Slashdot Mirror
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."
Next they'll realize that they can track nerds via /. posts.
Take a look at here .
There you can give a permission to your friends with Sonera cellphone accounts to locate you.
As far as I am concerned, not having a cell phone is a status symbol...
love is just extroverted narcissism
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.
Far to much power is being consolidated in far to few people.
Give everyone this tech and everyone would spy on each other for a year or two, then it would be common and boring. (except in small towns, where people would like to know the last time the neigbors wiped their ass.)
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.
Its easy to avoid.. just stand very, very still.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
I don't agree with your post.
It's not a typical Slasdottian/geek attitude, it's very important to think about civil rights. This has nothing to do with fingerprints. Fingerprints are taken if you are suspected of having commited something illegal.
Location tracking of cellphones is something completely different:
it can be automated, you don't realize that you are being tracked, it's easy to abuse.
A cellphone is a radio beacon, and it is designed to localize you to enable roaming an such. If you don't want people to be able to track you, you don't continually post your whereabouts to the world. You might as well be wearing a clown suit and shooting flare guns.
I had the privilage of working for a mobile company in Ireland, and one day I was be-bopping around the building and accidently came across a room that I hadn't noticed before. I looked in and saw a giant metal cage and in the cage was a comuputer console and a couple of large servers. I asked the network guy later what it was and he told me it was for the Garda (Police in the Republic of Ireland) to be able to track people. Basically, under court order, they could track down anyone. The understanding of the technology has been around for a long time. Simple triangulation of transmission and there you go, got them. The problem is actually getting access to the information.
I found out later I wasn't supposed to know about that and that there were essentially Garda assigned to that room on a 24 hour basis to impliment any court ordered tracking.
Obviously you aren't made aware of these when signing your monthly agreement, are you?
D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M.
Read the article. Holy crap!
This is not tracking where your phone is. That's old hat.
This is using the cellphone signal radiation as an imaging system, like radar or x-rays. Except always on, everywhere. Anyone who walks or drives within range would be imaged.
Sure it would be low res and only show large and/or moving objects like people and cars but It's quite the panopticon. i.e. everyting everwhere is seen.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
*meep*
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]
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
Yeah, or even Thomas Jefferson. Or the ancient Greeks.
-Peter
Apparently, the Soviet Union in Stalin's time was populated with excessive numbers of important people. Fortunately, that anomaly was fixed.
actually: 3) get arrested by police who were tracking YOU with this technology not your phone.
Roke Manor is the former research centre from Plessey and specialised in radar and communications.
Simple example: Let's say you're gay and living in an area where being gay is cause for persecution (even if it's not illegal). You may not be doing anything WRONG, but knowing everything you do sure makes it easier to persecute you.
And what if your lifestyle or religion or whatever you now lawfully do is declared illegal? Now all that observation of your formerly-innocent activities can be used as evidence against you.
And THAT is the problem with the philosophy of "I'm not doing anything wrong, so I have nothing to hide".
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
In the past, all or most of technology-related privacy concerns have differed from this one in a single simple aspect: you basically had to be an active user of whatever technology was exploiting your privacy to be vulnerable to it. Therefore in order for your credit card to be stolen online, it needed to, at some point be transmitted via an online purchase or transaction. More to the point, you actually had to OWN a credit card. A person with all his wealth in gold buried in his back yard had nothing to fear from hackers and the Y2K bug.
Similarly, spam, web tracking, email monitoring, phone tapping, phone-based GPS geo-location; all of these invasions could, by eschewing the technologies involved and choosing to live a simpler, less connected life, be avoided. The sacrifice involved was significant, but not unmanagable.
If technologies like these become acceptable forms of populace control, this axiom of "it only affects you if you use it" will no longer apply. A technophobe with no phone line and no electricity living in a cold-water flat in London will still be vulnerable to electronic espionage. The current range of this technology is anywhere cellular service is available. Considering I was able to make a call this summer from the peak of a 5000 meter isolated mountain top in the remote Italian alps, I find this idea truly terrifying.
The UK has, in recent years, been a bellweather for survaillance practices worldwide. As an American citizen beginning to see the sort of widespread video survaillance now common to those living in England, I make a simple plea to any UK citizens reading: Do anything within your power to stop this. Write letters, mail threatening powders, strip in front of parliment. (Note: don't mail powder. thats a bad idea) Anything to keep this idea from gaining a foothold. I ask this of you so that you aren't subjected to it, but also so that it doesn't eventually bleed into my country.
-- Nerds on toast in the new millenium
You write in short, assertive sentences.
:)
No bullshit digressions, long words or
subordinate clauses. You write like a man.
Even missing a few periouds now and again.
Read a lot of Hemingway lately?
Considered harmful.
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
When was the last time government protected you? As far as I can tell, governments usually look at the big picture, ie. "how do I keep my job?" And the best way to do so is to use terrorism against the people so they live in fear. Once they are afraid, you can promise to protect them. Of course, you cannot, but at least you can watch them, just in case you need a patsy to take a fall for the latest bombing, sniping, or what have you.
YOU can protect yourself, and YOU would WANT to protect yourself. Can you please explain to me in what situation anyone would risk their own safety for yours? I can't even say the police would do it...
"Naturally the common people don't want war . But after all, it is the leaders of a country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."--Hermann Goering (1893-1946), creator of the German secret police, Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, designated successor to Adolf Hitler. Said during the 1946 Nuremburg Trials.
Normally I wouldn't reply to minor mistakes but that's modded up probably cause people don't really know how GSM works.
...)
...
> your cell phone has to announce it's availability to local cells
That's not technically correct.
You cell phone does not announce it's availability to local cells unless you are being paged (someone is trying to call you / sending you sms
The cellphone has to announce it's availabily to the new Local Area (UpdateLocation messages) when it enters a new Area but not to the cells when it is travelling between cells.
LAs cover usually several cities and can conver tens/hundreds of Kms square and you cannot be triangulated using that information.
However it is still possible for "them" to page you and drop the signal before your phones starts ringing so that your phone announces it's location to the cell and that way you can be traked...
Just so that things are clear
People seem to be imagining this technology giving you decent-quality moving pics of people moving around. Impossible (IMNSHO) for the following simple but adequate reasons:
1) Phone masts are designed for 1.8GHz tops. At that freq, lambda is about 17cm. Therefore that's about your spatial resolution. Also, this may not apply in all directions. You might, in fact probably will, be worse off in some axes. In fact, I'm not sure you'll get more than a 2-D map out of it, since cellphone masts are laid out in a 2-D pattern, and there is no "grid" in the third dimension (height above ground, altitude).
2) So, it's impossible to identify an individual with that poor resolution
3) And, you can;t even track one moving individual reliably. Someone would (IMNSHO) only have to approach someone, embrace them, spin around a bit, and alk off again, and then I suspect the "viewer" wouldn't be able to tell which individual was which. Do that a few times with a few people, and the number of possible people the "baddie" could be goes up rapidly!
4) All the above assumes the system works really well even at that poor resolution (17cm). What's the temporal resolution, or "frame rate" of the system? Pretty crap, I bet!
5) So quit worrying. There's no way that this technology can be as sexy as it sounds just using existing cellphone masts.
Martin "Fleetie"
"Absorbing your worst..."
I don't have anything to hide ... so I don't mind this.
Now thats an interesting attitude. Perhaps you have nothing illegal to hide (that you know of) but maybe you don't want [insert anyone] to know every step you take? You might not want your employer to know that you have been going to interviews at a compediting company? Or your wife to know that you spend more time at your local bar than you should?
A bit extreme perhaps, but i still don't like it.
Oh, did i mention that turning off your phone isn't going to help? Batteries out is the key....
If an invasion of your privacy isn't a big deal to you then I don't even know where to start the argument..
True ravers don't need drugs
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.
To be very specific, it makes every mast into a Bistatic radar emitter. The tower emits the pulse thanks to GSM older design, and one or more reciever arrayed around receive the original signal and the bounces. So rather then allocate bandwidth, setup seperate emitters, and field it all over they are killing two bird with an existing stone.
This will see through some things, but not the way you think of it normally. You will get information indicating a "Large signal bounce", not the housewife at home. Although the low cost security, vehicle tracking, suspect finding (guns have a great cross section at these frequencies) applications are enormous.
Now the question is if they can make it work with CDMA. Possible, but probably not practical.
This really isn't that new of a technology. I know it has been proposed here in the US on some highways to use information like the number of cellphones in an area, the information could be used to track things like traffic congestion, and then monitoring centers could direct highway patrol to problem areas. It might also help alert highway patrol of accidents, etc. The idea is that they monitor the flow and can see the number of cellphones in an area. The technology of course makes sense because so many people have cellphones and with digital cellphone technology your phone maintains a constant, or almost constant connection to the cellphone tower to my understanding, whether you are making a phone call or not. I know that if you look at this http://money.tbo.com/money/MGAKCWDF15D.html that you can see where this sort of technology has already been used, but not applying to cellular phones. The idea is essentially the same however. I believe that the cellphone traffic technology stuff I'm talking about was planned for testing somewhere south of D.C. on the beltway or something. It was either Virginia or Maryland where I saw something about it though. Don't know if it ever got implemented.
:)
Some people may also know that reccent government mandates in the US have required cellphone companies and manufacturers to be able to locate a cellphone call to a more precise geographical area. I believe that the goal is something like 25 feet or so. I think the requirement is 300 feet right now. Not sure on this though. The reason stated was of course for 911 calls, however other uses could be conceived.
People can turn their cellphones off, however there are some theories that the phone may still give off some signals (so just remove the battery). Of course new legislation will require you not to remove the battery and the phone will not be able to be opened, etc or else you'll be brought to court under DMCA type laws! heheh Maybe going into areas of 'No Service' will be forbidden too
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
The article talks of a radar system based on the reflected waves from mobile phones.
Like yourself maybe? ;) It is actually talking about using mobile phone *masts* as a basic radar station and has nothing to do with handsets what so ever. The reasoning is that since the base station's transmissions generate echos in the same way as a conventional RADAR installation's transmissions do, then you can listen to and make sense of those echos. By monitoring the returning echos at the base station you can generate a RADAR type map of the surrounding area, and by intelligently looking for changes within that you can detect say, a group of Greenpeace members approaching Sizewell B. nuclear powerstation as a moving state change from the normally static background image.
I used this example on purpose; if the system was live, and given the picture at the BBC this seems to be an ideal site (ie. flat, limited access) for this kind of thing. If the system were live already then these people would be in jail right now while someone tried to determine whether they are really from Greenpeace, or from Al Qaida. So the tinfoil hat crowd can relax for the time being. But here's a thought: Have you ever considered what an *excellent* RADAR repeater a tinfoil hat makes? Seriously.
Actually, the fact that any kind of intruders managed to get onto a nuclear installation apres 9/11 is considerably worrying to me, but that's another matter.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
Hear my prayer. Smite down the hordes that posteth about triangulation and about GPRS, for they have not read the linked-to article. Curse them with boils and locusts and bad, bad karma, and banisheth also those that moderate them up, for they do spill their karma upon the stony ground. As in Kuro5hin, so shall it be on Slashdot, for ever and ever, amen.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Thank you for the clarification. I was concerned that since this was being implemented via. phone equipment, it would fall under that category. So, correct me if I am wrong again, a wire-tap concerns the information transfered only over the wire, but no metadata concerning the conversation, i.e. where and when it happened, possible videotaping of the conversation, sound amplification and recording on a party in the conversation, etc.? That can all be gathered freely?
If this is forging new legislative waters as well, I hope they do come up with something soon limiting the use of such systems without court approval. To me, it seems Video surveillance systems are easier to use without order to gather information and use against people, being that possession of the system that is recording you is 9/10ths of the law (Security Cameras, Traffic Cameras, X10 Cameras, etc.).
Zech Harvey, MCSE, MCDBA, CCNA
the point is that innocence has never been an assurance that someone will not abuse power against you. many post sept-11 muslims in the US were perfectly innocent (95% of those arrested as a matter of fact) and yet thousands were rounded up and held for 6-9 months or more on end. the japanese-americans during WWII were innocent, but were rounded up into camps. the jews in germany were innocent. and in our current times (within the last year) the government has interrogated a large number of citizens for 'unamerican activities'. the gov has also recieved thousands of complaints about 'suspicious' (dark-skinned) people who the government went on to detain, arrest, or degrade. So yes, there IS a precedent for those who have 'nothing to hide' needing protection from government power.
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
You're right. Law enforcement promises...Scout's honor...that they're not going to abuse this power. Fortunately, although we know they've abused every other technological advance, we're safe this time...because they PROMISE.
Or if we don't think we're safe, we're obviously terrorists, which makes it easier to justify monitoring us.
They're not just monitoring YOU, they're monitoring EVERYBODY. If that doesn't bother you, there are some pieces of literature I might suggest you read.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
One technique used in radar today is "pulse compression", that of modulating a radar pulse with a sequence that produces a large spike when correlated with itself. The most common such codes for actual pulses are called Barker codes, the longest of which is 13 bits. So, for example, with a 13-bit Barker code, a 13 microsecond "pulse" at 1 megawatt can produce nearly the same resolution and signal/noise performance as a 1 microsecond actual pulse at 13 megawatts.
There are also cyclic orthogonal codes that allow for even larger code lengths, turning a modulated CW signal into a virtual "pulsed" signal. Radio astronomers at Arecibo used this technique for radar imaging of Venus. The transmitter transmitted a megawatt or so CW, modulated with a sequence that was something on the order of 8000 bits long. The cyclic codes aren't as orthogonal to themselves as the Barker codes, but I believe they got an effective gain of around 5000-6000, giving an effective 5-6 gigawatt pulsed transmitter.
Note that CDMA happens to rely on orthogonal codes...
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Wrong.
I was a Ground Surveillance Systems Operator in the United States Army. Your right the resolution on the radar will not allow you to actually "see" the person, but It turns out you can "hear" the reflected doppler shift and a trained ear can descriminate between A vehicle, pedestrian or even two pedestrians if they have varying amounts of metal on them or have different walking rhythms. So If I had the opportunity to listen to a target walking, for about a minute, then the target embracing someone and walking off would do no good unless they had the same rhythm and the same equipment/belts/zippers and arm swing. I would be able to continue to track them. Of course if the target walked up to someone, embraced them and both targets then started skipping or prancing off in other directions, I would lose them, Or rather I would track both, so really this will only obfuscate you if you can walk up embrace, prance, and repeat. But doing this might draw attention to yourself.
Please reply with your email server's address, username and password. Since you don't have anything to hide, I'll publish any email you get online. Thanks in advance.
Trollem mirabilem hanc subnotationis exigiutas non caperet
"The UK has discovered that radio waves can go through walls now?"
Actually, there is a fairly old invention that does allow one to see through walls. It's called a 'window'.
This has been concieved as a way of defeating stealth aircraft, and some observers believe this was how the Serbs shot down the F117 stealth fighter during the Kosovo campaign.
Stealth aircraft work mostly by reflecting radar away from the transmitter. But when the transmitter and receiver are not located at the same site, this can be defeated. Mobile phone networks fill the air with electromagnetic radiation, and if any one transmitter is located at a "lucky" spot, the receiver will be able to pick up the reflection from an aircraft. Since the open air usually doesn't reflect any radiation, an aircraft will stand out from the background.
Of course, to aquire range information, you'd have to trangulate with another receiver. And you can hardly use the doppler effect to get rid of ground clutter, since you'll be listening to a wide range of frequencies from a number of base stations. Also, it puts a new perspective on the question of targeting civilian infrastructure or not.
Score:-1, Wrong
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]
2) I don't believe that this system will be able to tell one person from another. So, for example, if you go somewhere where you can't be tracked (large building, subway, etc) the odds are that when you emerge you will just be an anonymous blob on the sceen (until you pass a security camera anyway).
3) Here's another idea. When walking about, keep passing very close to other people. It will make it more difficult for the operators to keep track of which blob is you.
4) Perhaps some sort of jammer could be devised. The total energy reflected by your body would be VERY small, so you would only need to radiate a microscopic amount of power. Probably less than would interfere with surrounding cellphones. Could a track on jam system be devised? Possibly, but I think that it would need changes to the central system.
Lockheed Martin's "Silent Sentry" system has been trackin airplanes this way for several years, but instead of using relatively weak and short-range cellphone signals, they use the immensely stronger broadcast television and radio signals. A simple demonstration of this technology can be done with any old TV attached to an antenna -- when an airplane flies over, you often get a distortion or echoes in the TV image. As you might imagine, if you explicitly start looking for these distortions, you can detect and track the airplanes remarkably well.
Lockheed's first installation had used regular Radio-Shack TV antennas, but they were replaced pretty quickly by simple T-shaped antennas, along the wall of their building near Baltimore-Washington International airport. They claimed to be able to track targets more than 100 miles away. One spectacular advantage of this kind of 'radar' is that it has no emissions of its own, so the pilots have no inkling that their plane is being tracked. Apparently these systems required substantial computing horsepower, but of course the price of that has plummeted recently. I'm sure that one could build one of these systems now for a shockingly small amount of money.
Given the work that has been done using the long-wavelength TV signals, I'm sure that it will not be long at all before the equivalent cell tower based system can be deployed. It will be interesting to see what it is used for. Theoretically, these systems could have tremendous positive value; for example, things like smart cruise-control that knows where all the cars around you might be. Still, at least in the beginning, you can be sure that it will be exploited by the military and police forces first.
thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
I have already pitched this idea to the South Carolina State Government to allow hurricane evacuation traffic management. During a recent evacuation, the Interstate was gridlocked for 24 hrs while a major highway 2 miles away was empty.
Moderation in All Things... Especially Moderation - gurutc
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
Yep, if you want to stop undesirable signals coming in these days, you need to build your house with one of these new-fangled "fire walls". As a bonus, your heating bills go way down, though you do have to be careful about the roof, since it's only held up by hot air.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
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.
"NO! I CAN'T HEAR YOU! SPEAK UP! I'M IN A CINEMA"
Ah yes. The asshole's over there.
IIRC (can't find the exact article now), according to MilTech magazine, China has implemented, or is implementing, a similar scheme for military use. However, it is based on civilian TV broadcasts!
All these TV transmissions make up a radio pattern in the air, and by using arrays of passive receivers that analyze the radio waves at their particular spot, you can easily spot any large object moving through the air, interfering with the radio patterns. Thus, "stealth" aircraft will have a tough time as it is no longer necessary to return a radar signature to be spotted on radar -- you just have to be a large, blunt object in the enemy airspace.
So what enables this is basically lots and lots of processing power to continuously analyze the radio field patterns.
Don't ever call those see through walls things "windows." Microsoft will sue you.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
The trick is to get real tin foil, not aluminum foil. Many people call aluminum foil "tin foil," but they are not the same. Read More.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
You can't recommend using Windows on SlashDot you'll just get flamed for it. :)
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.