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Tracking People Via Cell Phone
An anonymous reader writes "According to the articleat the Guardian the UK Government have been working on a project to use the widely available mobile phone masts as a form of localised radar to track both people and vehicles without their knowledge.
Supposedly there is even work on the way to give this project the ability to see through walls!
Maybe Philip K. Dick was right to be paranoid about governments."
I need to construct a faraday cage where no radio signals can enter or exit?
Rather what it does is to transform all of the telephone masts into "radar platforms". So, it cannot identify you, but it can tell you that there is something in a particular location....
They are already doing this at Finland, though police has limited access to such information and they need court order to get it.
-- Reality checks don't bounce.
If you had read the article, you would realize that they are trying to read the reflected cell tower radio waves and make a radar picture out of it. They already know they reflect, the rest is just engineering.
A. Rightmann
This isn't just monitoring which cell a phone user is in, but actually using the base station masts as radar to detect moving objects (e.g. people and cars) anywhere within the field - which means basically making the entire UK transparent, even if you're not carrying a cellphone! It's perfectly serious, here's a link to the company developing it - first mentioned in Jane's Defence Weekly in 2000, but it's only recently got government funding.
It seems that half of the comments are from people who has not read the article!
The article talks of a radar system based on the reflected waves from mobile phones. I have a number of problems with this:
* The problem is huge, as each signal emitter is mobile, and thus the signal processing needed to filter out the source of each signal-bounce must be huge.
* As the number of signal emitters are variable in the vicinity of each reciever, this make the signal processing even more complex.
* They claim to being able to put all this in a laptop sized device.
This would not be so controversial if it was a simple cell phone tracing system, as they allready exist. In Sweden, one of the major competators even offer a 'locate' service, allowing other users to locate a phone. This service can be turned on and off from the located phone by sending SMSs. Even when turned off, the phone can still be located, all you block is the ability to get a position on another phone. This can, and has been used by the police to, for example, prove that a certain person has been at a certain location at a certain time.
What is new, however, is what this article is talking about: using the cell masts (the antennas that allow people to have cell service in an area, not the phones themselves) as a radar to track everything in a particular area. You don't have to carry a cell phone to be tracked, thanks to the fact that (almost) everyone wants cell service everywhere all the time.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
From the article:
"Signals bounced back by immobile objects, such as walls or trees, are filtered out by the receiver. This allows anything moving, such as cars or people, to be tracked." (italics mine)
This is much, much scarier than tracking cellphone users (since tracking can easily be avoided by NOT CARRYING ONE). Anything that moves can be watched by Them--you, your car, your cat. And it's only a matter of time before they find some way to positively identify each blob of motion their little devices detect.
Of course, the good news is that the system filters out immobile objects. So, most of us /. nerds sitting here at our computers all day will be well-nigh invisible :)
insert IANAx where x equals the first letter of the science I would need to study in order to get this right,
but...
It is actually my understanding that the user of the phone, is not being tracked,
but that they are actually using the signal sent out by any number of phone(s) as a sort of "X-ray" type thing
where the objects in-between any given cell phone and the reciever device
stop the signal, creating a shadow that the reciever picks up,
Thus creating the image
That is where the reference to Radar comes into play, by not actually locating the person by the origin of the signal, but by the objects in the way of the signal on its way to the reciever
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody is looking - H.L. Mencken
Oh, and this article has nothing to do with that. It's about using the radio waves emitted by the cell phone towers as a form of radar - detecting how the radio energy bounces back from buildings, submarine periscopes, airplanes and people with tinfoil hats. You should read it, it's actually very interesting.
Money for nothing, pix for free
Roke Manor is the former research centre from Plessey and specialised in radar and communications.
If you don't like it, turn off your cell phone. Send messages by pigeon, use a cup and string to talk to your friends, be a hermit.
Don't you get it? That isn't the point. It doesn't matter anymore if you use a cellphone or even own one. This technology uses cell towers like radar dishes to view an image of ANYONE and ANYTHING within range. You simply can't avoid it.
-- Nerds on toast in the new millenium
Yes, this is "an invasion of privacy", but what is the big deal? Does eeryone think that they are so important that the government wants to spy on them? Gimme a break!
Well, one day you might be. Maybe you'll survive a rail disaster and make the mistake of trying to bring the negligent parties to justice? Then you'll see exactly how important the government thinks you are.
I don't know where you're from and I'm not a lawyer, but...
In America we have this thing called Habeaus Corpus (sp? actual name?!?) that prevents a person from being tried for a crime that was commited before it became illegal. While I don't agree with the original poster, I don't agree with your logic either.
I would say if the police had to have a warrant to use the technology, like they do when they put a phone tap/other surviellance, then I don't have a problem with it. Just a thought....
~Dan
http://sitemaker.umich.edu/dan.coughlin
http://www.pbase.com/efatapo
Here are some links I found: DARPA research, Canadian project (they're pretty tight -lipped about this), and German work is ongoing too.
It seems to have been used in astonomy for counting meteors & observing auroras.
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." --Napoleon Bonaparte
Well the government already knows where you are anyway if you have your phone on - obviously the phone has to logon to a cell and that connects it with your phone number (and potentially your name and address if your on a rental/contract). The government could be looking at this already without anyone's knowledge, certainly a technician or programmer for the phone company can, and probably they do, without anyone's knowledge. So already you can be tracked to with-in a cell, which could be quite close especially in a city.
When you physically move into another cell, the network must know witch transmitter to take over (this might only happen if your actually in a call im not sure) but that effectively means they are tracking signal strength of the surrounding transmitters so you could take a guess or use triangulation/geometry to figure out a more precise position - depending if a call is actually being made - this would be harder to pull off if you wanted to keep it secret (or avoid loosing your job) but its still possible.
Everyone knows that phones with GPS receivers will also take commands from the phone company/3rd party. At any time the phone is on, they'll be able to ask it for its position without the user even knowing. You never know, the phone could even _pretend_ to be turned off, yet still be giving out its position. You'd have to take out the battery or wrap it in foil.
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Ah, I see. So while it may not pinpoint a person, it could tell authorities that a particular call was relayed thru a particular mast, thus the odds are that the person they want to catch is in a certain radius??
No, this has nothing to do with relaying calls through the antenna. If you're using a phone they can track you anyway, especially when you're using it. What this is talking about is using the mast that your calls are relayed through as a radar, which allows them to pick up ANYTHING (over a certain size I'm sure, based on the wavelength and other factors) moving in that particular area, regardless of whether or not people are actually using a phone. If you're in an area that has a phone signal, the masts that provide for that signal can also be used to watch the movement of all people and vehicles in the area, though it can't identify them individually (unless they have phones, then they could probably put the two pieces of information together, or incoordination with other surveillance systems, as mentioned in the article, such as training a video camera on a person or vehicle that was spotted moving in the area of that camera). The example used in the article is that of monitoring sensitive areas, such as nuclear plants, so they can see, thanks to the cell masts, that a person or vehicle has approached or crossed the perimeter around that plant, and they can notify the plant's security or use the plant's existing systems to further identify the breach.
-PainKilleR-[CE]
Pulse compression is a great technology, but it requires some circumstances that we don't have here. First, the spread codes for CDMA have a large number of bits compared to most systems used in radar. Second, the synchronization would be non trivial in this case, partly due to the wide spread. Third, the power is variable to enhance overall system performance.
If someone could tackle the sync problems with making a CDMA signal into a usable bistatic emitter, then there might be a low update (when you get a strong output signal), or short range application that works well.
hear hear!
BTW, As has been pointed out, if you are carrying a cellphone, the watchers will get both where (and I presume a sillouete of you) and who. I find the idea a bit disturbing.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
I don't think it is even pinging your phone - it is pinging *you*. As a conductive object, you reflect RF - including the RF generated by mobile phone masts. As you move, you change the pattern of reflections. The pervasive mobile phone masts create a kind of universal radar transmitter receiver, so the only thing that the snooper needs to carry to spy on you is a receiver.
OTOH, all they will see is that a person is moving hither, thither and yon. They woundt see what you are doing or hear what you are saying.
So, from the Civil Liberties point of view, this is no worse (but no better than) universal CCTV surveillance. There will be nowhere you can go - above ground, out of doors - that they can't watch you. I am skeptical about the "through walls" bit - through some walls, some of the time, but my mobile often loses signal indoors - and if I don't get enough signal to recieve, I am surely not reflecting much.
The signal is unlikely to be detailed enough to identify you, so all that they can tell is that a human is moving. This could be useful in two ways. As the article says, monitoring "no humans allowed" areas like security barriers round military and nuclear installations. And tracking someone once they have been identifier - e.g. tracking the kidnappers as they run off with the ransom money. But there would be a *lot* of ways of shaking such a tail an an urban area - if you knew it was happening.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
"Our ruler's will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may commence persecutor, and better men be his victims. It can never be too often repeated, that the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest, and ourselves united. From the conclusion of this war we shall be going downhill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will remain on us long, will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in convulsion."
--Thomas Jefferson, "Notes on the State of Virgina" During the American Revolution
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As for the cell thing; some localities are doing a primitive version of cell phone tracking already in order to monitor traffic conditions.
All they have to do is monitor the speed at which cell phones move down a roadway (being handed from tower to tower) and they can determine the approximate speed of traffic on that roadway. They don't need to know specifically which user is where, just that the average speed of all cell phones on that system is X MPH.
Obviously this can also help them spot potential problems; when the cell phones all slow or stop unexplicably.
-Coach-
Perhaps the world's greatest tragedy is that ignorance is not impotence.
already have http://www.mobilecloak.com/ The off switch for always on mobile wireless. A simple method of making your wireless stuff invisible to any other wireless stuff or signal that would want to communicate with it.