facial/vocal recog software is just as easy, when drones are somehow even
cheaper and smarter, when 5 new technologies we hadn't considered exist, when
there's even more people reaching out to each other to find common causes?

I would state that the singularity has already reached us. The next steps will
simply be better organization and better interconnects between computing
nodes. (people)

~~~
R_haterade
Should also state that the relatively democratic, even anarchic nature of
4chan posting is the single best mirror of my own thought processes I've
encountered in my time on the internet. (Maybe a little less porn gets posted
in my brain, but you get the picture.) While it has its flaws, I think it's
really a great way to mimic some sort of collective consciousness.

------
johnwatson11218
I remember reading of another example like this on reddit where they referred
to this kind of thing as "weaponized autism". In that example they had looked
at training videos of a terrorist training camp and managed to get the
physical coordinates which were passed to the military for an airstrike.

~~~
chroma
You're probably thinking of /sg/ (the Syria general broad) on 4chan last year:
[http://i.imgur.com/5P1N1GI.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/5P1N1GI.jpg)

Turnaround time (from initial post to bombs dropping) was about 36 hours. Most
of the delay was in relaying the info to the Russian Ministry of Defense.

~~~
backpropaganda
Does this operation have a wikipedia page?

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tscs37
Say what you will but this shows how much dedication random people on the
internet can bring up if they want to do something... even if it's as
destructive as this... Amazing and terrifying.

~~~
booleandilemma
If only it could be harnessed for the power of good. 4chan as a service.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Do “for the power of good” and “as a service”, uh, align? It would be the
favourite tool of terrible people.

------
empath75
I'm not sure we should be celebrating what's basically an intimidation
campaign to shutdown free speech. What they did was trespassing and theft in
the service of shutting down political speech they disagreed with. It's pretty
disgusting.

~~~
Vexs
That's a bit much. People who go and yell shit in front of a camera, yeah,
that's nothing to celebrate. However, random individuals coming together,
learning new things, and working towards a common goal that harms pretty much
nobody at all except the ego of an actor is something that should be
celebrated. Plus, the techniques used are kind of neat. Think to yourself, if
this was a nazi flag, would you feel the same way?

Furthermore, it's a bit ironic that you bring up an attempt to shut down free
speech, when that's exactly what shia did when people started supporting trump
on his opposition feed. Freedom of speech is freedom of speech from the
government, not individuals, so he's perfectly in his right to do that, but
still. And yes, stealing the flag is theft. I can't support or argue for that,
but again, would you feel the same if it was a nazi flag?

I don't support trump, but calling this endeavor disgusting is disheartening.

~~~
accountface
This is the most mind-bendingly deluded post I've seen on HN in a while.

> individuals coming together, learning new things, and working towards a
> common goal

the common goal here is being an asshole

> if this was a nazi flag, would you feel the same way?

Shia's flag said "he will not divide us" it was a message of unity that
someone took down to replace with the representation of an administration with
actual white nationalists as advisors.

> it's a bit ironic that you bring up an attempt to shut down free speech,
> when that's exactly what shia did

Yelling into someone's livefeed is free speech in a public place, but
continuing to follow them and ultimately trespassing onto private property is
harassment. Free speech isn't yelling whatever you want whenever you want.
It's freedom from the government oppressing your speech.

>would you feel the same if it was a nazi flag?

This again? Seriously. Here's a challenge for you in the future: try to make a
sound argument without simply throwing the word "nazi" in.

~~~
hex12648430
>Shia's flag said "he will not divide us" it was a message of unity

Unity that excludes almost half of the US population. I'm glad that people
reacted against the passive-aggresiveness of this message when the stream was
hosted in a public space. I don't condone stealing on a private property but
let's not fool ourselves here, the message of this art project is reinforcing
the US vs THEM mentality that is currently tearing Americans apart rather than
truly trying to unify people.

~~~
accountface
It literally says "will not divide" and you're here making a comment that
specifically divides.

I guess the flag really is wrong.

~~~
nimchimpsky
but it also says "he". it is obviously against trump/republicans. Its a
political statement He can make it, but others can disagree, that is the
beauty of free speech.

I think trump is an imbecile, but denying his supporters free speech as you
are doing, is exactly why he is popular.

------
lighttower
Humans working in teams to solve a problem. imagine the amazing things
children could do if our education system motivated them like 4chan motivated
random people on the internet

~~~
RoboPlumber
This one was 8chan, not 4chan. While I'm nothing more than an occasional
passive observer of the chan communities, it seems that most of the "talent",
so to speak, has left 4chan amidst increasingly strict rules against various
forms of tomfoolery.

~~~
hex12648430
As far as I understand most of the work was done on 8chan because the 4chan
moderators banned discussions of the live stream from /pol/, but most users of
the /hwndu/ board on 8chan originally came from 4chan's /pol/.

>it seems that most of the "talent", so to speak, has left 4chan amidst
increasingly strict rules against various forms of tomfoolery.

I don't have any number to prove this but to me it seems that the overlap
between 8 and 4chan is huge. There's very few 8chan users that absolutely
never visit 4chan anymore. 8chan is tiny in comparison to 4chan so the signal-
to-noise ratio may seem better there. (according to their front page they get
roughly 2k posts/hour, if it was a 4chan board it would be medium-sized and 3
times slower than big boards like /b/, /v/ or /pol/)

------
TazeTSchnitzel
> trolling Labeouf so hard that he lashed out and got arrested

Uh, a better word might be _harassing_?

------
clubm8
So for anyone else intending to do an anonymous live stream, doing the shoot
indoors (insulated from outside noises such as a 4channer driving around in a
truck honking their horn) would probably allow for an uninterrupted stream.

~~~
JoshCole
I don't think it would. I think what this actually shows is the opposite may
be true even when it seems absurd to think that way. Crazy things might be
used to locate you:

\- Picture surfaces of person planning to do the live stream hopping off a
plane. People track where they came from back to Malaysia.

\- Person sees the dimensions of the rooms via the live stream. Runs over
Google maps and finds all buildings with those dimensions.

\- Half the area gets ruled out, because of the limitations of running a live
stream means there is no connectivity in some of the areas.

\- Rent a car service records hacked for only car dealer in that area. GPS
logs of cars acquired. One of the cars went to one of the possible locations.

Burglar heads out breaks in and captures the flag.

It's completely absurd. Utterly absurd. Not much more absurd than what
happened here though.

~~~
Houshalter
All of those things are way more effort than what they did here. It's like
computer security, where you can never have a system that is 100% guaranteed
to be perfectly secure. But you can do some simple things to vastly increase
the work required by an attacker.

~~~
JoshCole
Yeah. I get that.

I just don't think the take-away of this was as long as you sound-proof a
room, you are probably golden. It would be reasonable to have thought that an
undisclosed location with no visible landmarks was fine. It wasn't.

As far as the using the geometry visible and google maps: this was done before
in a video of a terrorist training camp. It resulted in Russia bombing the
area, after they were alerted.

------
chis
I don't know if this is really all that impressive... Shia posted a photo from
a diner in Tennessee, and then some dude drove around honking until the noise
appeared on stream.

~~~
NuDinNou
That was used as confirmation, they found the general area before.

------
matt-attack
Could someone please explain how you can triangulate a location by the
presence of three contrails in the image. I simply don't understand how that's
possible.

~~~
teej
They didn't. They ended up finding it because of Shia's tweet and having some
local 4 channers drive around and honk.

~~~
RoboPlumber
Nope, they did use contrails. I happened to see the /hwndu/ board while it was
happening. They only sent people out in cars after triangulating the flag
using the sun (for camera direction) and flight data (for location).

------
phyller
This is why we can't have nice things

~~~
rdtsc
What was the nice thing here though?

~~~
phyller
The internet, freedom of speech. I know, we do actually have those things, its
a facetious comment, but with a kernel of truth. Our freedoms rests more on
personal respect and responsibility than the government and military. Once we
pass a certain percentage of people who celebrate antisocial behavior, things
just break down. Cities only exist because less than 1% of people think its ok
to randomly throw bricks through windows or punch strangers. If that number
creeps up to some other larger, but still very small percentage of people,
cities just wouldn't be livable anymore. These guys just decided to troll this
project, and went to extraordinary lengths to break the law and ruin someone
else's dream. If more people did this type of thing, no one would feel safe
expressing themselves or sharing information of any kind.

~~~
rdtsc
I think there is more to this story than just random vandalism, or say a
personal feud.

What is different here is this was a political issue. I don't think they would
go and throw bricks at storefronts, or rob people on the street and so on.
This was done as a political taunt. But I may be wrong, I don't go to 4 chan,
this is the impression I got from reading about it.

> These guys just decided to troll this project, and went to extraordinary
> lengths to break the law and ruin someone else's dream

It seems they didn't go to extraordinary lengths just to break the law. They
would have done this even if it was on public property and there was no reason
to break the law. The goal was to prove a point.

There is another disturbing and interesting process happening and that is of
disarming of slogans and political speech by appropriation. This random group
of participants basically showed that indeed "He Will Not Divide Us" by coming
together and solving a technical problem to prove a political point. So in a
way they appropriated the slogan and applied to themselves. That makes the
slogan less effective. The exact same thing happened with "Fake News" it was
used for a while but it was appropriated by Trump's supporters and it ended up
backfiring. Now major mass media channels are openly taunted and are defending
themselves against the charge of being "Fake News" and so on.

~~~
rbanffy
> I don't think they would go and throw bricks at storefronts, or rob people
> on the street and so on.

Sure. Trump supporters just deny people healthcare and burn mosques. Apart
from that, they are exemplary citizens.

> basically showed that indeed "He Will Not Divide Us" by coming together and
> solving a technical problem to prove a political point.

By taking down a flag with "He Will Not Divide Us" and replacing it with a
MAGA hat and a Pepe. That really helps...

~~~
rdtsc
> just deny people healthcare

didn't ACA prices go up 100% in some places with a majority of insurance
companies withdrawing from the markets in some states? How did Trump
supporters do that?

> and burn mosques

Incident of mosque arson is up? Interesting, do have links to any statistics
on that? Seems rather implausible

Did you mean case [http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Houston-
man-...](http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Houston-man-pleads-
guilty-in-mosque-fire-10785703.php) where Gary Nathaniel Moore burned his own
mosque?

Or another one from Bellevue Washington were a person related to the mosque
burned it down: [http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/15/us/washington-mosque-
arson/](http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/15/us/washington-mosque-arson/) ?

It seems there is a rise if congregants burning their own mosques down lately,
wonder what prompted that...

Apparently also Trump supporters are going around slashing Muslim women's
faces with knives. Oh wait, no there is a rise in Muslim women slashing their
own faces and then filing fake police reports
[http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/EMS-Possible-
Slashing-L...](http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/EMS-Possible-Slashing-
Lower-Manhattan-Wall-Street-374191921.html)

~~~
rbanffy
About ACA premium increases, you may want to check
[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/09/us/politics/w...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/09/us/politics/who-
is-really-affected-by-rising-obamacare-premiums.html?_r=0)

"previously been arrested for making a disturbance at the mosque" is not
exactly "related".

Apart from that, you have two cases.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
> Apart from that, you have two cases.

And you have zero cases and some handwaving.

~~~
rbanffy
Let's see... The guy who made disturbances around the mosque he then burned
exists and pretty much burned a mosque.

There are a couple cemeteries that were vandalized.

And the Republicans are about to deny healthcare to 24 million people.

I think you are waving hands trying to dismiss reality.

------
lkrubner
It's extremely worrisome that this part of human psychology exists. In this
particular case, the white supremacists exerted maximum effort, and showed
tremendous cleverness, simply to advance their agenda. This same energy could
be exerted for thousands of good causes: crowdsourcing research efforts to
track climate change, or track bird migrations, or to track populations of
endangered species, or this energy could be channeled into astronomy, or any
other research effort where amateurs play an important role in helping advance
knowledge. Or this energy could be channeled into local volunteer efforts,
such as teaching low income children skills they might not learn in the
schools. Or reading to the blind at retirement centers. But instead this all
of this cleverness and effort was exerted on behalf of a white supremacist
agenda. I find it incredibly sad that people are moved to exert so much effort
for what is on the surface a trivial and useless act, and worse, which one
that is ultimately in the service of a dark and evil impulse.

