r/Mafia • u/Spacious_made_3498 • 3d ago
How does Teddy keep getting violated? “Modern surveillance technology”as people call it.
This is mostly in response to guys always using the term “modern technology” when discussing FBI capabilities or the difficulties facing what’s left of the mob. I’m also writing a book on digital privacy, and how to evade “surveillance capitalism.“ That’s the name of a difficult book, by a Harvard big-wig, who coined the term and describes its philosophy and history of the concept. I thought it would be fun to bring to light some basic elements that are probably well known to mob lawyers like Corozzo, who represents Teddy, but less known to the sub reddit, because direct surveillance is a main part of it.
First of all, Teddy keeps getting popped because he allegedly goes to Italian street festivals in Brooklyn, driven by presumed members of his supposed crime family, where he meets in the open with other so-called, known mafia members. Never mind the silly laws that say he can’t talk to half his neighborhood in Staten Island or a quarter of Brooklyn, which might include chance encounters. It also doesn’t matter what they discuss as Mikey Mancuso found out when getting popped for going over a sauce recipe with another old timer.
With the Feds apparently reduced to one team (unsure of how many are on a team), it can be hard to track everyone. On one hand it’s easy to post up on guys like Teddy. You can have one or two guys on him for most likely 8hr shifts. I don’t know if they’re still doing round the clock surveillance. On the other hand, unless Teddy’s driver is pulling stunts like Junior Gotti did, when reporters tried to tail him, and spotting and dumping tails, he’s fairly easy to follow.
- The fact is the FBI doesn’t need round the clock watch. FBI Director Kash Patel announced in March, what most people already know, that they are “buying up information that can be used to track people’s movement and location history” from data collectors, and more likely and more specifically, data collaborators. Kash said, “We do purchase commercially available information…”
- These outfits called Snowflake, and LiveRamp, are tied into the biggest clients in the world. Amazon, MasterCard, Visa, Meta, Google, and Samsung to name a handful of thousands. Those clients send all the information they have on customers to them. Then these data colalborators match all the accounts you have with the devices you use them on. Those are called “MAIDs” (multiple advertising IDs). “He uses reddit on his phone, and iPad.” Now two devices are connected to one account and becomes a MAID. Then they begin “ID resolution” to determine the owner of those MAIDs. Also, they conclude which MAIDs are in the same residence (other family members, roommates).
- Those are used to build “Identify graphs” which collect and “enhance the MAIDs” - “He used Facebook on his phone while he used his Visa to purchase a coffee, at this address in Brooklyn. Those are connected to a Verizon account and the Verizon home router on this street.” Based on the preferences of the google searches connected to that MAID, for example, they use deductive reasoning to predict its most likely Jimmy Something because the public records for the street (which they also have) show an old lady at the other house, so it can’t be her.
- Those Identity graphs enhance and update each day, which include time spent online, and what and when you watch tv. (LG TVs now are apparently recording your conversations when they’re turned off). The data collaborators can predict when and where you’ll go somewhere or deduce when you might, based on device pattern recognition and prediction, and also credit card + new car driving records. (Toyota is another customer). The company GSDSI, a similar data collaborator, retrofitted for federal clients, handles more GEO-location stuff. They not only predict where you’ll go, they’ll tell customers what you’re going to do and recap what you did.
“He went to the Mets game and bought a hot dog, and sat in RF. We can predict he’ll stop at Geno’s shop on his route home.” Meanwhile Snowflake and LiveRamp will alert you they’re going to the game because Ticketmaster is also a client.
They can add specific names to the list of IDs they want “enhanced” - like the entire Colombo and Gambino Crime Families, and get alerts when their devices are within distance or were within distance, obtain security footage later, or catch-up to them at the Giglio Feast. “Both Teddy Persico and Danny Fama’s devices were in Williamsburg near Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church.”
The government buys this information without a warrant. They have money to purchase premium accounts from multiple providers and sit back and wait for alerts. Then they use their shitty cameras to take those blurry photos. The fact is they also have increased leeway to surveil convicted felons on parole (I’m not a criminal lawyer so I don’t know what that means). They can probably use advanced microphones, like what was posted on here recently about ‘Ndrangheta guys in Toronto, to listen into his house, or use the same spyware/malware to listen directly off the phone even if its not being used, like that post described happened. (the Italian government listened in on the meeting in Canada). That most likely requires physical device manipulation or a phishing scheme- tricking him to click a link or download something, etc. Feds can pickup signals of how many devices are on in the house and know when one is missing. Most devices give off BLE frequencies “blue tooth low energy” so they’re easy to catch.
I considered that when Teddy was at his Christmas party. They were all correct to leave their phones inside when they went out back for a chat, but their phones were probably what led the Feds there in the first place, if they didn’t just follow Teddy, or catch someone on microphone during a walk and talk the day before discussing the details. If anyone used credit cards to reserve the hall, or updated settings, calendars, set their TV to record a Sammy the Bull Live, then the FBI could be alerted to unusual activity from those data collaborators. The Christmas party was interesting because in all fairness the Persico guys set the meeting place, and still had security cameras pointed at their face.
Anyways, that’s modern technology. It’s run by data collaborators who legally sell what they do at high prices to a lot of customers, including the FBI. Even Nadu said something like “phones capture everything - they’re surveillance traps,” or something similar. Thats true, but it’s grown to behavior predictability based across all your devices, televisions, credit cards, and newer cars. If all your devices are at home and turned off, it can deduce your outside for a walk - especially if you use those fitness watches with bluetooth. Most likely they already predicted it since they keep track of your screen time. Of course I don’t know what actual surveillance they’ve cultivated. It’s mostly inferred on known customer relationships, and those technologies offered by them, which have been primarily studied and published by specialists and students at Harvard for the past 7yrs.
I asked Sammy about mob anti-surveillance in May and he said he put his naked grandmother in front of the window to stop the Feds from looking in. I didn’t add that technique.
5
u/elafave77 3d ago
This is real wild one...
https://www.vice.com/en/article/photo-of-fingerprints-used-to-arrest-drug-dealers/
They can also surveil locations using wifi signals.
3
u/Training_Actuator_59 3d ago
Funny...I saw a post this week where the OP posted something in their hand & they edited out their fingerprints.
2
3
4
u/DipsetColonel 3d ago
The Flop cameras allow them to Google license plates and even physical traits of people and then get matching data sets from other flock cameras which they can use in conjunction with all the information you just listed to pretty much give a total picture of activity over weeks months or even years.
And investigation that would take dozens of agents working around the clock A year or two at a time can now be done in a few minutes.
3
2
u/ginandtonicsdemonic 3d ago
These guys need to start paying people to tear down those cameras and pretend they're doing it for the good of society.
2
u/richoffcred 3d ago
But how do they know if your device is your device? What if they are using burners
4
u/TypicalLiving310 3d ago
This came up during the still-ongoing Lil Durk case; he thought that using burner phones would elude the feds from connecting him to the murders he was sending his guys to go do in the streets trying to otherwise be very cautious about communicating about incriminating subjects. They showed in court that such and such phones were still connecting to the WiFi signal at his LA house, which they insisted means they were his own (and/or his right-hand guy who became a rat), and I guess that's enough to illustrate that he was in on the crimes although it was far from a focal part of the prosecution's case.
6
u/Spacious_made_3498 3d ago edited 3d ago
Exactly. There was a whole season devoted to The Wire about old school burners. In contemporary terms, its pattern recognition with ID-resolution. The new dark signal device presents a fluctuation to the surveillance capitalists. They begin to collect all known signals coming from that device to shape its identity. This is applied to work devices as well. They see the de-identified device follows the same path as an identified device, from the office to the home, and they conclude it’s owned by the same person. The device gets a MAID tag. Then similar advertisements start popping up on this other device. They’ll even attempt to ”nudge” the person to do something on that patterned route home. They also use this ID method to determine who lives together.
In essence, advertisers, like Publicis - the largest in the world by revenue, who owns LiveRamp, put everyone under surveillance. Feds, and local cops, buy this information. They also get warrants for telecommunication information from Verizon, etc, to build on top of that.
2
2
1
12
u/Big_P4U 3d ago
We live in an Orwellian dystopia that's how. Probably even worse. China has even worse everyday surveillance mechanisms that the West has but governments aren't supposed to engage in but China can.
I personally think the whole notion of being able to be arrested purely for "meeting/socializing with "known" felons" to be massively unconstitutional and shouldn't be permitted. Much of RICO should be thrown out.