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Serial Killers Have Rapidly Declined Since The 1980s
(www.discovermagazine.com)
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this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2024
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Lots of great possibilities listed in article.
I was shocked that 60% of murders are solved. It was not that long ago that the solving rate was near 20%.
Tracking people is so much easier now I think.
Nowadays peopke bring their phone to a murder like a chump.
Some of the analytical software that can be applied to mobile phone cell ping and metadata alone is incredible. Not only is it able to show snapshots of a given period to identify patterns, but it can also be walked back in time to identify patterns which are increasing in their intensity. This can indicate changing behaviours in individuals and groups.
You might think the solution is to turn off your mobile, wrap it in foil, leave it at home, smash it ect but that's not the answer. A suddenly lost mobile agent is a red flag, as is an abnormally stationary one, or an abnormally repetitive one.
Imagine you're an analyst, and you're aware of a potential terror cell consisting of 5-8 members. You've identified from cell metadata that each member has met at least one other member at least once in person. Imagine then that 6 of these individuals either go off-line, or their phone remains stationary for an unusual amount of time, eg normally they would be at work. You could reasonably conclude that they are having a secret rendezvous in meatspace. Then, based on the time taken for each mobile to reconnect, and its position when it does, you might be able to heat map a list of possible locations that they could have met at, based on estimated travel time for each. Then you might find evidence of tgeir meetup from osint sources like CCTV or sat imagery.
If you dont want mobile phone metadata used to uncover your crimes, you should constantly behave unpredictably. Maybe carry a foil bag and keep your phone in it sometimes at work to simulate black spots. Maybe choose a mobile provider with the worst possible coverage. Sometimes leave your phone at home. You know those random spam messages you get on Signal or whatsapp? Converse with them occasionally, these act like red herrings in your interaction matrix. Anything that contributes as chaff, white noise, false signals, whatever you want to call them, anything will help if it makes you unpredictable.
And that's just phones. CCTV, satellite imagery, other peoples phones and devices, freeway ALPR cameras, audio devices, all these things contribute to mapping your move.ents, constantly, over time.
Take solace that probably nobody is actually watching you, at least, no human is. Just an algorithm. When the algo detects youve deviated from your pattern, then it might flag you for human review, so try not to have an easily identifiable pattern, and chaff that bitch up as often as you can.
I know I'll sound like a bootlicker, but this is why I'm in favor of more street cameras for the city. It's obnoxious how often there's a picture of the car involved in something but no one catches them because there's no way to just follow the car to where it went.
because it's also a massive privacy invasion as well. If someone with access to the system decides they don't like me, they can stalk me, if someone hacks it, whatever is in there about me is now available to them. If the government wakes up one day and decides that it doesnt like people who have differing political opinions, suddenly they have a profile of who i am and what i do almost perfectly.
It's very much patriot act levels of national security, but for the individual. "we'll spy on you, but it's only so terrorism doesn't happen, we promise" and then uh, snowden shows up in the story.
Same thing with something as simple as tracking vehicles, it's a lose lose most of the time, and a win lose the rest of the time.
Well but people who attend protests should not be tracked through clothes they have purchased, for example.
I wonder if thats due to increasing competency/giveafuckness by authorites.
or if its due to decreasing competency amongst killers.
I believe that was discussed in the article. Along with early interventions that help little shits not grow into giant shits.
It was roughly 60% in 2018, which was lower than it was decades before that. It was 90% in the 1960s for instance. Murder clearance rates have been declining for decades. 2023 was under 50% and is a record low for murder clearance.
Basically more and more murders are going unsolved, and this is a trend stretching decades. National murder clearance rates have never been 20% since that data has been tracked.
Some cities are near that currently though, like Oakland. Interpreting police incompetence around murder cases as somehow indicating less serial killing is pretty absurd.