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FEMA To Use Cell Phone Signals To Find Survivors
twistah writes: "CNN had an interview with a representative of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the agency helping with the New York WTC rescue effort, who said that Lucent has given them technology to trace the signal of cell phones. The idea is that people will give them phone numbers of cell phones and pagers of people missing due to the WTC collapse, which FEMA will call and attempt to trace the signal to find the missing people. FEMA has now put this information on their web site, and are dubbing it the 'Wireless Emergency Response Team.'"
Can people live this long under rubble? Or are they just finding bodies like this?
My other car is first.
I work as a co-op for the Mitre Corporation [www.mitre.org] and last week it was announced on a company email list that about a dozen MITREites are down in NYC helping find people with this cell phone technology. Details have been a little sketchy as to precisely what was being used and such, so it's nice to get that information. I'm really proud to be part of a company doing what we can to help.
09
I was thinking about this the other day, but if people were frantically calling these cellphones then the battery would almost certainly be dead by now, and even if this were not the case my phone will only last about 4 days without getting charged as it would ramp up the power output to try and get a signal.
Hopefully this will be a good launching point for this technology in the future
For safety reasons cell phones are going to have GPS receivers in them soon to tell 911 operators where you are when calling on your cell phone. This would be totally useful here, because there are going to be a lot more cell phones in that pile of rubble than living people. While I agree with the privacy concerns (including my own) this would have been totally helpful here. (Especially since most cellphones don't have more than 3-5 days of battery life. They should all be running down by now).
-Sean
by now, any of those ppls' cell phone batteries have long since worn out.
Intercarve Networks, LLC
there is a blurb at techienews here about E911 with a link to an article about when phone companies were supposed to have it.
After so many hours, woulden't most cell phone batteries have run out by now. I hope I'm wrong.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
And what about a link to the CNN interview? Or isn't it on the web? J.
Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earthbound misfit, I.
http://www.markvd.net/
This is my sig, there are many like it but this one is mine...
According to news reports earlier in the week, there were indeed quite a few cell phone calls from those people trapped under the rubble. But right now after 4 days, those people would have died due to injuries and lack of water and food. I just wonder, if they have this kind of technology, why didn't they use it earlier?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I read a number of news reports earlier in the week. I think /. is just a bit slow on this one.
:)
-Sean
Cell phones only have a standby time of about 3 -4 days.. many peoples hopes are long gone.
However, GO lucent.. maybe this will increase their stocks..
I am not crazy, I am fully in sanity
One would hope that those trapped would have realized rescue efforts were going to take several days or more and powered down their cell phones in order to conserve the battery.
But I suppose that is speculative, at best.
Goals are deceptive - the unaimed arrow never misses.
Its been a few days already. How are they going to find signals from phones whose batteries are almost dead, through rock and other signal blockers?
Most peoples' phones work fine for a couple of days, but unless everyone down there has an extra battery pack or a working charger and plug, their cel phones won't do them much good at all.
"Look at me, I invented the stove!" -- Ben Franklin
The company I work for is doing the same thing. They haven't done it already because it's never been done before. With CDMA phones it's not as simple as looking for a specific frequency, they have to identify the phone by the code it uses to decode the signal.
People I work with have been working very hard to modify the basestation software to allow them to search for a particular phone. They are basically strapping a small base station to their back and walking around the rubble.
It's the usual argument. Which would you rather have - anonymity, or the ability to at least *try* and stop things like the WTC crash from happening?
I know it seems ridiculous to you Americans, and I'll probably get flamed to oblivion (though that is not the intention.) But if it means even the slightest chance of preventing this kind of thing from happening again, I'd sacrifice some anonymity any day.
A working cellphone transmits regularly; how about
a field meter with a directional antenna?
I remember an article on Slashdot quite a long time ago that there was some technology being developed for military use that would detect the electric signals emmitted by a human heart's natural pacemaker. The military application would be to allow soldiers to see targets and members of their own force, even when distinguishing a target using infared or night vision would be difficult.
Maybe someone has a link to this story? Or more details about the technology? It sounds like it would be useful in a situation like this.
I also heard on CNN that they can use this "technology" with Palm Pilots as well, but they were very sketchy on the details.
------
www.moneybythenumbers.com
Who must help and support FEMA are cell-phone technology specialists from Europe, it's hard FEMA to help anyone using this method without a hand from some European IT's.
There may still be people alive under the rubble. There was supposedly several 'basement' levels under the buildings that had stores and restaurants, which would be a possible source for food and water. Also, it was mentioned that the some of the lower-levels were flooded might might also provide water. Humans can survive several weeks without food. It's water that's really essential.
There's lots of talk about the phones not being able to get a signal from a suitable cell site since the closest one was on top of one of the towers.
But it seems to me that in order to find people in this fashion, the cell phone wouldn't need to be operational in the normal sense, I.E able to place / receive voice calls, or any calls for that matter.
If the phone was simlpy able to generate a strong enough RF signal to penetrate all that debris, it would be trivial to triangulate a position from that signal.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you wouldn't need to actually 'call' the phone. and wouldn't actually have to answer or ring at all. The phone would simply have to send out RF energy, searching for a signal (cell site), which it would be doing automatically ever since it lost it's signal. Granted if the phone were able to place and receive calls it would be that much better, but perhaps low-tech is the way to go.
On another note, couldn't the rescuers use radar to search for sizeable voids in the debris? This way they could get to the areas with the best potential of having a live person in them.
Karma...what's that? I just speak my mind.
a few smart people would only have their phones one an hour a day (or something), thus conserving power..
Today I masturbated while fantasizing about the papergirl.
This is an attitude that can only come from someone who has studied very little history, and/or is too young to remember government abuses in the past.
The problem is that if you don't restrict and control the tools that governments have available to them, they will abuse them. It's human nature - if you were an FBI agent, wouldn't you use whatever tools you had at your disposal to track down bad guys? It's not far from there to doing what Sen. Joseph McCarthy was doing in the 1950s: tracking down people engaging in "un-American activities", the kind of term which of course is defined by whatever over-zealous government official is conducting such investigations.
There are countless cases of over-zealousness of prosecutors, police, and other officials, and to an extent, that's the way we want it - but that's exactly why there are laws and structures to keep these people in check, and to make sure they don't harrass people who are considered by law to be "innocent until proven guilty".
It might seem to make sense to give the government more leeway in this time of crisis, but even if it does make sense, any extra powers granted to them should be temporary, and only usable in pursuing terrorist activity. Otherwise, the terrorists will win in a much bigger way than they have already: they'll succeed in making the United States a place where the government abridges its citizens' freedoms, a place where many citizens may end up with good reasons to fear their government.
I'm a Spanish Telecommunications Engineer.
I know of cell-phone technologies. And I think it's not difficult to locate a cell-phone if you the base-station can receive signal from it.
For those who don't know how this works, here is a brief explanation: I have a cell-phone ("mobile terminal", MT) and I'm sending signal to a base-station (BS), and the BS says to my MT how much power it has to use and how long before its time slot has to send the signal. Knowing the power and the time, it's easy to locate a cell-phone using at least data from three base-stations (yes, you have to use triangulation).
I think it's not that difficult. In fact, it's easy and the police uses this approach to locate people. Israel even uses this way to kill terrorists (or potential terrorists).
--
Pau Garcia i Quiles
Enginyer Tècnic de Telecomunicacions, esp. Telemàtica
Download the Linux Kernel 2.4.0 Poster now! (PDF)
I've actually been at the Wireless Emergency Response call center most of the morning and am scheduled to go back 3am Monday. Yes, it may not be a good chance...but it's still a chance. You can still hear the horror in people's voices. Being in Georgia we've been so removed from the victums and family...being at the call center really brings it home...
I do hate to say this, but a travisty of this magnitute will have some positive outcomes. Weither it be search and resuce tech and procedure, building arcitecture, or just plain people looking over their shoulder, this was necessacary for humanity to experience even though it blows. Look at the Titanic. Because of that, regulations were created to make sea travel safe.
= They say "guns don't kill people, people kill people", but I think the gun helps. -Eddie Izzard =
Hi!
The swedish version of 911 automatically tracks down all income cellphone calls to a 50m precision.
It is extremly useful when people don't know where they are, the emergency response team can get a postion that is close enough for visual search.
-tas
Both Nokia and Ericsson has a location function include in there networkequipment due to customer demands and laws.
Some companys in sweden even use GPS/Cellphone locators to track there employes. One of the most known cases are Taxi Stockholm where every car is followed by the central giving them an advantage over other companies.
-tas
I'm posting here out of desperation. Multiple government contacts have alluded that the Yanks downed a plane on Wednesday. I can't find any concrete info anywhere. Does anyone have any sources/URLs/actual information? I want anything confirming, clarifying, or disproving this.
I feel like a fruitcake conspiracy theorist posting this, and will probably get modded down past the sewer, but at this stage, I'm looking for anything.
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- We're all in the mood to send a message.
We've seen the images for days now, often through moist eyes: The horrible stream of videos showing every possible view of the plane piercing the steel building and bursting out of the other side. The twin towers and other buildings crumbling to the ground. The once mighty Pentagon dented like a warrior's shield; a gaping plane-shaped hole in a Pennsylvania field.
The next phase immediately unfolds as tears and acts of personal heroism grow into anger and determination. American flags fly everywhere. We will find them. And we will punish them. We will send a message.
Well, let me propose another way to send a message. Actually, it's not really my idea. I've been hearing it over and over again from our readers.
Buy!
That's right. On Monday invest as much and as often as you can in America.
Send the Dow ($INDU: news, chart, profile) screaming for the moon.
Call your broker, sign on to yourbroker.com, dust off your PalmVII. Do whatever it takes, so when that New York Stock Exchange bell rings Monday, it looks like the doors flying open on Nordstrom's annual sale.
Obviously, any one who invests is taking a risk. And each of us has to look into our heart to see how much we want to risk, and what the rewards are for that risk.
Said one investor named "Neckbreaker 2000" on an Internet message board: "Terrorists want us to crash. No selling! Long USA."
"I will not short it. I can't in good conscience profit off betting against my nation," wrote "Detu10yr" in another post. "I will take the portfolio hit if necessary, but sleep at night."
Another explained that he will put $2,500 into stocks Monday morning. "The reason that I will risk my cash is to show the terrorists that American financial buildings may crumble, but Americans don't. If I lose my money, I will consider it a gift to those who have died." If there's a profit, he said, he'll donate it to the Red Cross.
Logan Darrow, publisher of American Venture magazine, suggests that every investor buy 100 shares of stock and hold it. In what he calls the "Great American Stock Revival," Darrow wrote that it would show the terrorists their attack "failed to destroy America."
This is the clearest message Americans can send the world. It says that we are determined not to be pushed around, that we will put our money where our mouths are and stand up for our economy and the way of life it supports, which is exactly what the enemy aimed at when they flew those planes into the World Trade Center buildings.
Let the army fight with their weapons, guns.
Let us fight with what we have: our wealth and determination.
It's a proven fact that after most national disasters, stock markets have risen over the following year. Everything else happens faster these days, why not this?
If our markets soar on Monday, we will stun the world and prove that we are serious. That message will be very clear: If you want your fortune to be safe, invest it in America and its industry.
Buy stocks. Support every company you believe in.
Execute those trades early and often.
It's as close as you can get to feeling like you are pulling the trigger against our enemies.
Last night I dug up this passage from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and typed it in:
The Earth.
Visions of it swam sickeningly through his nauseated mind. There was no way his imagination could feel the impact of the whole Earth having gone, it was too big. He prodded his feelings by thinking that his parents and his sister had gone. No reaction. He thought of all the people he had been close to. No reaction. Then he thought of a complete stranger he had been standing behind in the queue at the supermarket two days before and felt a sudden stab--the supermarket was gone, everything in it was gone. Nelson's Column had gone! Nelson's Column had gone and there would be no outcry, because there was no one left to make an outcry. From now on Nelson's Column only existed in his mind. England only existed in his mind--his mind, stuck here in this dank smelly steel-lined spaceship. A wave of claustraphobia closed in on him.
England no longer existed. He'd got that--somehow he'd got it. He tried again. America, he thought, has gone. He couldn't grasp it. He decided to start smaller again. New York was gone. No reaction. He'd never seriously believed it existed anyway. The dollar, he thought, has sunk forever. Slight tremor there. Every Bogart movie has been wiped, he said to himself, and that gave him a nasty knock. McDonald's, he thought. There is no longer any such thing as a McDonald's hamburger.
He passed out. When he came round a second later he found he was sobbing for his mother.
Of course, Dent's thoughts were of complete and utter physical destruction of the entire planet. However, the comparison is not totally unjustified since many of us feel that the entire culture of the world has changed in an irreversable way. In a sense, the old Earth is gone.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2001/09/14/afgha nistan/index.html.
here's the lead:
An Afghan-American speaks
You can't bomb us back into the Stone Age. We're already there. But you can start a new world war, and that's exactly what Osama bin Laden wants.
By Tamim Ansary
Nokia 5165 is one of the most common cell phones in use in America. It automatically goes to sleep in standby mode and only wakes up when it senses an incoming call. My Nokia will go for more than a week without a charge if I don't make or receive many calls. Nokia says it will go at least 200 hours (a little over 8 days), but I've got as many as 10 days between charges with mine.
A receiver would only tell the cell phone carrier where they were, it wouldn't tell the person on the other end of the line where they were.
With the current situation this would do no good. The survivors already know they are under a pile of rubble. GPS won't shed any new light for them.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
...if that post above it's any type of sophisticated trolling or it's a poetry?
There are multiple ways to locate a cell phone or pager, and I suspect they will use all of them. Some have already mentioned GPS, that's rare to non-existant in today's devices. More likely are triangulation, or simple signal strength.
Several cell providers have been using triangulation to work towards the E911 requirements. Rather than implement expensive GPS solutions, they simply track a phone from multiple antennas, and triangulate the location of the phone from that. While normal accuracy is only +- a quarter mile, in an instance like this local portable cells could bet set up around the site and generate high accuracy.
Even if that can't be done, making a cell phone talk to the cell site (telling it to reregister, for instance) would allow you to listen for its signal with a strength meter. Walk away it reduces, walk towards it gets stronger. In a relatively small area like this it would work well.
Of course, there is also low tech. If they ring the phones, and make the area quiet, they can hear them ring. For those very near the surface this could be particularly effective.
Others have commented on batteries. Many cell phones are probably running low, but I would venture about 1/3 of today's phones last a week on standby, and would still be able to ring. Two way pagers and other communications devices often last longer, two weeks or more at a go. They could still have a huge number of these devices active. That said, they need to be careful. Ringing them too much will run out batteries.
I wish them luck, it's a good idea.
Instead, they're only trying to get a very general location of the phones, to determine whether they're at "Ground Zero" or not. If not, they could potentially be used to find if somebody's at a hospital in a coma, or if they somehow got out of NYC in time and for some reason haven't been able to contact someone.
These phones aren't really being used to locate the survivors, they're being used to gain some clue as to whether a person is buried, or might have survived. It won't do a great job of locating people, but it will help discriminate if a person is "likely dead" or "might have gotten away."
I also heard that no actual calls have to be made to trace a phone's location, but I'd guess that it must at least be turned on and able to receive a call. And yes, as many posters have said, batteries are going to be a problem this many days later. But any more information on what happened to these people will surely be welcomed by their families.
-- Imagine how much more advanced our technology would be if we had eight fingers per hand.
Has anyone heard about a law being passed that doesn't allow encrypted emails being sent into the US? I heard a rumor that it was passed a couple days after the attacks.
OK.. I REALLY hope this works... but something tells me that the odds are VERY low :(
- It has been about 4 days since these phones have been charged. If someone alive is unconscious they probably didn't try to conserve battery life. Hence the phone doesn't have power. About 50% of modern phones can last over 4 days (mine can last a week) so there is still some hope here.
- If (hopefully) its owner *is* alive, he/she probably tried to dial out (and obviously failed because they would have been rescued). If they were smart they would try to turn off the phone to conserve battery life. When the rescuers try to dial the number it would go right to voice mail.
I hope I am wrong...
Kevin
Not a bad idea, although as others have said, a lot of batteries are dead by now.
I heard on the news that some body-sniffing dogs are now being employed with success. At this point, this may be a better lower tech solution.
Something of a morbid subject, still...
What about cooperating with the other Arab states?
We kill the Taliban then you guys split up the country or administer it or whatever you want. The US is happy because OBL is gone. These other Arab states would presumably be happy for the chance to improve the lives of their fellow Arabs.
And Pakistan has already agreed to let us through. Really, does the author think they are the only person who knows anything?
Know someone who is stealing cable? Report them!
Did anyone even stop for a *MOMENT* to think? Today is Saturday
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Yep, same here. I have a Qualcomm 2100. WOuld've gotten a Nokia but you can't with sprint PCS. Oh well.
I have placed images of outside the US Embassy in Ottawa, Ontario in Canada. Canadians have been placing various momentos, and memorial offerings along the outer fence. Feel free to repost this URL wherever appropriate...
http://207.198.90.123/Memorial/index.html
-kilk
narrowly, as far as i know (from watching bbc streams), pakistan has agreed only to the terms of a u.n. security council resolution. although i don't know what this says it is unlikely to be a complete rubber stamp of u.s. wishes. thus overflies and/or use of pakistan air basese are probably allowed. launching a ground invasion, like desert storm is probably not, (yet).
but i think the more general point of the piece -- that obl wants to provoke massive retaliation as a prequel to more moves on his part -- is worth considering.
taking into account the highly complex and sophisticated nature of the plot so far -- one that has been years in the planning, apparently -- it would be foolish to not at least entertain the notion that provoking retaliation isn't part of the wider game plan.
when an american play chess against a palestinian?
The palestinian wins, because the american has no towers.
If you could get a cell phone to answer a special emergency incomming call, and if you could place a cell tower close to the site - you could do a triangulation of the vicem by setting up three loude noise makers spaced far appart. Each would trigger in sequece, and a triangulation could be made by determining how long the cellphone took to hear the noise. This would allow rescue workers to fin the locations of the phone - even if the GPS signal can't get to the phone, the noise could.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Dude, neither Afghanistan, nor any of the surrounding states have any significant Arab population at all.
You really should learn something about the world before you start mouthing off about how best to rule and slaughter it.
...boy, talk about making sure my next cell phone has "killer" battery life.
How *was* cellphone service the the WTCs? I've worked in large sky scrapers before and cell service has *always* sucked. Everyone I knew forwarded their phone, turned it off and ploped it in the charger while they were in their cubicals. And what about those freesets? Some people, believe it or not, don't own/use cell phones.
Some mobiles have a lot longer standby time than you think, for example, 5110s can easily stay on standby for at least 10 days, my 8210 can do about 4 or 5 (considering it consumes 3ma in standby, even less with no signal).
Thank you for that link.
Ansary's little essay rings with more truth than can be found in a ton of the knee-jerk verbiage flowing out of the media.
I survived the Dick Cheney Presidency 7 to 9 AM 7-21-07
Geeze, you're right on with this. Baby out
with the bath water. Let's become a totalitarian
police state so that we only have terrorist
and the government to fear, instead of just
terrorist.
As far as secured doors. Why not secured doors+
sleeping gas in the cabins or massive depressurization as a deterent?
I think what needs to happen when we go after Osama Bin Laden is we need to fill a bunch of bombers up with wreckage from the World Trade Center and drop it on his ass.
Bin Laden tried once before to bomb the WTC. He obviously is very intested it seeing the World Trade Center up close. We should oblige him.
After all, we dropped Saddam's limo on Bagdad.
Dude, neither Afghanistan, nor any of the surrounding states have any significant Arab population at all.
Arabia is just the peninsula and not the surrounding area. You got me "dude". That's one point for you. Congratulations.
Your correction however is irrelevant. Let me help you stay focused on the following fact. The US is going to retaliate and people are going to die. This particular thread is about what can be done to limit the destruction by removing the incentive for the survivors to grow up to become terrorists. What I suggest is rebuilding the country or countries that will be destroyed. This seems to have worked well for Germany and Japan. It may not work well in the Middle East because there is so much resentment of the US there. What I suggest is turning over reconstruction to the Arab states - Saudi Arabia for example.
Somehow I doubt you'll have anything intelligent to add but I invite you to surprise me.
Hmm, well glad to hear it. I worked for 'em for 10 weeks. They were completely unethical bastards. Hired me for a 5 month contract, which turned out to be really 4 months, then pressured me to go on full-time at half my consulting rate. When I didn't take the deal they fired me, then used my 10 weeks of work to fulfill 1 yr contract with the NSA.
Nice, real nice.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
No, they were in a position to do that if it had gotten any farther but it went down instead. The passengers found out about the WTC via cell-hone and apparently decided that if they were going to die they'd go out on their own terms.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
This is an incredible story about some of the amazing new military technology we've got.
We'll need it, too, if this guy is right. It's a well-written essay.
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
According to CNN/Yahoo, Colin Powell basically got them to agree to cooperate with any "reply" to terrorist efforts...in other words, roll your tanks and fly your planes over the country.
> for the love of God, change your .sig
As good as done sir. It's not quite appropriate as it was. (It came from a newspaper article about a house lit on fire by a sparkler)
My other car is first.
Two factors affect phone battery life that I haven't seen mentioned here yet, so I'll inject them here. (I used to have a job selling Sprint and AT&T cell phones, so I learned more of this than normal people want to know.)
1) Part of it is just the age of your phone. Newer phones have more efficient power saving systems. No great surprise there.
2) Many newer phones (and virtually all the cheap ones that some phone companies give to new customers) only use digital cell networks. Phones using all-digital networks need less power than analog cell phones. Given the same amount of stored energy in a battery, the digital phone often lasts twice as long as the analog one.
It sounds like zulux has a dual-mode phone (as do I). When a dual-mode phone loses its connection to the digital cell towers (which are still rather rare outside cities), it switches to analog (and drains its battery faster). If it can't get a good signal at all, it then switches to power-save mode. Dual-mode phones thus have wider coverage areas than all digital phones, at the cost of a shorter battery life outside urban areas.
(Incidentally, many dual-mode phones allow the user to deactivate mode switching, so it's all or nothing. This is useful in those freak zones where you're too close to an analog tower, and the phones switches modes when it doesn't need to.)
Summing up my rambling:
1) Analog phones (which are fairly rare nowadays) buried in the WTC rubble are almost certainly out of juice. Two or three days is about it for analog phones.
2) Digital and dual-mode phones might still have juice, depending on the obvious variables like battery capacity, power-saving technology, and whether the phones are wasting juice trying to connect to the analog network.
3) It's always a good idea to keep your phone batteries fully charged, and it's OK to splurge and buy the extra long-life batteries, if that's an option for your phone.
This has been a public service annoucement from your friendly neighborhood ex-phone salesman.
Proud to be / Smiley-free / Since Nineteen / Ninety-Three
but i'd just like to say - in this week of praying, candle burning, and flag waving - if you'd really like to "do something", here are a few suggestions:
1. buy or check out a book on the middle east, american foreign policy, islam, terrorism, the history of afghanistan/arabic nations, or other relevant topics. intelligence and rational thinking will be our greatest weapons in this new "war".
2. turn off the major networks, and listen to npr or the bbc, use the internet, and read diverse newspapers. stop getting all of your information from the "gatekeepers". realize that all media could have potential biases and hidden agendas, so get information from as many different sources as possible.
3. think for yourself; really think, don't just react. use logic, but never forget how you felt on 9/11.
4. pay attention to what your government is doing. this is more important than ever. it's shocking, but true: at this moment our government is attempting use these attacks to push through highly questionable legislation. capital gains taxes and carnivore should not be discussed on the heels of this crises, while emotions are running high. no matter your opinion, force your congressmen to cool their jets before making any more major decisions.
5. have dinner table discussions with your friends and family. talk with arab-americans about their experiences. talk about real issues, not just lurid details and rumours. keep an open mind. encourage those around you to think rationally.
america must become the nation we are supposed to be: a just nation founded on independent spirit and free thought, not fear, hatred and ignorance. i refuse to say that ignorance on the part of americans is responsible for this attack, but it is to blame for the hostile attitude of foreign citizens (still, notice how the news has connsistently shown the same scant footage of celebration, with just a few people participating in each case). arrogance and ignorance are to blame for our failure to prevent this attack, and we can no longer think of ourselves as isolated or invincible.
Granted, battery life on cell phones and pagers is an issue, but...
:(
Don't these devices also use a crystal-based signal from which to run? Those little quartz devices are not immune to shock, by any means. I'd even hazard to guess that falling a hundred stories, let alone having a hundred stories' worth os rubble fall on them, is very likely to render the crystals inoperative.
Still, some units may have remained functional. Here's hoping they find some people with this approach, tho I suspect that even a well-designed unit would have been pounded unto dust with the collapse
Lemon curry?
...who reflexively twitched at the naming of FEMA?
Too much Deus Ex, I guess...
-- Veni, vidi, dormivi
Who is to say that survivors had their cellphones on them? If a building in which you were residing got hit by a plane and started to burn, would you want to get out first and buy a new cellphone later, or waste time finding your existing phone?
Perhaps all this would achieve, even if it was accurate enough, would be to find a whole load of lost phones amongst the rubble. Potentially, this could also confuse the situation as some of the owners may have escaped safely.
<!-- DHTML / JavaScript menu, popup tooltip, Ajax scripts -->
How stupid are you?
Hi, can you help me, im stuck in a pile of rubble, yeah my cell phone is allmost dead, can you pull me out. I dont see what help calling these people will be, either they will recive an answer of, yeah well get you out in about 3 days, we have to get through another 2 or 3 dozen floors to get to you or, you were on the 12th floor, geeze, you surived! well we really dont know where the 12th floor is anymore.
seems kind of pointless to me.
please sign. Slashdotters are a large majority that could help something like this. HREF="http://www.actionagenda.com/petitions/
A GPS should not even be able to get a signal inside the building (too much steel. Even heavy tree cover will disrupt the signal). The last cached position would be "front door"
Not very useful
- And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.
- And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.
- And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them throughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.
- And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
- And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
- And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
- Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.
- So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.
- Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
Yes, that's right, that last verse is Genesis 11.9...A prayer for Osama bin Laden
It's an interesting piece by Steffan O'Sullivan.
(Apologies for being OT.)
http://lightacandle.sol.dk/
It would seem to me that one of those infrared cameras would be perfect here. Although they can pick up heat through walls, I don't know how they would do with the massive amounts of concrete and steel that must be at the site.
Can anyone think of a reason why an infrared camera wouldn't work?
It is no wonder that they are cheering this sensless death. Iraqis, Saudis, Palastinians, and arabs in America in stores, campus halls and other public places where TV's where. What a sad pathetic life. I pity you, but unfortunately because of your actions and that you are a threat to innocent lives, I must destroy you.
Expose terrorists that may be in your town, use our forums to vent your frustrations!
Shouldn't battery life of a cell phone be a concern here? Even the best ones have lives of only a few days in non-talk mode. By the time this story hit, it had already been 5 days, so the chances of success seem somewhat low. This is still a good idea, regardless.
As I flipped across C-SPAN 2 the other night (yes, there actually was *ONE* channel not showing the same thing over and over), Senator Leahy (D-Vermont) was questioning an amendment to S.149, an appropriations bill, that he thought would greatly relax the requirements for getting a 'wiretap' order.
I'm pretty sure this appropriations bill sought money for the immediate crisis, even though it was reported out of committee back in July.
Leahy kept harping on the provision that any 'law enforcement or other authority' simply needed to certify to a judge that the monitoring was necessary. Of course, that old windbag Orrin Hatch took great umbrage at this questioning of the amendment in this time of dire straits, and how dare Leahy suggest that this might be overreaching by the government! Leahy wasn't particularly clear and Hatch made it sound like there was nothing in the amendment that didn't already exist in current law; but, then why would they need an amendment if there were no difference?
It all sounded like an opportunistic attempt (that passed) to seek an expansion of government wiretapping abilities.
This debate was either Friday or maybe Thursday evening and the amendment passed.
Beware.
slashdot: A failed experiment.
This is the perfect cell-phone manufacturer contest. Which phones survives the collapse of WTC and have a battery that lasts 5 days?
Do you have a source for this? I haven't seen it reported... FBI had reported that it knew the planes had been hijacked, but "since these sorts of events normally end peacefully" it hadn't taken any action.
Probably the fighters had been sent up to investigate after air traffic controllers had figured out that something was wrong, but at that point the real purpose of the hijackings probably wasn't known or suspected.
Probably not suspected... flights had been off course and not hailing for 30 minutes, so were assumed hijacked, but it's hard to believe anything was responding. An in-flight F-16 would probably be cruising at 5-600mph, and could reach 1400mph within 15-20 seconds, meaning that "70 miles away" would have been 3 1/2 minutes away. At that distance, air-to-air missles would have been possible, and after the first tower had been hit, there would have been some discussion of this option. Recent reports from Cheney indicate that it wasn't discussed until after the Pentagon was hit.
However, there were nearly 16 minutes between the WTC impacts. It is plausible that an already airborne military craft would have made it to the vicinity in time for the second attact, but nothing off the ground would have been able to get there... it takes 10-15 minutes to scramble a plane up from strip alert, and we didn't have any sitting on alert at the time...
an opinion as to whether a fight over the controls of the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania or some deliberate sabotage by the airline's pilot or other aircrew member could have resulted in damage of some sort to the wing that would have sent it plummeting to the ground
Flight 93 hit the ground at over 500mph, indicating that it was under power and, likely, undamaged. While the flight crew was likely to know how to cause enought damage -- even from outside the cabin -- to down the plane, this suggests that there was a stuggle for the cabin. As well, keep in mind that there were calls from the plane -- including Barbara Olson's call to her husband -- within five minutes of the downing. None of these calls to my knowledge reported damage to the craft.
Not to mention that cell phone batteries are probably empty by now. I know my cell phone's autonomy never exceeds 3 days...
Even when this would work, this is too late.
If you could get a cell phone to answer a special emergency incomming call,
You can. As part of the process of connecting a call the cell towers send a message to the phone, asking it to tell them where it is ("Joe, can you hear me?"). The phone responds with a short transmission ("I'm Joe and I hear you!"), and the cell towers that hear the response can measure the signal quality and decide which one has the best signal path to the phone. Then THAT one places the call. If none have an adequate signal the call isn't placed, so the phone doesn't ring.
This means your phone can be "pinged" and located without it doing anything to notify you. If you haven't added an external detector (i.e. diode and piezo sounder) to detect the transmission you won't know it's being done.
I understand that law enforcement agencies already have equipment to do this. Perhaps this is what they're bringing.
and if you could place a cell tower close to the site
For "cell tower" read "small box of test equipment with a little antenna at a known point."
- you could do a triangulation of the vicem by setting up three loude noise makers spaced far appart. Each would trigger in sequece, and a triangulation could be made by determining how long the cellphone took to hear the noise.
Simpler: Have four (or more) antennas at known relative positions listen for the signal and measure the DIFFERENCE in the arrival time. (You can also measure the PHASE of the signal to determine the "difference in arrival time" to as much less than a cycle of the signal as you equipment can measure the phase.)
The surface of constant path difference (result of measuring with two antennas) gives you a hyperbolid. Add a third antenna and you get the intersection of two hyperbolids - a curved line. (Don't recall the family of curves at the moment.) Add the fourth and you're down to two points in space.
You can also do this with four passive devices measuring the time between a cell tower's "ping" and the phone's reply, though the computation is a bit more involved.
Problem is that this is the behavior in free space. Add anything that bounces the signal about or shields the direct path and you're fouled up. And the phones are under tons of material, much of which reflects microwaves.
Forget about measuring phase to locate down to inches - you'll have to depend on the arrival time of the start of the signal, before the additional signals that took a different route arrive. Still good for feet or so. But if you're lucky what you'll find is the hole the signal is coming out of - and if you're not you'll get a bogus location in the vicinity of such a hole or perhaps the vicinity of the singal itself, due to signals taking different bank-shots to different antennas.
Still, I expect it would point you in the right direction and usually send you to the right room-sized volume. And as you dig out more obscuring stuff the quality of the location would progressively improve. That's good - as you get closer you need a better idea where you're goiong, to keep from crushing the person you're after.
Also: There's no reason why you couldn't bring test equipment that, once it got a good path to the phone could CALL it, so (if the person was alive and awake) you could talk to them. (Though it might be good to use the call mostly to tell them to stay off the phone but leave it turned on, to conserve the battery.)
Which brings up one last downside: Some people may have either used up their batteries trying to call out while there was no working base station in reacy, or turned off the phone to conserve power for later.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The problem is accuracy. The base stations
are not designed to record or process the
signals in a way that allows for accuracy better than about 300 meters radius. So although what you are saying may in fact be *somehow* possible by getting data from existing off-the-shelf equipment, that equipment is just not designed to get the timing information with enough accuracy for a good location.
Some of my coworkers were at ground zero
assisting in this. There are people there
using traditional RF direction-finding techniques,
basically walking around with hand-held sniffers.
My coworkers set up a wide area location system, but had difficulty achieving a useful accuracy.
They're talking about two-way pagers,
not one-way pagers.
The US Military has a back-up plan for GPS that could be applied here. They are developing ground based GPS transmitters that they can erect on a battlefield in the event the real satellites get jammed or knocked out. You could erect 4 high powered pseudo'lites at the corners of the rubble heap and blast signals through the rubble.