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GPS Meets PCS
The Donald writes: "According to an article at News.com, Sprint PCS will be starting to implement E911 calls in Rhode Island sometime in October. The FCC required that all cell phone providers have an improved E911 system in place by October first. This is the first step in making the E911 a reality, with Sprint being the first major company to actually put a phone on the market that will work with E911; instead of just filing papers with the FCC saying the implementation is just to hard. The Samsung N300 phone will use GPS to track the people down. I like the idea, I just hope the phone will display the GPS information, and there is a way to opt-out for all of the location based advertisements you will get with your GPS enabled phone."
How about enabling a switch to disable GPS except during 911 calls?
Skivvy Niner? Email me!
HEY! Look left just ONE MORE TIME!
I wonder if the positional info could be used by the owner of the phone for some purpose - maybe tracking a fleet of drivers realtime or coupled with Wireless Web to provide navigation. There are some neat possibilities here that Sprint could capitalize on.
"So, um...like...second post d00dz!!!"
OK, now that I've got that out of the way (and probably pushed myself to 10th post as a result) here's a real comment.
Ads. Ads on the phone that *I* pay for. Quite simply, there won't be any. If any company tries to advertise themselves on my phone for which I pay per-minute charges, they'll find themselves on the ugly end of a lawsuit involving the "junk fax" law and some very bloodthirsty lawyers.
If you want to advertise to my phone, then someone else will be paying my damned monthly charges. Otherwise, beware.
As an aside, I've been around long enough to see that advertisers have pushed the boundaries far enough that the pushing back we see now is an inevitable result of what's been going on for the last two decades. The end result is that we're not going to stand for much in the way of blatant advertising in anything we buy, do, or watch. All that means is that the advertisers will become sneakier.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Perhaps the new Verizon/Disney/AOL/U.S.Justice.Dept will handle the entire issue by adding the fine to your monthly bill!
Keeping
I was 1.5 blocks from my apartment in Brooklyn when the guy grabbed my left arm and pressed a knife into my ribs.
As I reached into my right back pocket to get my wallet, my arm was pressing against my phone (Sprint PCS). It would have been very easy to activate some sort of panic button.
He only took about $60, but what if I were getting the shit kicked out of me, or raped, or whatever...
I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
The example always given for this locater technology is 911 calls. Now, when you are calling 911, you do want them to know your location -- the sooner the better really. And I can see how this could serve a useful purpose. Politicians certainly pushed this application when stating their requirement to cell phone manufacturers.
/. are well aware, is that this is yet another step toward Big Brother. Insert the usual arguments here ["Oh c'mon, stop being so paranoid!" "Yeah, but why give them the power to abuse in the first place?"]. How far will this technology be extended? Will they start to track your location on the highways, to see if you are speeding if you get from location A to location B faster than you ought? If someone corrupt within some government agency decides they don't like you because of your idealogy (whatever it may be), can they start to track your locations at all times?
The downside to this, of course, as we at
I would like this technology if it can be turned off when desired, even if it's only out of principle. I don't like having a choice taken from me, even if it is "for my own good."
________________
Private Essayist
Budget (the rental car company) already implemented that, and they started tacking fines onto invoices.
Mooniacs for iOS and Android
Disclaimer: I work for TeleCommunication Systems Inc. - we provide nationwide E-911 service.
During the FCC mandate for Phase I - which most carriers still have not fully deployed was based on cellsite/sector / some other general location. For Phase II E-911 the requirement is a PDE. As there are literally hundreds of ways to get this information (GPS handsets are only one). Under the TCS solution for Phase II we query a "pluggable" PDE for the location information - so the only time that anyone gets your specific location information is only when it is needed (as in during a 911 call). The only real difference with the Sprint solution is that they have brought the PDE functionality in-house.
Just to try to help clarify...
I can tell you as someone who volunteers for both a fire department and an EMS service, how important E911 is. There are very often times where passing moterists will call 911 and report a car fire on the expressway, somewhere around exit 30 eastbound. Now often this is enough information and we can easily respond to the call. However, if they tell us its after exit 31, and it turns out to be before exit 30, then that means we have to continue down the expressway, turn around at the next exit, circle back at least to the exit before the accident, then turn around again and get back on in the right direction. This has just caused a delay in our response by at least a couple of minutes which can often mean the difference between some insulation burning under the hood, or the total loss of a car. On the other hand (EMS side) a five minute delay can mean the difference between saving a life. If someone is involved in an accident and loosing blood quickly, every second counts.
This winter, when coming home from the grocery store, I witnessed someone on a motorcycle take a turn just too sharply. The bike fell over on him and crushed his leg. I called 911 to report the accident on my cellphone (Verizon), and I didn't even have to tell the kind lady where I was, she told me. I went home that night and did some reseach, and found out that they can in fact pinpoint the location of a call. I beleve the company responsible for some of this is Cell-Loc (or something like that).
Hopefully, though, they won't use this to 'magically' close the store early on the day my bill is due, because they traced my calls and found out I am heading their way....
--- At my sig, unleash hell.
There was a case in New Haven, Connecticut, where Acme, was "asked" to refund charges for "speed violations" by the state department of consumer protection. When the GPS system tracked a speed above 90 MPH, ACME charged a cool $150. The Atty. General has asked for refunds. It should be pointed out that ACME does not inform the local police in any way. They just pocket each fine. They now have there own speeding enforcement system, and there own way of cashing in! I thought some smaller towns had a crooked traffic court. This is a private firm, their own judge and jury; where each fine equals more profit. This is just not right.
You know who I think is crazy? All my ex-girlfriends!
With the current anti terrorism mood, I doubt you'll be able to opt out.
In fact, if they weren't going to continuously log your whereabouts before, they probably will now. After all, we're just using this data retroactively to investigate terrorist attacks.
And they probably are only using the data that way. Today. But what about ten years from now when things are different, but they still have much greater access to things they should not? What about when we're no longer in a war against terrorism? Our government agencies don't have a great track record of not abusing power.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
GPS and phones aren't that new.
Garmin had their gps phone a couple of years ago.
When you put in an emergency call it would send
your coordinates along with it.
It was nifty, i almost got one for my birthday.
If you're looking for a link here it is..
http://www.garmin.com/products/navTalk/
Am I the only one to find the idea of mixing a wireless communication device and a very precise position locator undesirable ?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
as it is spelled out in the contract strictly legal. Of course you could always counter sue them.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Requires? Au contraire--nothing will be required. Nothing is EVER so blatant.
They'll just make some really incredibly cool device that will require an implant to use. Whether or not you get it is up to you, but you'll be left out of the 'information age' if you don't.
Then let marketing get 'hold of it, and you'll get the implant voluntarily. That's how things work these days.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
911 service can also be screwed up by PBX systems. I know of several cases where someone called 911 and the ambulance responded to the company headquarters building, where the PBX was located, instead of the building where the emergency occurred.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
"...to opt-out for all of the location based advertisements you will get with your GPS enabled phone"
Just like adds that can now be targeted at you based on where you are (thanks to the GPS enabled phones), there is something else that is also inevitable. Think about "targeted" viruses.
Those "smart" viruses would scare me more than those dull adds.
Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private
That's the other method people are proposing.
GPS advantages/disadvantages:
+ precise
+ works great outdoors
- extra cost, extra weight, extra bulk (another antenna), less battery life
- doesn't work indoors or in cars
Triangulation advantages/disadvantages:
+ low cost
+ phones remain the same size/weight/battery life (triangulation can be mostly done in infrastructure)
- generally less precise
- in urban environments, multipath interference and distortion caused by buildings is a problem
- in rural environments, you're lucky to get a signal from one tower, much less 3!, so it doesn't work too well.
Note that the GPS implemntation doesn't need to be a full one-- some of the processing smarts can be located in the cell towers. Unfortuantly, this doesn't buy you much as the radio section is still the major size and power draw.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Of course you don't need a cellphone. You don't need a home phone, a credit card, or a bank account. You don't need a car, electricity or mail-order shopping. There are lots of things you don't have to have...
On the other hand, why can't we have those things along with the guarantee that they won't be used in ways that aren't in our best interests? I dislike the "you don't have to have..." argument, because it seems like over time it pushes you closer and closer to a broken-down cabin in Montana.
What sort of things will we have to give up ten years from now in order to guarantee anonymity and privacy? Will they all be optional, or will life without that set of things become increasingly unpleasant?
It's off if I yank the damn battery out! :)
That light you see at the end of the tunnel might be from an oncoming train.
On their site, they have a spiel about privacy protection. Here's a quote:
Of course, who knows if this will be respected by the OEM's who implement the snaptrack technology in the phones. There's always the tin-foil-over-the-gps-antenna solution... maybe those people with the tin foil hats are on to something!
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Well, to tell you the truth, these types of phones (WAP enabled, GPS enabled, etc.) exist already. They are in very small quantity here in the US, but exist rather abundantly in Japan. The big problem was they didn't catch on as soon as expected here in the states, and companies like AMD and Intel projected that they would, thus the huge crash in the Flash memory business (ramp really hard on super-dense flash, then nobody buys it...). So if you're in Japan, you can get one of these multi-functional super phones. If you're not there, you'll have to wait.
I work at a 911 center, and all advertising concerns aside, I can't wait for this to happen. Most cell-911 callers have absolutely no idea (plus or minus 20 miles) where they are; some don't even know what state they're in! It may help to convince some people to activate the keypad lock on their phones (no "rump dialling"), if they know they can be located. The phone companies just see this as a profit-eater, and want to use every means necessary to delay its implementation.
"Never pet a burning dog."
Instead of these other posts that sound "nagging" in nature, I'll give you a real life story as to why these things once existed, and now rarely do.
911 gets a call from a cell phone. They answer, and all they hear is a constant loud roar. After a minute or so of not being able to communicate, the line is dropped. The call comes in again, 5 to 10 minutes later. The same roar, yet no communication with anyone. The 911 operator gets curious, and makes a few calls. The line drops. Yet another call, minutes later, same roar, no human. A unit is deployed to find where this signal is coming from. Strangely enough the signal was traced to the Pontiac Silverdome (in Michigan, over 60,000+ seating).
They traced the signal to a man who was watching a Detroit Lions game. The man was quite large, probably a little too large for the seat that was given to him. Anyways, his cell phone was pressing up against the arm rest of the seat, and pushing the emergency button every time he shifted. This story is true, and there are several of these stories in existance if you take the time to talk to 911 operators.
This is the reason that cell phones now rarely have 911 buttons. This is also the reason most phones will now come with a "keyguard" function that ignores all button pushes until a certain key combination is pressed. It's just not feasible, with how easily buttons can be pushed in a pocket, on a belt, or in a purse. Cell phones may be good for many things, just not this.
To be clear, you don't need GPS technology to track people down using their cell phones. The feds have plenty of ability to do this already. With the help of the FCC and three trucks (or possibly with no trucks and good access to the cell towers), you can be tracked down with great accuracy. That's because your cell phone communicates with a base every few minutes - more often if you're traveling.
Also, though it's not as good as triangulation, tracking you down to a within a relatively small radius is even easier, since your phone is only communicating with one base station at a time.
I imagine that most modern pagers (the ones with a transmitter so you never miss pages) could be used like this too.
Spooky, huh? I've always wondered why E911/GPS couldn't just be implemented by upgrading the cell switches to do auto-triangulation. This gets rid of any GPS antenna issues.
Invisible Agent
This post is a mirror; when a monkey stares in, no hacker gazes out.
In fact, when I bought a new Sprint PCS phone a year ago, that business went away when I switched to a newer plan.
It's my understanding that common practice in Europe (and Japan?) is no charge for incoming calls. It sure ain't so here. I figure they are going to get a certain price per minute, whether they double the Tx charge or have separate Tx and Rx charges. BUT, again as I understand it, Eurpoean practice is that land lines charge by the minute too, so there's no big discrepancy. In the US, however, local landline calls are unlimited with the basic monthly plan, so a landline call to a cell phone makes it hard to charge the Tx end. There is NO WAY the US regulatory bodies would allow Tx surcharges for landline calls to cellphones. Customers would howl bloody murder!
Infuriate left and right
I work for SignalSoft Corp (http://www.signalsoftcorp.com) on their Wireless 911 product (http://www.signalsoftcorp.com/products/911/911.h
I see good and bad in all this. The good is that the E911 service is probably very useful. And in benign applications, cell phone tracking is not necessarily terrible. The bad is that I'm pretty sure that sooner or later, this technology WILL be abused. We attempt to build safeguards into our software to prevent abuse (http://www.signalsoftcorp.com/newsroom/pressrele
So, here's the scoop. If you are worried that you are worth tracking by powerful government agencies or very, very rich people, do one of two things: A) don't carry a cell phone or, B) take the battery out of your cell phone. B) is not foolproof, but it should be good enough until cell phone manufacturers are required by law to include a small backup battery in the guts of a cell phone large enough to run a GPS receiver. Fortunatly, current batteries are very bulky and expensive, and including a nonremovable secondary one in cell phones big enough to run a GPS receiver is likely to be many years in coming.
Second, push for privacy legislation. I don't know the laws governing cell phone tracking, but I bet they're a lot laxer than they should be. A court order (like a search warrant) should be necessary for any government agency to track the cell phone of any US citizen. If this is currently the case, great. If not... let's get a bill like this passed post-haste.
-Anonymous Coward who doesn't want to lose his job right now.
In Australia, with GSM, you call 000 or the international GSM emergency number (I forgot it), and it will automatically call the Fire/Ambo/Police number through your network provider (Telstra, Optus, Vodaphone or a reseller), if you have no signal to your own provider it will allow usage of any provider you have signal with for your emergency call. Even without a SIM card inserted in the phone. This is a legal requirement and seems to be a feature built in to GSM itself.
Due to the very precise time division multiplexing used with GSM, the distance you are from the base station you are currently subscribed can be gleaned down to a metre. If they can force your phone to switch to 2 other cells after an emergency call, they could probably pin point you without GPS. With the hidden Network menus in Motorolla StarTac GSM and Nokia phones, you can see how far you are from the base station in metres.
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
Freeway-side phones in Californa are even worse. Not only do they put you on hold, I once stopped at one to report an accident i'd witnessed and got a message indicating that the phone had been disconnected.
Glad I bought my nifty new phone before the GPS rollout. My natural paranoia tells me that precise location/movement tracking is *far* too tempting to government just to be used for E911 calls, regardless of claims to the contrary.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Part of the gov't mandate is that the cellphones must be equipped to transmit requested GPS data even if they aren't turned on.
But they're only going to use it to find people making 911 calls. Right. Absolutely.
Kevin Fox
Here in Finland they have been using the WGS84 system for triangulating your (the GSM phones) location when you call emergency services.
You can also make use of it by sending a textmessage and in about 30 seconds time you'll get a message back giving your coordinates. No more getting lost in the woods!
Here's a message I got back when getting my position at home:
PARAINEN (town)
Skräbböle (part of town)
22.16'55'' E,
60.17'11'' N
No ICBM's please!
Linus
Looking over at Spamhaus, we find that Sprint is working hard to be in the top 3 spam-friendly ISPs, currently hosting 18 sites of known spammers and spam software and ignoring all complaints. If this is what their policy is on personal information, I don't think I want them to know where I am.
It's called tin foil, my good man. Tin foil will block the GPS signals, and as a bonus, it will prevent aliens from monitoring your calls.
Because the GPS needs to see a constelation of satelites, the antenna is not very directional. Pointing it does very little on most units. Try it with your handheld GPS. Mine works fine upside down.
The truth shall set you free!
Another possibility would be to use some of the technology that is used to determine the orbital elements and positions of satellites. The base station can transmit a carrier modulated with a PN code or ranging tones. The cell phone modulates its transmitter with the output of its receiver. The base station can use the cell phone's signal to determine the range and doppler (relative speed) of the cell phone.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Some half measures may include: leaving the cell phone home; unplugging the battery; trading out phones with my wife and friends.
Legislation will be difficult here. No one needs a freaking cell phone, much less one with GPS, so complaints will be lost on the general public. Right now, people are willing to give up their credit reports (periodically, not just as a check on purchase!) and social security number to get one of these gadgets. It may be possible to force providers to behave in return for spectrum rights, but we see how well public service laws have done in TV and radio. Elements of the government itself have an interest in tracking people, and they have the upper hand right now. They will be getting a big helping hand from big corps like On Star. What a nightmare.
The reality is that this does not really help people find you when you need it. Think about it. If you are aware of your problem, you can call for help and tell where you are. If you are not and no one knows that your are in trouble, who's going to bother to look for you? Your wife? Hopefully, she knows where you were going and help will be on the way anyway. In practical terms, very little extra security is gained for a massive loss of privacy. I could live with that if I could turn it off.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Now THIS is scary. I can see a new market for lead cellphone cases.
Of course, you couldn't receive calls, but you can't with it off, either.
At least off means off, dammit.
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
If you have a Sprint TP2200 (and probably other touchpoint models), try this:
##33284 (scroll down to SAVE)
select SERVICE SCREEN and hit Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the
debug screen.
Last two lines are labeled LT and LG- those are
the lat/lng of the cell your phone is talking to.
Don't know how accurate it is; the cell my phone
picks up at home is (according to these numbers)
in the middle of the Detroit River.
How do I define abuse? Let me count the ways...
How's that? Probably need a lawyer to clean it up a bit, debug it, performance tune it, etc.
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
I think the GPS precision is what they're after. After all, they're not trying to locate you in a normal emergency. Where a 100 foot or so location would be adequate.
They're trying to solve other problems. Correlate your location with other data. Anti terrorism, today. Other uses tomorrow. You got in this taxicab at 9:07 AM. See? Your gps coordinates match the cab's coordinates for 39 minutes. Then you used a pay phone at 27th and Crawford -- specifically, the third phone booth from the end. At that exact time, the phone records show you made a call to your mistress. Nine minutes later, she went to the bank, the 2nd teller window, and withdrew $200,000 in small bills. Photographic bank records coroborate this. Then 13 minutes later, she went to see a woman she is sleeping with, that you don't know about, who lives at 119 Somewhere St., and gave her half the money. etc., etc. [Filling in remainder of story, left as exercise for slashdot trolls.]
If they were just worried about "normal" emergiencies, such as fire, traffic accident, shooting, etc., 100 foot accuracy would be fine.
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
"Hi honey. I'm sorry I'm late. The car died again, so I'm taking the shuttle." "Ummm, ok dear" (Wife pulls up GPS data on the internet) "huh? HONEY? WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN ORBIT!?!"
How about...
What are you doing at [Insert female acquaintence]'s house? For the past 3 hours?
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
... may not understand that GPS has pretty crappy accuracy when you're down in the middle of a downtown area surrounded by tall buildings. GPS signal availability (L-band requires direct SV-to-user line-of-sight) and severe multipath reception problems made it fairly useless in the downtown canyons. I remember tests done in city environments where the receiver could get fooled into providing a position solution that it was a considerable distance from its true location; all because of the reflected signals one finds in cities. Or did someone rewrite the laws of physics since I've been out of the GPS arena?
All this does is provide someone with a false sense of security that the police will know where you are when you call. I wonder how many times we'll hear about the police showing up on the wrong side of Central Park when responding to a mugging? Or that the call came from 1000 feet over the river, etc.?
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
It is true the body attenuates the signal (blocks it), but on the ground, there is enough reflected signal to provide a weak signal from all birds in view most of the time. I seldom get a bird signal to drop out completely by body shielding. The only problem to the GPS is the EPE (estimated position error) increases somewhat, but position fix is not lost. This is how a GPS unit can be attached to the underside of a car to descretly monitor and track it's whereabouts. Try it! Put it under the trunk with a big magnet on your teens car and record the track. You will find out if he really went to the library. The signal is degraded, but present. A GPS does work under a car and inside buildings near large windows.
The truth shall set you free!
E911 service could have been addressed by the market: you are worried about it, you want the feature, you buy a GPS-enhanced cell phone that transmits your location using a simple audio code. I think consumers would not have gone for it.
The fact that E911 service was legislated and made a requirementand the fact that phone companies didn't fight it harder suggests to me that it isn't about saving a few lives, it's a combination of a desire by law enforcement to be able to track mobile phone users as part of crime fighting, and a desire of phone companies and advertisers to locate users and stolen phones.
If my math is right, 1km would correspond to a delay of 6 usec; that's an eternity by modern processor standards, not to mention hardware clocks. Furthermore, the handheld doesn't need to keep the time, the tower does. And the phone can take whatever time it needs to respond to each ping, as long as the time is fairly constant (its latency just becomes another unknown in the triangulation).