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Phone or Tracking Device?
Red Wolf writes "The first major commercial service that traces people's locations using their mobile phones -- mapAmobile -- is designed more to ease the minds of worried parents and suspicious bosses than to enable unauthorised spying."
That's how it always starts. As more and more companies use it, and when corporations finally control it, those safeguards will slowly be peeled away in the name of security and efficiency - by then it will be so common that most of us probably won't even notice the loss of privacy at all, and others will even encourage it in order to help catch criminals.
FP
I am more worried about the 2005 law that requires GPS/triangulation in all cell phones for 911 call locating. Here's a link to an article in Popular Science about China and how people were using their cell phones to find out which buildings were infected with SARS.
.02
People play a game where you "kill" a nearby person after you locate them using your cell phone equipped with GPS. Just what I want, ANYONE to be able to locate me on the street (opt-in service or not isn't my point).
The first major wave of location services could beam to the U.S. as early as Christmas, when 44 percent of the nation's 149.2 million cellphone subscribers are expected to be traceable, according to the research firm In-Stat/MDR.
No thanks, I would prefer to die after placing a call to 911 rather than have whoever decide that they want to track me via GPS/triangulation.
Live free or die.
Just my worthless
that's what i'd use it for. DUH
Sorry, but "easing the mind of a suspicious boss" is still "unauthorized spying" by any reasonable definition of the term.
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
It costs money, and is only in the UK. I would imagine considerably more time to get something like this here. And even if a company launched it (without some group getting wind of it), it could easily be recalled by the FCC (if they so desired).
Colossians 2:8
I find the wording of the press release ironic.
;)
<paraphrase>
This device isn't really for spying, it's more to allow parents to spy
on their children, and employers to spy on their employees.
</paraphrase>
They of course fail to mention that if the technology were available, a judge
could easily grant a warrant to allow authorities to observe your
movements without notifying you.
In many ways this is worse than Orwellian, because at least in
Orwell's vision, you could still hide from the cameras or escape to
places that didn't have cameras on them. With this device if you had
it on (assuming it works as well as they claim (doubtful)) they could
pinpoint your location all the time. I guess you could just leave it
in your office while you went to play that round of golf and say you
were in a meeting.
Still this technology is simply a herald of more instrusive technology
to come. Move over Orwell, the future may be worse than you imagined.
As someone said in an earlier story, doubleplusungood.
Doug Tolton
"The destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't." -John Galt
I keep my cell phone encased in lead.
Make me a friend and I'll mod you up
"more to ease the minds of worried parents and suspicious bosses than to enable unauthorised spying."
Except that it still can be used for spying!
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Nooo! Does this mean my boss can check and see that I really am stuck in traffic or that I was actually at Mrs' Boss' house for me weekly performance review? Oh no!
How long will it take before there's a option on the mobile device to disable this? Even if they don't offer it, I'm sure it'll be hacked pretty quick.
Or a novel idea, turn the phone off!.
I'm sure it will work better and more casually than the tracking device I have bolted around my teenage son's ankle!
(\_/)
(O.o) This is Bunny. (> <)
I wonder how this works since SIM cards are pretty small. Regardless, I like it.... to a point. Where I work, we have a lot of people who drive a lot of miles in their own cars. At $.365/mile, this adds up quickly (almost $1200/month). Even still, almost all of them cheat padding their monthly miles, or taking a very long route to get someplace. If they KNEW that they could be tracked, it might give honesty a kick in the pants. Where I don't like it is when someone is spied upon and never told. That's just not cool.
This service will cause so much grief and end end so many marriges when significant others find out we are not late at the office but in the pub, or the locator dot is unexpectedly situated over one of their girlfriends houses.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
From what I understand, if the Feds really wanted to they could track your cell phone if it's on now. It's an unavoidable side effect of the technology.
Now, admittedly, I didn't even RTFA, but how is easing the minds of suspicious bosses and worried parents not spying? Just because it is your employees or family you are watching does not mean you are not spying on them.
If your boss gets these cell phones great dont want to be tracked pull the battery out while in the car. This is realy no worse that truckers being tracked like they are now. For your kids well hrm they dont have any reasonable expectation of privacy untill 18 from there parents at least. Well I hope they dont if I'm civily responcible for them. Now the funny thing before everybody cries out about them getting warents to get the info guess what they can do this now I have worked with a phone company to send this data back.
No sir I dont like it.
How do you know that just because you can't make calls or see anything on the screen the phone is really off? It might even have a small internal battery that charges off the main battery and powers the tracker when the main battery is disconnected.
Jason
ProfQuotes
I don't authorize anyone to spy on me ever. There now they aren't allowed anymore. Unless it's my mom. THen it's OK, I'm pretty sure she won't dock my pay for spending the afternoon at the peelers.
I went to battle MC Escher, but drew a blank
An interesting interview with Virgin's Richard Branson on UK TV noted that Virgin Mobile aided European Police locate a suspect down to a part of a city in mainland Europe - that I say is a good use, but I understand why John Connor lived outside of the system :/
It's 1984 all over again
I have this on my phone right now.
Currently its set just to be active when I dial 911, but I could turn it on and have it running constantly.
All you would have to do is unplug the battery if you absolutly didn't want to use it.
is designed more to ease the minds of worried parents and suspicious bosses than to enable unauthorised spying."
/., we say it's alright to use the Xbox as a home PC even though that's not what it was designed for. For that very reason alone, I am 100% sure that this will be used to infringe on at least one person's privacy.
And Kazaa is really just designed to transfer information back and forth. It's not Sharman Network's fault that it gets used to infringe on an incredible number of copyrights.
Let's face it, just because it was designed to ease parents and bosses, that's no guarantee whatsoever that they will not be used to violate one's civil liberties. RFIDs are designed to help stores keep inventory and make checkouts easier, but they can be easily abused to "see" what someone is wearing on his person.
We champion the right to use products in nonstandard ways all the time here at
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.
A suspicious boss has no right to spy on you... suspicion does not consistute the right to spy.
Three cheers for self employment!
meh
"We now now that schoolboys have hacked into the Pentagon computers." Where's the evidence for this?
..but if you are really interested in moving around throughout this land of ours with being tracked by big brother's watchful eye in the sky, then you can LEAVE YOUR NOKIA AT HOME.
It's a no-brainer.
--
is it just me or does it seem like it is getting easier and easier to track the locations of people...
just 3-5 years ago, when you took off in your car, it would be difficult for someone to get up with you unless they knew your destination... now a majority of people have cell phones which allow whoever wants to to contact them... next comes locating devices...
sure is an easy way to see if your significant other is cheating or if your kid really is studying at the library... what is next, surgically install gps units or what??
phone traces you!
AT&T Wireless has had this for quite some time. It's called find-a-friend, and it lets you locate and be located by other AT&T GSM customers that you specify. I do have a GSM/GPRS phone with AT&T and I've read a little about the feature, but never used it.
If you do not like the fact that this device will allow anyone to find out exactly where you are, I emphatically recommend that you not purchase one.
That is all.
-- I Am Not A Terrorist.
This device isn't really for spying, it's more to allow parents to spy
on their children,....
Spy well, dear parents, for your children will be the ones taking care of you in your twilight years....
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
is designed more to ease the minds of worried parents and suspicious bosses than to enable unauthorised spying." Yeah, so...? Intention is nothing, potential is everything! Unless a level of security is embedded into the technology, and just just part of *their* interface, this will be used by jalous ex-husbands and others to spy on a regular basis. Grimlock
... for location tracking always include the ability to have someone else get ahold of this information. This is why I don't have a cell phone. In theory, they could track what cell tower I was connected to anyway, and get a rough idea of my location. Granted, a normal POTS line has a definite endpoint, but it's not one that is carried around.
I can see benefits to this technology, since 911 operators will have an easier time dispatching emergency personnel, and it might even be useful for delivery drivers to know if the destination is legitimate. Other than that, though, I see so much possible abuse that I don't want to see this technology in use.
I would be cool with a cell phone having a GPS receiver built in, so I could find out where I am and tell the caller, but they should not be able to gain that information without my approval.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
to use this when waking up after a huge drinking binge to find out where the hell I am.
Of course, what value is coerced consent? The two groups of people this is clearly intended to be used on -- children and employees -- will not be 'consenting' in any kind of free manner.
'Consent because I'm your legal guardian and can consent on your behalf' and 'Consent or lose your job' don't really count as consent in my book.
The cellphone is becoming a tool for employers to squeeze away the last vestiges of a personal life for their employees. First is the expecation of being contactable at all hours, day or night, instantaneously (and thus the expectation that people will never be doing anything they can't be called away from). Now, they can't just contact you, they can find out where you are, at any moment, and without your knowledge.
And as for those of us living in the United States, you really think the Justice Dept. isn't going to press for access to this kind of thing -- with as little judicial safeguards as they can get away with?
Ugh.
Can you see me now? Can you see me now?
--"The perfect example of the man of action is the suicide." - William Carlos Williams
1) You have the right to question the vendor of a product your buying and determine whether or not you want this.
2) No one is making this a standard it is a company doing what they want, so I don't see the big hoorah around this
3) It might actually come in handy considering if someone were kidnapped, this could be a possible method of determining their whereabouts.
Sure there are pros and cons behind this, but it isn't anything new. Now if this were any longer I would rant on about Applied Digital Solutions' Digital Angel product, and how the DOJ is looking into using them in the future.
That is truly newsworthy. Besides one could set up their own triangulator to do the same thing if they really wanted to track you. Expensive yea, but it's doable without going through some company
MoFscker
Since you're your own boss, doesn't that mean you are spying on yourself 24-7?
Settings -> Location -> On/Off
Notice (as shown in the display):
Karma: NaN
It could become lucurative business to sell such information
Remember TIVO which now dishes key press information out to bidders at a zip code level - they could do something like that...
The terms and conditions of the service define a "Locatable User" as "the owner or keeper of a Locatable Mobile Phone who has consented to being Located."
In a confusing definition, a Locatable Mobile Phone is defined as "a mobile telephone registered with the Service by a Locating User."
Do they mean Locatable User? If not, this seems to indicate that I add someone else's phone to the registry, then they are notified and have to give consent, and then I can locate them. This seems like an odd mechanism as opposed to a purely opt-in method. Their further description indicates that this might be the case, but it's still unclear:
"MI International shall contact all Locatable Users directly by SMS to obtain their Consent to be Located."
I want you all to know that I already have the patent pending for tinfoil cell phones. Also to those of you who say things like "You could always just leave your phone at home" have you forgotten the point of having a freaking mobile phone man. Before you know it everybody will using this with out the approval restrictions and your phone will not only have a tracking device but also a tiny camera and their watching you, always watching you. AHHHHH!!! Please remember just because your paranoid that doesn't mean they aren't out to get you!!!
Trust Your Technolust
that we saw this article on location-tracking software in PDAs, using simple triangulation. I wonder if this uses a similar technology?
By disable, I mean break into a million pieces (or functional equivalent). Will the phone work without it? If not, how do you misinform it so that it is not accurately giving up/out your location?
It is necessary to track mobile phones for technical reasons. We know that any mobile service operator knows location of any active mobile station. This is technical nature of mobile services.
Everytime we agree to use mobile service we agree to be tracked by somebody. Don't worry. This is your choice and nothing more.
grote?
Parent: Jr, I've told you 1000 times that I want you to call us and tell where you are going.
Jr: Gee whiz, when we got to the park the payphone was busted.
...
Parent: Here is a mobile phone for you. Now you have no excuses.
...
Jr: The battery ran down.
...
Parent: I've just bought you an always on, methanol powered, auto-locating phone.
...
Jr: The dog ate it.
Sorry, but spying is spying. Spying by authorities on the people of this nation, whether they be government or employer or any other type of authorities, is reprehensible.
Turn it off...
I keep my cell off a lot. Why? I use it for MY convienence... It's for me to make a call, not to be pestered when I'm in the car, at the mall, eating dinner, etc.
Corporatism != Free Market
I think that other technologies will come to mask the effects of this one, and thus balance and privacy will be restored.
I feel that the general tone that these are inherently bad for their potential to become aweful, but personally I would prefer for this to come to the publics attention rather then being used secretively without our knowledge.
I do, however think that legal actions can be done that can harm us much greater than any new technology. This is why we should investigate this technology, and advocate its opening up to standards so that it may not become a device to monitor people like herds. But will become a device that everyone knows how it works, and how to cirumvent it if neccessary.
We should all fight for a GPL of this, not scream that its the anti-christ of privacy... Technology, like the show, must go on!
Cell phones are RF devices. They broadcast. They say "I am here!" and the nearest cell tower says "Cool. I'll patch you in here until you reach the next cell." The phone company could track you to within the radius of a given cell since day one. As the technology has matured they've been able to better locate individual phones. It's a side effect of providing better coverage and more efficient service.
If you're worried about people tracking you by your cell phone, turn it off - and be aware that as soon as you come on the air to make a call, "they" will have a good idea where you are.
All this new service does is make that knowledge accessible to someone who's not monitoring cell sites inside the system. The addition of GPS in the phones makes it dramatically more accurate, but it's not really a new capability.
If you're worried about the Law tracking you down by your phone, then you should probably ditch the cell and go back to pay phones. Ditch the calling card too.
As for parents, if I give my kid a phone, and I care enough about her to wonder where she is, then tracking her with the cell (especially one I'm paying for) is my parental right. Parents are responsible for their kids. Part of that responsibility is having an idea whether they're out raising hell or really are over at their friend's studying like they said they were.
Bosses? Different matter and entirely situational. Company phone, company car, company time, the boss has the right to know whether or not I'm abusing my privilege. My phone? My time? Hell no.
Sure, they can track us with our phones. Big fat hairy deal. You don't want them to track you? Then don't carry a -transmitting- radio in your pocket!
Never attribute to malice what can as easily be the result of incompetence...
clue
Besides, this service already exists in different forms. There are a number of companies who provide GPS tracking for company car fleets, trucking lines, etc. This is just the next logical step.
It does, however, scare me that these devices could be used as surrogate parents. Instead of actually talking to their kids and asking about their whereabouts, Joe Lazy-Parent can just fire up the tracker and find out where Little Johnny is.
They want people to pay for this service, pshaw. Your location is information and information wants to be FREE!!!
Trust Your Technolust
until all phone companies are required to have phones tracking systems installed this is not a real problem. I can see a service that will redirect your calls to a different cell-phone, with a provider of your choice.
You can't handle the truth.
Cops don't *need* a warrant to observe you. Not even without this. There's never been any sort of protection against observing people.
I don't like the idea of a tracking device much, but for Chrissakes we can do without the damned 1984 bit every time.
Btw, if that was a troll, great job!
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Because the service requires the user to 'accept' the request for triangulation.
Yes, in the future, blah, blah, blah, etc. However, you can already triangulate mobile phone signals without having to sign up for commercial services - I somehow doubt this will "open the doors" for snooping. Those who want to are already doing it - those who don't aren't going to be suddenly inspired to.
And then your health insurance contract and your employment contract explicitly state that if you have a cell phone you must have GPS turned on. And you'd better give them the keys to it. Then when you call work on the weekend and they notice you have the GPS turned off you get fired.
If I remember correctly they used similar tech to locate Kevin Mitnick in that bad book (and movie).. Though this would not fly in the US as people would freak out if they knew someone could track them anywhere they were.
So paranoid are people..
anime+manga together at last.. in real time.
There engineers said only security services have access to this information....I notified them of the site and they should be stomped by the mighty faceless corporation that is vodaphone shortly...
"OK clean up and scram, mom's 10 minutes away"
"Dammit don't drop the weed everywhere!"
"Next time look where you throw your bra"
Good point, and I don't have mod points
T-Mobile GSM phones have had this capability for about two years now. The thing is that it is not active on any of the phones due to concerns about customer backlash with the whole tracking thing. Once companies have worked past the acceptence issue, you can expect T-Mobile to active this feature.
All your base are belong to us!
Since this past February anyone has been able to see where my phone is in real time right here A cool map of everypoint I have driven past.
Free cell phone tracking
Your kids have rights, even if you pay for a cell phone for them.
Sucks, Huh?
Looks like we may finally be able to use our phones as GPS devices, rather then have to carry an extra GPS device. This would be especially handy in Europe.
Sometimes all of us end up working for a jerk. When times are tight; working for a jerk is better than not working, after all. I'm just not keen on expansion of the ways in which jerks can screw with people.
The other problem is when something becomes 'standard business practice' and even the non-jerky employers start doing it. For example, compensation for being called after hours. As a professional sysadmin having worked in the business for almost ten years, I have never, ever had a job in which I get paid extra for getting calls. It would be safe to say that 'standard business practice' is that employees in my position don't get that. It would be a rare employer indeed who'd give out that compensation.
Assume for a moment you are part of a group of sysadmins who must rotate 24/7 support coverage by carrying a company cellphone. Now lets add cellphone tracking to the picture. You now have a situation where although in theory you are on your own time, you must carry the phone, and have it on, and thus be tracked.
The biggest question I have, is can you get a report for where the phone HAS been, not where it is. Can you get information going back say 24 or 48 hours? If you can't now, I'll bet you will be able to shortly. Great potential for abuse here.
Let's say your boss is not religous and you are (or vice/versa) he can see if you do/do not go to church, what denomination you are etc. This is just one of many examples of potential abuse. If you deviate from the norm in any way those deviations can now be noticed, tracked and acted upon.
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
Cool, normally it's non-US slashdotters getting to say how messed up the US is! Now those of us in the US can say, glad I don't live there!!!!!!
Why yes I am a Troll...but how did you know I'm from Norway?
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
*sigh*
Kids still lie to their parents. At least someone actually cares enough to know something about their kid instead of letting them go off an buy guns and kill people...
Moron.
Any GSM call will already alert your service provider to your location. They will have at least the cellsite you're connecting from, and likely residual data from nearby sites that your phone skimmed over before selecting one in particular.
The only difference here is that the location service is finally being made available to third parties.
Since February, anyone with a Motorola i88 or i58sr and Nextel service can track their phone for free. You do have to load a Java app onto the phone first
Free cell phone tracking
The problem with any technological "solution" is that it breeds more problems. If you depend on this tech to determine people's locations then it can be faked. What if I just left my cell phone dialed into, say, my ISP and left it sitting in my house? Now the snoop will confidently think I'm at home when in reality I'm well on my way to Tiajuana.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
For the cellphone manufacturers: Make phones with tracking/etc as an option. If you generally prefer privacy, but have an accident of sorts (and are, one would hope, at least coherent enough to push of button) allow the "trackable mode" on the cellphone to be an option
For cellphone users: There's a big button the phone called "off." As long as you're not expecting a call, you can just turn the damn thing back on when you need to dial out. If you're still paranoid, yank the battery or get a lead-lined case/signal-scrambler or something.
While the Feds have mandated location tracking for 911, it was left to the States to pay for it. as legislatures take this up, they can be pushed to place legal limitations on use, including clear opt-in for non-911 use, and liability for telcomms who leak, or make unauthorized use. Particular attention should be paid to archiving of the locater data absent opt-in.
State legislatures also have the power to set Statutory standards for law enforcement access to location data.
Ben Masel: 51,282 votes for US Senate in the Wisconsin Democratic Primary
BUT calling that consent is a bit weaselly with the words.
Unfortunately I can't find a transcript of the show, but here's a quick description taken from the shownotes: I'll leave the Orwellian aspects of cellphone tracking to the other threads.
Jonah Hex
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
Eventually I can see cellphones totally phazing out house phones and pay phones will eventually stop taking change becuase change itself will be phased out. Eventually paper money and metal money will be non-exsisitent and the only way to make voice or video calls to anyone will require you using means in which you can be easily tracked. The sad thing is I don't really believe there is a way to stop this. Maybe I can hold this stuff off until I die...but not likely. Privacy has no place in the future, sorry guys.
Creative Demolition
I have an idea. Just make this tracking info accessible to general public. Imagine web site with query form. Enter phone number and get name and location of cell tower nearest to this phone.
Nice. Then let people pay to get hidden from general public.
I bet the parents of those two missing kids in Massachusetts would really love it if their cellphones (which are currently defaulting into voicemail) had this ability. I mean, they're probably dead, but at least they'd know.
Perhaps a cheaper device, nothing more than a panic button that uses the cellphone system, would be a good alternative. It also wouldn't ring and alert your kidnapper that you have it. It wouldn't solve every situation, but I bet it'd be pretty useful in many.
Plus, it would be another product for the cellphone companies to make and sell service on. Get one for every member of your family! Not anywhere near as expensive as a cellphone, so more people could afford them, and they'd all need service, though, like 911, the service portion should be free. These should definitely not be anonymous, though, or the prank potential would be enormous. Plus, you'd want to know who to be looking for. Perhaps have your information (name, address, photo, etc.) at the phone company when you sign up for service, when the thing goes off, all that info is instantly routed to the cops.
This system seems to be UK based. In UK, the digital cellular systems is GSM/PCS. GSM base stations have a theoretical maximum diameter of 35km (15-20 miles?). Since the 1999/2000 boom in subscriber quantity, most cells top out at 2-3km and can be as small as 100m (300 foot) in town centers. Also, cells usually are segmented into 3 slices of 120 degrees each, to maximize channel re-usage ability.
Another GSM feature is the "timing advance", which roughly indicates the distance of a mobile from its base station. It is necessary, because GSM is time multiplexed. A mobile is assigned a "time slot" for transmission. To avoid interference between mobiles that are far away from the base stations and those that are near, the far mobile sends its packet a little bit too early. It then travels a the speed that radio waves use to have and arrives dead-on its time slot. While "timing advance" is originally used only for this purpose, it obviously also is a good indication of where the mobile is.
The mobile knows all these values - each base station has a unique identifiyer, and the timing advance is measured every N seconds (which btw is the reason why GSM mobiles are spec'ed for travel speeds of 250km/h max).
The trace system basically "phones-home" this information, where the base station ID is looked up in a database to find out where the mobile is.
This is not new. Former Viag Interkom in Germany offered such a service, too. Once registered, you could look up the position of a mobile through an internet page. There's also a travel assistance service of D1 Telekom Germany, where you call in, hang up, the system traces your position, and sends a text message with traffic jam information etc (for your current position) to your mobile.
All these systems base on the same method of locating you, but are marketed differently.
But back on-topic: there is no GPS. As simple as that.
A little background on how they already know where you are, and why.
Auto-reply to ACs: "Truly, you have a dizzying intellect."
Thank you for writing my post for me. :-)
After reading through all the comments, it's amazing how many people failed to read even a bit of the article (I shouldn't be surprised, but it's still something that drives me nuts).
From the article:
1. If police want to use this to find you, they can and already have. The article clearly mentions how this technology was used to nab a bomber in the US. As parent poster stated, this isn't something new, it just brings the technology to people who don't have access to it right now.
2. To use it, the person with the phone has to consent. For kids, sucks to be you, but I certainly can't blame parents for wanting this. For employees, tough luck. It's not like it's your personal phone that's being traced...just your work phone.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
Some one has a website to tell you how to disable the GPS triangulation on your new cell phone? And then how long before it gets shut down for some kind of DMCA, PATRIOT act or [insert new law taking away our right to play with our toys law here] violation?
This is a right to privacy issue, my boss doesn't need to know where I am when I'm not at work, its none of thier damn business where I answer my phone from. As long as I answer it and do what has to be done.
is designed more to ease the minds of worried parents and suspicious bosses than to enable unauthorised spying
I'm more afraid of my parents than I am of the CIA.
I would be more afraid of my boss than I am of the CIA, but my boss doesn't care where I am at 4 AM on a wednesday night.
My parents do care, and they have the will ability to pull my college tuition if they had some way of knowing where I actually was at 4 AM and they didn't like it.
At the moment they have no way of knowing that since they're in another state. If they could track my cellphone...
This is about as interesting as a post by someone who hasn't RTFA.
Not trying to be funny here, but aren't cell phones tracking devices anyways? 80% of the time when someone calls my cell, they ask "Where are you" or "What are you doing?"
Not all that different than a "real" tracking system if you ask me.
This company is offering a service that the police had to get a warrant for. The phone company can do it, when a warrant is issued. With this service, anyone can track phones they pay for. Or any phone they can convince the service provider that they are allowed to track. Being an order taker for this service and having no scruples could pay really well. Who has a hot babe you want to track?
FYI the direct mileage reimbursement rate for 2003 is $.36/mile.
a) I made no mention of the constitution. Though I do fear for its protection, with the current white house / justice dept. They never heard of a search or seizure they didn't like nor thought reasonable.
b) That life sucked worse in the past doesn't excuse any way that it sucks now. And yes, I realise just how sucky things were back in the day, before labor laws.
Curiously enough, I've seen many cops recently talking on cellphones. There may end up being quite a market for the phone numbers of these mobiles, considering the possibilities of compiling a database of trackable police cruisers.
No doubt this will try to be sanctioned, but, it is after all, new technology. When was the last time that was secure?
You'd think in the information age this data would be easily found.
--- Ban humanity.
I dont know what the intentions for this featur are, but I know Ill be using it to track my drugs and arms runners. No more calling them like 'Where you at?' or 'Where's my guns at?'. Now I'll just know. And when they mess up a deal or get locked up, I can send a cleaner and know where the cleaner is at too!
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My Sanyo 4900 has a location service. The paper instructions and phones internal help system claim if I shut the location system off, only 911 facilities will be able to know my location. What this really tells me is that it is always on from the phone end but Sprint will only pass the signal to the 911 system, not anyone who wants it. I also assume that the police will also have access to this also if needed or wanted. There is NOTHING that prevents law enforcement from going to Sprint or any other carrier and requesting a list of all users that were in a certain area at a certain time. This IS what the system is really being pushed for and why the Office of Homeland Security is the government department responsible for this E911 service implementation.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
mapAmobile is designed more to ease the minds of worried parents and suspicious bosses than to enable unauthorised spying."
And crack is designed to give a "highly euphoric feeling" while providing the added benefit of weight loss.
Law enforcement can use radio wave triangulation to find a cb radio. You cell phone is doing the same thing. When you are using a cellphone you are broadcasting your position..Don't like it?
Dont use your cellphone.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Otherwise one day she might relize that I wasn't at work late and I was drinking last night.
"A lot" is two words. You wouldn't say "alittle", would you?
You wouldn't say "I had a little of fun", would you? "A lot" is a special case.
I looked at this service a few months ago when I first saw it on a tv news buletin. It's working with regular GSM phones by triangulating the position of the phone based on the signal strength monitored at the GSM base stations dotted around the country. It's information that the GSM networks have had available for a long time, it just required a third party to co-ordinate the service for all the UK networks.
As for all the privacy concerns voiced on this page I recommend people read the faq. Most significantly:
Can I locate any mobile I like?
No, mapAmobile can only be used with the permission of the user of the mobile you wish to locate. We ask for this at registration and send regular text messages to remind them that they are being located. The phone must be on O2, Vodafone, Orange or T-Mobile.
I understand that the old txt msgs aren't very popular outside Europe, Asia & Africa (ahem) but trust me, the vast majority of GSM Mobile Users are very familiar with it.
Democratic Presidential Candidate, Dennis Kucinich, the Progressive Choice, will be guest blogging on lessig's blog next week!
Coors Lite - at least up here in Canada.
They have built GPS into (select) cans and bottles for a prize/promotion contest.
The term "We're tracking you." is on the boxes. If you have a 'winning' can, you are to stand in a location free of trees and buildings and wait until they come to you. Insanity to me.
Talk about getting people softened up for their eventual slave-tags. Sheesh.
and people wonder why I always carry foil in my back pocket!
HATS, people, HATS!!!
what ever happened to the good old private eye?
Linux: Helping nerds look smarter since the late 90s.
Soon you will see reverse look-ups with this. "Let's see who the owners of the cell phones are who are in the red-light district. Maybe we can blackmail them."
in the old world.
Over in Europe we've had services like this for at least two years.
Some just show your location based on the current base station you're connected to, and some are more sophisticated and uses some kind of triangulation (maybe based on what base stations you have been in contact with the last minutes? I don't know).
I've tried it a couple of times, and it's seems to be quite accurate give or take some fifty meters.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
Nextel released the i58sr and i88s handsets in November of 2002. Many vendors have provided the Java and web/desktop software nessecary to track the handsets since that time. They are probably over 20 vendors now including Actsoft, Xora, Portable Internet, GearWorks, Televigation and At Road just to name a few.
Come play Moral Decay!
The MapAMobile privacy policy doesn't even mention the privacy of those phones/SIMs being tracked. If that's not even on their radar, how seriously can we take the rest of that policy, regarding the related info they collect, which is a juicy cross-reference nexus for tracking the phone holder in a online world model?
--
make install -not war
I am not trying to be a "something-something" but just wanted to see if someone has been able to distill the essence of the arguement of why privacy is needed at the individual level, and can express it in a soundbite of say 30-60 seconds. I have been having a hard time articulating myself in the period of the attention span of most people. Of course I could ask them to read stuff like Orwell, but that is asking too much of them. I am looking for something short and sweet ...
So my question is very simple. Is there a short and sweet way of capturing the need of ABSOLUTE privacy in at least some spheres of your life, no matter who you are. Even if you don't hold such an extreme position, but only slightly tend towards privacy over surveillance, I would still be interested in seeing how you express yourself in just a few words ....
To distill the essence I have many times tried to boil it down to its abstraction. But when I do it it becomes pretty awkard to express ... Here is an example
Would anyone want to share their formulation of this need for privacy...
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
The provider I use (Verizon) uses GPS to meet the US E911 requirements. It has an option to turn GPS off for non 911 calls.
To the best of my knowledge Verizon relys on this GPS data and doesn't have the hardward and software to triangulate.
is that was the sprint locator stuff is all about? On my samsung phone there is a locator feature but to my knowlege there is no service that uses that feature.
In case you haven't noticed, the job market sucks right now....
:
You might be able to find a job flipping burgers, but if you are supporting a family most people will probably rationalize it like this
"Well it is spying on me, I'm forced to carry it, but if I quit I wont be able to support my family. So I'll suck it up and deal." Thus it becomes the status quo and acceptable for employers to monitor what you do, who you associate with and where you go after work.
FWIW I am not in this boat, but I know others who are. My point is some people will not have the option of turning the phone off. And without vigilance, it could easily become an expected part of life.
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
As someone pointed out above, you can already be tracked by your cell phone. A friend of mine is a US Federal Marshall. Someone has a warrent out for their arrest, him and his friends go find them. He told me that they tracked someone to an isolated spot in Mississippi from the guys cell phone. Costs the police dept. like $100 or something like that, but they can find you if you use ANY kind of cell phone.
Another thought came to mind though. I recently lost my cell phone. A positive effect of GPS cell phones might be for me to be able to check the phones position online, plug in some coordinates into mapquest, and go find my phone. Of course, this could also turn into a selling point for our Orwellian future.
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Squirrel
Let me dispel some myths. The phones are standard 2G phones. The phone has to transmit slightly earlier the further away from the cell it is. Light, although fast still takes time to travel. And when you only have a tiny split-second time slot to get into, it needs careful timing.
The networks have had this ability for a while, but it's only recently that they've opened up their networks via APIs that other people can use. It's accurate to about 500 metres in towns (due to the higher number of cells), and to up to about 2 kms in the countryside.
It gets updates the network whenever the phone has to transmit - SMS, phonecall, MMS, GPRS, or when the phone moves cells. So you can only query the last known place and time that a phone was "seen". I am writing an application that takes advantage of this - but I'm not going to tell you what it is.
Get your own free personal location tracker
They already use systems like this to track semis, it's called AVL (Automatic Vehicle Location).
You can find the results of a study done on this system, including benefits and costs here
There is a worryingly large amount of people who do not reach the bare minimum of 30 hrs per week. Vote vote vote!
Don't forget that there's a large group of people out there who have no interest in cell phones and therefore they won't be trackable. If we become like them, we won't need to worry about being tracked. This is definitely not Orwellian because we CHOOSE to use the tech that can track us. We choose to use credit cards, ATM cards, wireless data networks, PCs, and cell phones. You have the power to stop this. Stop using the things that can track you.
Have a mandated cell phone for work? Need to be on call? You could choose to go to the office and wait by the landline. Don't like that? Too bad. Nothing's free, and the markets expand to take advantage of the nooks and crannies that technology provides.
This commonly available resource has some additional potential for use to make money. People will do just that. That's just the way it is.
Respectfully,
Anomaly
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
There's nothing stopping you from exploiting the weaknesses of this system.
For example, you could leave your cell phone plugged in and turned on in an appropriate place and have your calls forwarded to another number.
For the truly paranoid, implement a VoIP solution and have the audio traffic bounced off an anonymizer service so that people can't tell where you really are.
Sheesh!
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
Anyone with some urls on {some}phone tracing?. (Not want to start a flameware btw)
...is that you have no guarantee that the person opting in, is the one being tracked. What if I buy two phones, opt-in (doh), and tape one of them to your car with a high-power battery? I'd have a pretty solid guess of where you are and where you're going for a week (doesn't need to call, send/recieve SMS, anything, just be online = low battery consumption).
Personal tracking would be more difficult though, but not moreso than it could be embedded in a large purse, bag, suitcase or any other large object you carry around. Particularly if you gutted it of everything it doesn't need (speaker, microphone, display).
I find that a greater threat than the Orwellian eyes most slashdotters seem to worry about...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Would their be a market or use, even a gag gift, in metal protective cases for cell phones that happen to make effective faraday cages?
Protect from prying eyes?
Great if you have to carry the phone, but hate to give up your time - Boss, I had the phone, just didn't get a signal.
Guys,
You are all missing the point. The only reason that carriers are implementing this functionality is because it is _required_ for emergency services. E911 has specified this for years, and as with most things, carriers have been dragging their feet for years. Europe has the same requirements.
Essentially this is all there to allow 911 operators to know where you are calling from. I've been in a car accident and called 911 from a cell phone. Do you know how hard it is to tell where you are at night, on a highway without distance markers? Exactly.
So, the functionality is already there, for an extremely important safety function. This isn't there to allow the cops to follow you at all times.
It does however, result in really cool other functionality. How about:
All pretty cool, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Jason PollockThis isnt' new. They've been doing this in movies since the 80's.
for the first conviction for stalking with this. Got a new paramore? Hey, give them a cell phone! Or that cute new girl(or guy) in the office? Even better, give them one off the company expense account!
Privacy, we hardly knew ye.
It was George Washington who said "Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. It is a force, like fire, a dangerous servant and a terrible master."
Just wanted to set the record straight.
Washington said, "Government, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a terrible master,". That changes the meaing a bit from your quote, but proves your point.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
My telecom is always able to track me if i'm using my phone. Of course, I have a landline...
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
I spoke with a developer with a working system. The phone companies can (as in "do now") provide the location information, and security is provided through certificates. If, for the moment, you assume that certificates work, you get to control who gets to see your location information. You can hand it off to your friends or boss, and you can turn it off (stealth mode) at any time. I saw it working and it is pretty impressive (or scary for all the reasons already mentioned). Also, once the infastructure is in place (which it now is), it is trivial to implement.
Coercive permission and court warrants would get around perfect security (if such a thing existed).
However, my point is that the infastructure is in place right now (in US) and implementation is easy.
Two things. One, if you lost your phone, this would certainly be useful, though I don't know if it's worth the potential Big Brother effect or not.
Second, let's say a mother gives this to their child, and said child loses this phone or leaves it somewhere. How long do you think it'd take the mother to freak out thinking their son/daughter had bit the big one? All they'd see is a stationary phone. And knowing the target audience parents, wouldn't they just freak out and get worried their child had been injured/etc? Some "peace of mind" that is.
"I drank what?" -Socrates
This is totally pointless for the tasks their advertising, any kids who didnt want their parents knowing their position could easily turn their phones off, get on the tube, give them to friends or just wrap them in foil to simulate loss of signal and then turn them off (looks like you got on the tube ;) Any kidnapper could do the same. It has no real value and certainly not 30's value.
Also it would have been cool if they gave you a trial period - like a day or 3 location requests. Seeing as its tied to a phone number you cant just sign up for a new free account. This is such a geek toy, hm i want!
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
It seems the general consensus here is opretty negative on this technology due to it's potential for abuse. However I can't help but feel if a couple of Uni students rigged up the same thing in their dorm room with a couple of pringles cans and aan empty pizza box, everyone would be applauding at how cool it is and how it has the potential to save the world.
Just a thought...
Where am I now?
Good!
Using thie technology its only accurate to 100m or so. Now if you are meant to be in an area then its great for your boss to see it. However if you are trying to track a stolen phone then how annoying is that going to be?
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
I can't believe the parent's parent got modded as "insightful" for suggesting if you don't want to wear a tracking beacon, leave your phone at home.
Big brother is OK if it is "market forces", I guess...
Easier way... in the US just get Sprint service.
I honestly do not see the situation improving. As you say, people will just accept it. Just as they accept secret courts, unlimited detention without charges, secret search orders etc. All in the name of safety and security. It's just sad to think that most people are willing to live in a world patterned after 1984.
Doubleplusungood....
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
Todays workers are definetly different than they were before. Befor you could trust people in a way that you can't do today if you want to stay in bussiness, You live in a dream world if you think that you boss still trust you.
Bullshit, bullshit, buuuuulllllshiiiiiittttt. What, do you think that there weren't unreliable workers 50 years ago? 100 years ago? 1000 years ago? You are so full of it its not even funny.
If anyone has lost trust, its companies, not workers. Money has always been the first priority of any business, but in todays global economy your company will sell you out in a second. You've worked at the company loyally for 10 years? Tough shit, they're going to move to Bangladesh were they can get three people to do you job for less money. Board members want to raise their stock price? They bring in "Chainsaw" Al Dunlap, slash a couple thousand jobs (and thus payroll) to bring the stock up a couple points and you're out of a job.
Its the workers fault, my ass.
"... is designed more to ease the minds of worried parents and suspicious bosses than to enable unauthorised spying."
Forgive me if I'm wrong (or redundant), but even if the people using this are "worried parents" and/or "suspicious bosses" these parents and bosses are still spying (it's redundant to say unauthorized spying) unless the other person fully consents to the idea.
I bet this is another situation where, not accepting the technology somehow makes you a person of suspicion.
I hate this crap.
Hold on, I'm not ready to read through this topic yet. *Puts gigantic tin foil hat on head, checks mirror, and adds some more to be sure*. Okay, now I'm ready!
GM's Onstart system already does this quite nicely. A friend of mine has it and when he works late his wife can make a "toll free" phone call and verify the exact position of his car. Fortunately, he is not a cheating husband, but still she can find out what road he is on and the speed he is travelling. In short, if you have a cell phone, you can be tracked...the system is not completely activated yet...comrade.
Just remove the battery from the device.
I think this sort of technology is INHERENTLY BAD because NOTHING can be secured from EVERYONE. Simple.
Then there are hackers who may, or may not, break the security.
What I would like to see is the ability to TURN THIS OFF, so I can use it only for CERTAIN NUMBERS only, e.g. 911
That will be much worse than Orwell every imagined.
At least in 1984 a person was free to roam under the radar.
This technology certainly brings that to a halt. Orwell will be turning in his grave!
designed more to ease the minds of worried parents and suspicious bosses than to enable unauthorised spying."
Seems to me to amount to the same thing, only that children and employees don't have the power to object to the "unauthorized spying".
designed more to ease the minds of worried parents and suspicious bosses
I think I'll ease my parents' minds and set my phone adrift in the Hudson.
The company I work for already has a system for TDMA & GSM in the US (Note Grayson Wireless is now Andrew Corp). We have this live in almost every state.
Julius Caesar - Act I, Scene i: "What mean'st thou by that? Mend me, thou saucy fellow!"
I wish they had this 3 weeks ago when my phone was stolen.
I bought an LG cellphone about 6 months ago and it touted that it had a built in tracking feature for emergency calls, it has an On/Off feature for this tracker,wether or not it works is beond my ability to confirm but I hadent even concidered civilians using this to keep tabs on your location
Whats A sig anyway
Having trouble locating your stalkee? No problem, just use our tracking system.
stick it in the microwave, shut the door. don't turn it on, unless you want this to be a terminal experiment. microwave frequencies are in the same rough ball park (at least as far as shielding goes) to GSM frequencies and it'll stop reception!
In the UK at least (where this article is talking about) you can still buy a mobile phone and the credit top-up vouchers for it in cash and use it without ever giving the phone company your name or address.
Granted, someone clever might be able to identify you by your voice or the numbers you dial but otherwise they only have a number, not your name.
I've kinda wanted this for awhile, but only if you can authorise keys on other people's phones. Imagine you're at some huge music festival - how useful would it be if you could turn the service on and select your buddy from the list, then just walk round with an arrow pointing to which way they are and a distance meter.
Many of you won't appreciate the idea, but then you've probably never been to Glastonbury..
toeslikefingers.com - because
See how long it is after you do this before someone comes knocking, mentioning the problems airliners are having near your house and offering to point out the error of your ways with a boot.
We've been developing location-based mobile services for a while now, with several customers with live services, and many more trialling. They're very useful for services like "dial this number and be connected to your nearest taxi company".
;)
However, REQUIRED BY LAW, the user must be informed that they are about to be located. Their consent is implicit if they don't hang up at that point. People can't spy on you without your consent. Of course, what this means for kids under voting age regarding their parents is up for interpretation.
...It then travels a the speed that radio waves use to have ..
;->
what speed did radio waves use to have, and what speed do they have now
The problem is that E911 is not widely deployed. Sometimes because of bureaucratic incompetence or inertia, sometimes because the local government took the money and spent it on something else.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Right, but that has nothing to do with this device, since we've established they can do that now. Compared to status quo, no net disadvantage
You actually trust the police?
Fuck no!
My experience with police is they are power hungry, brutal, believe they are above the law and will flaunt it in every possible way they can each and every day.
You forgot "dumb as dogshit."
Police are supposed to be servents, but somewhere along the line they got this idea they are supposed to be in charge.
Probably with the nightstick they were issued.
Seriously, I don't like cops either, but I think that's the least bad thing about cheap tracking devices and such.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
Even if you turn the phone off (by pressing the off button or whatever), parts of any wireless device are still powered, because the battery is still connected thereto. When you press the power switch, a computer(ized) power circuit detects the power and fires up the rest of the device. Same with computers - power switches are not physical switches like your typical home lights - they are merely push buttons.
The point? Your phone may be off, but I'd be willing to wager all of RIAA's and DHS's annual budgets for the next 50 years that even if your cell phone is switched off, the embedded GPS unit will still be powered, and therefore still sending and receiving signals.
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
I've got several SprintPCS phones on a family plan (yes, even geeks sometimes procreate), and the two most-recently manufactured (a Nokia 3585i and a Samsung A460) both have options to disable the GPS locator for everything except 911 usage. That's good enough for me - if I call 911, I want the cops to find me!
Of course, the more paranoid among you might claim that disabling the "location-based services" on these phones doesn't actually do anything. So just wrap your cell phone in 1/8" lead sheeting and you'll be fine.
You know, with all these phones that have ungodly amounts of memory and built-in GPS, why don't we have a friggin unit that combines both functionality for the user? I would love a GPS unit, and getting one subsidized by my carrier would certainly be nice.
± 29 dB
All this is nothing new, you've always been able to trace a cell phone location by what tower it's connected to. And embedded GPS tracking has been around for quite a while now. Chances are if you bought a phone recently it has "E911" capability; which means your phone has an embedded GPS unit. All phones that have GPS give you the ability to restrict usage of your beacon for 911 use only, now what security they use for that I don't know. And of course you can always turn your phone off. Then even if your phone is off companies have installing GPS tracking units in vehicles for quite a while, I can think of 5+ different companies that offer tracking right off the top of my head. And privately usable versions have been available for at least 2 years.
The cell phone company already has this information (and in many countries has to keep it for months too)... The concern I have is that you're now making this information available to Joe Public, with no real safeguards.
Imagine a couple of scenarios:
1. I think my wife is cheating, so I tap in her phone number and it sends a message to ask if she's OK to be tracked... Of course, I do this when I have access to her phone, so she doesn't know it's been done. Is that OK?
2. After my acrimonious divorce, I get a new girlfriend. We're all lovey-dovey for a few weeks, and both agree to be tracked so we can 'see where snookums is' whenever we want.
Then we split up, she goes all Bunny-Boiler on me, and now she can stalk me MUCH more effectively than before. Is that OK? Who's going to ensure I can opt back out of this?
3. The police decide to question me about a crime that took place in my street, and take my phone from me while I'm held in the cells. I'm later released as I did nothing wrong. How do I find out if they signed my phone up for tracking? Maybe they're trying to watch my movements so they can pin the crime on me after all ("Look buddy, as soon as you were released you went right to the crime scene - care to explain?") Where are my rights here? They need a warrant, don't they?
4. Someone grabs my phone in a bar and signs it up for this tracker service while I buy a round... then they watch where I go at night so they can find my house. Later they wait until I'm 100 miles away and go back to clean the place out, secure in the knowledge I'm not going to disturb them.
If the safeguards are in place, great... if not, expect this outfit to get sued into oblivion the first time they're used in 'evidence' in a personal injury suit... "The burglar used your service to rob me - you owe me $$$!"
(Anonymous 'cos I work in Telecomms - not for these boys though!)
"The first national service to catalog people's identity and provide for easy tracking -- small blue numbers tattooed on their forearms -- is desinged more to ease the minds of parents worried about The Jewish Question and suspicious party leaders than to enable unauthorised spying.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.