For a brief moment I wondered if this is what I want to see on HN/Techcrunch. But we're a community, and lots of us live in SF - if it were a friend of mine, I'd be super happy to see this trending. Seems like the least we can do is have each others backs.
This reminded me of another missing person posted here. Does anyone know what happened to Luke Arduini? I have no connection, but for some reason this stuck with me.
The blog says that a 9-year-old girl saw a man matching Luk's description wearing a purple hoodie jump off the Golden Gate bridge on the very afternoon he disappeared. The police report about this incident was tracked down months later by a private detective hired by Yahoo.
Unless I'm misreading the article, it took months to unearth this police report. (The blog explicitly says that without Yahoo's help he would likely still be "missing" as he was for several months.)
This is terrible!
How is it possible that we have an NSA that is so wickedly super-competent that they can listen live to any phone conversation in the U.S.A. by clicking a few keys on the keyboard (per Snowden's claims), and yet the police department is so utterly incompetent (or uncaring) that they can't do the equivalent of a grep on the incident reports for Jan. 1 2014.
search 'purple|violet|red' + 'hoodie|sweatshirt|hooded' + male + radius(Oakland,25miles) in incident_reports_2014-01-01
/r/sanfrancisco mod here. It's a tough call, and one that Reddit Admins (not mods) have mostly decided for us. The worry is this: an abusive ex could post a "missing persons" alert for someone trying to hide, and get their location.
So, we have a rule that a news organization (which has more of an ability to vet a story, as well as a "the cat's already out of the bag" effect) has to cover it before it can be posted – and you'll notice the story is now on r/sanfrancisco since one did.
Most subreddits handle this but requesting that the OP post a case number and the phone number for law enforcement investigating so that people can get directly in touch rather than posting personal information on Reddit.
Agreed. Also, in this case, I think the Techcrunch article meets the requirement for vetting by a news agency. Hopefully the SF-related subreddits will give this greater visibility.
> As Reddit has strict site-wide policies pertaining to unverified personal information, Missing Person posts must be validated and reported by a local news service proving that the person is missing.
This makes perfect sense, since as a user-generated content community, a large portion (not a majority, but a large part) is in very shady shit. /r/jailbait, /r/thefappening, etc.. But for everything shut down, there are countless others that are still operating, like /r/FacebookCleavage, /r/photoplunder, /r/redpill, /r/greatapes, etc..
Reddit has expressed that it wants to be totally neutral so that it can model a "new type of online meta-community" that has literally no curation for types of communities. They want to have /r/MensRights'ers and /r/feminisms'ers on the same site, fighting with each other, generating ad impressions. They want to attract white supremacists and misogynists and feminists and people of color alike.
So, the main thing they need to guard against is conflict on reddit spilling over into the real world, and the best way to do that is to strictly prohibit posting personal information.
Of course, "personal information" doesn't extend to things like naked photos taken and distributed without the consent of those depicted, but you can't use that to make Reddit a scary place for misogynists. So it's okay.
Ah, I hadn't seen that. It looks like they've updated the post with links to actual news articles to satisfy Reddit's requirement of posting personal information.
Can someone take a missing person report from Police department and take it to Cell phone company and get any cell location traces for those period of time? Assuming the cell is on.
Can anyone do it or just someone from police department?
If only it were that easy... my brother went missing in February 2009 and as of today it's still an "ongoing" investigation. I was basically blocked at every turn...
In order for to get a cellphone log or trace, the detectives on the case needs to file for a subpoena. A judge will then need to sign off on it which takes 24-48 hours. Following that, they need to submit it to the cellphone company which claims it might take a billing cycle before the data is provided since it's on the "cell towers" and it's not transmitted yet. Even then, the information is useless. It's nothing more than what you receive on your monthly billing statement.
Police has no authority to just do it since it's up to the cellphone provider.
I severely doubt that if it were a drug investigation, or a cop-killer ala Chris Dorner, the cell company would wait a billing cycle to provide location data.
Notice also that nobody needs to file a subpoena. The cell companies can just hand it over, and often do. Because your brother is less important to the police than a drug dealer, they're not willing to blackmail the cell companies.
Perhaps you should edit that to remove the sentence beginning "because your brother..." You're talking about a person's loved one - compassion rules...
That is (unfortunately) not entirely true. If they have reason to suspect there is an immediate risk of injury or death, they can locate the phone (assuming it's on) with a high degree of accuracy (at the very least, cell tower triangulation, if not GPS activation).
We had a situation a few years ago where a couple kids had skipped school and gone joyriding in a quarry. Their parents contacted the police, who contacted the cell phone company, and the cell company gave them a reasonably accurate fix (I assume this was voluntary on the part of the phone company, given how quickly it happened).
in that instance it was likely that the parents were the rightful owner of that information because the account was in their name so therefore there was no need to involve a judge
This depends on where you are located, but for the most part the answer is no - unless you are a member of a law enforcement agency you will not be able to get this data from the cell phone company. Depending on the country, cell phone provider and law enforcement agency, they will probably need a warrant or court order as well.
tangentially wrt. "Depending on the country ... need a warrant or court order " - in Ukraine conflict both sides were using cell phone realtime data for tracking opponents. In particular during August incursion at least some Russian paratrooper platoons were tracked and finally hit that way. Young people who grew up having cell phones all around them and they had it with them during the incursion. Gradually both sides have learned at least to turn cell phones off - so far it seems that that is enough, at least no clear indications to the opposite - before entering combat zones.
On the flip side, if you're an adult and trying to "disappear" for.. whatever reason you've chosen (it's your prerogative), social media has made that difficult.
An adult trying to disappear would not have a very hard time saying, "Hey, everybody! I'm going to take some time away from social media and go on a trip. I'll be back on-line in a couple months. I look forward to reading all your posts when I'm back." In some ways, I think social media makes it easier to disappear, as you can give everybody a plausible explanation at once, rather than trying to talk individually to the many people who might be plausibly concerned by a sudden disappearance.
I didn't mean go on a long vacation. I meant disappear and start a new life. You wouldn't post about that on social media, you'd just pack your bags and go. But social media will have your friends being detectives about where you've gone, someone from reddit might see you at the airport or grabbing coffee, etc.
Unfortunately, it's actually not that hard. My brother vanished when he was 23 and to this day, he's still a missing person's case. You'd hope that your friends would search for you, but most people are just too busy with their own lives to exert too much effort when it's not their problem.
He was someone with over a thousand Facebook friends, but no one seemed to notice that he stopped posting. The first few months he was missing, his friends continued to send him invites to parties, events, etc. As time when on and he didn't respond, they naturally stopped sending invites. A few friends sent emails saying, "Hey, I haven't seen you in a while. I'm worried. Call me." Eventually they too stopped. All it took was a matter of months before people stopped to reach out.
When news broke that he was first missing, his friends seemed more annoyed than anything. I suppose most of them thought this was a hoax (not that he's ever done anything like this before). They were reluctant to be bothered, to break up their day to simply answer a few questions the detectives had to paint a better picture of my brother. I don't blame them too much, no one wants additional drama in their lives.
Of course, the scenario will be unique for everyone. Everyone has a different group of friends, different resources. Unfortunately for me, I was blocked. I practically had access to all his accounts with the help of his girl friend, but at the end of the day, I couldn't get a subpoena to see if there were any deleted gmail or facebook messages. I wasn't able to get a subpoena to track the cellphone fast enough. He was just casted off as a statistic, just another quarter-life crisis suicide case. I sincerely hope the family gets some good news about Dan Ha, because there's nothing worse than having to wake up every morning wondering if you could have done more.
You're commenting like I refuted or disagreed with you about something - I was just positing the opposite, that yes, because of what you said it's more difficult for someone who wants to go run away from everything to do so. I was agreeing with you.
or just drop out of social media without notice, far better than letting know your plans. Its so very easy to vanish in this country if you are smart. Most of those who do only get caught by chance or some stupid act.
One recent in Georgia was only caught as part of a traffic stop.
Or the Eric Frein case in Pennsylvania, where the idea of searching abandoned buildings in the area apparently never occurred to the elite state and Federal police agencies.
You don't have to be smart to hide from the police... you just have to be smarter than the police. Of course, they have the advantages of unlimited money, unlimited patience, and (apparently) unlimited surveillance power, so staying hidden for the rest of your life is going to be a lot harder than dropping out of sight in the first place.
Frein was probably a case of too obvious. You have a woodsman hiding in the woods. Where do you look? Looking in old buildings is obvious, but also exactly where you'd think frein would expect the police to look and the last place he'd hide. Still should have looked a little closer, but it's like I knew you'd know I would you'd know I would know not to hide there...
If the little bit of time this stays up on front page, would help find him, then by all means let it be. You have my support for this. I hope, wherever he is, he is in good health.
It doesn't shock me at all -- It's one of the reason's I got the hell out of SF, and I'm not going back. It's an effect of the monster we've created, the collateral damage of our industry that the lottery winners, the VCs, the media, and the politicians all sweep under the rug. It's an effect of the "don't show weakness" cultural norm that we've created for men, and it's about time we get over ourselves and tear it down.
Not the city - certainly nothing that's can be solved by city hall. But tech as a whole, and even moreso in SF specifically, is a pretty hostile-to-mental-health place to work. Everyone being shitty to themselves (and those around them) because of the 1-in-a-some-large-number-here chance of becoming an instant millionaire.
Sounds crazy, but this is an irrational fear that I have for myself or loves ones; I'll go out one day but won't make it at my destination without anyone knowing where I am.
I know share my current GPS location with my family, so that they always know where we all are, and the last place we were at before going missing.
I try to be polite and respectful when I disagree on HN, but you are honestly an ass. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you're just ignorant and not an idiot.
When you asked for a "reason" for depression, you clearly implied a human cause. You may even have implied that he just "felt bad" about something that happened to him. That is wrong to the point of being offensive. You wouldn't say, "Why did he get brain cancer?" or "Why does she have Parkinson's?" Depression is an illness.
It's not considered curable, though it is highly treatable for some people. And the curability of something doesn't dictate a "reason" or lack of one. Illness is often senseless and random, especially something with a genetic factor such as depression.
Generally what i have seen is that people get depressed because of some painful event which happened in their lives.
Like, you get depressed when your partner leaves you, or you're fired from a job or death of a loved one. So, i haven't seen anyone getting depressed without any painful emotion. Maybe I am highly wrong in that.
Lets say, I clear my ignorance by believing/understanding that depression is an illness without any reason. But, making a statement like "depression needs no reason" ain't correct either. Both possibilities exist.
If I may rephrase, I was just curious about the reason, if it existed, why Dan Ha was depressed.
> So, i haven't seen anyone getting depressed without any painful emotion. Maybe I am highly wrong in that.
Yes, you are wrong, though it is slightly confusing. We use the term "depressed" in more than one way. One way is the way you used it, which is more colloquial and means "down in the dumps." The other is clinical depression [1], which is probably what smt88 is talking about.
People often get touchy about depression (as you can see by the downvotes and by smt88's sharp response to your questions) because it is very frustrating to the clinically depressed when non-clinically depressed people tell them to "just cheer up" or look for some easy reason, when such a thing just doesn't exist.
Incidentally, I didn't see anything about depression in the article. Why did you ask in the first place?
> Like, you get depressed when your partner leaves you, or you're fired from a job or death of a loved one. So, i haven't seen anyone getting depressed without any painful emotion. Maybe I am highly wrong in that.
There are normal emotions - such as as grief - that occur after a painful event. If those feelings don't dissipate over time; if they continue to interfere with day to day living; then you might want to call that "reactive depression".
But you do not need a traumatic event to suffer depression and it's more common to not have any one specific event.
> I was just curious about the reason,
That's none of your business. It's voyeuristic and intrusive.
First, it doesn't matter why this person is/was depressed - it's not our business. Depression, like many other illnesses, is a private matter and only the person suffering has the right to decide who to tell and how much information to share. The fact that Dan Ha is missing does not change this.
Second, while the onset of depression can sometimes be triggered by one or more specific events, the truth is that many cases of depression have no discernible cause. When someone says that "depression needs no reason", they simply mean that there doesn't need to be any specific trigger. Of course there is something underlying the condition - whether it's caused initially by an event, some chemical imbalance in the brain, some combination of the two, or something else that we don't understand yet, the point is that it doesn't have to be caused by "some painful event".
Third, don't assume that depression is a sudden condition. It can creep up on you over time without you realizing it. Or maybe you do realize it, but you do your best to handle it, to get over it on your own, to hide it from others. You can have highs and lows (not to be confused with bipolar or manic episodes), rather times when you feel you are doing better or worse. Maybe you go a week or a month thinking it's gone, only to wake up one morning with depression making itself known again. It can be months or years before anyone else notices, if they ever do. And the ones who do? It's not necessarily your closest friends - it could be a casual acquaintance or a coworker who notices the change.
Depression can consume you. You might think it just means feeling bad, but it can be much worse than that. It can mean feeling dead inside, or not feeling anything at all.
Even when you make a choice to accept help (whether you seek it out or it's forced on you - hopefully before you do something extremely stupid), it can take a long time to recover. Medication often helps, even though we don't no exactly why - yes, we know approximately how the medication changes things in your brain - affecting dopamine uptake, for example, but we don't know why it does it. And it's not a matter of simply going on medication. You have to work with your doctor to figure out the right level for you - and that level might change over time. What worked for a time may be too much later, causing side effects that leave you feeling bad. Adjusting the dose can mean feeling worse for a couple of weeks while you wait for your body and mind to adjust! You sit at work feeling like you're about to fall asleep, and when you try to go to bed you stare at the ceiling for hours. You might be sitting or walking and feel a wave of dizziness. You gain or lose weight, seemingly without changes to your diet or routine. Even though you're not as depressed, it can be hard to go out and do things with people, leaving you feeling isolated.
Therapy can help at times, but it also takes time. You don't just sit down with a doctor and establish trust right away. It takes multiple sessions for a psychiatrist/psychologist to make a diagnosis. And they might not be the ones who can recommend medication either, so you still have to work with another doctor at the same time. Short term therapy ends up lasting for months, or years.
Finally, do you know what can be the worst thing about depression? People who tell you that there's no reason for you to be depressed. People who think it's easy to "stop thinking that way!" People who think that you ought to know why it's happening. People who say "get over it, you've got it good."
Don't believe you know what causes depression because even the people who spend their lives studying it admit that they can't really explain it yet - they can't put together the puzzle because they still haven't even found all the pieces!
For a brief moment I wondered if this is what I want to see on HN/Techcrunch. But we're a community, and lots of us live in SF - if it were a friend of mine, I'd be super happy to see this trending. Seems like the least we can do is have each others backs.