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Is That Cell Phone Tower Watching Me?
An anonymous reader writes "Cell phone networks, FM radio towers and television antennaes could all turn into pieces of cheap and dirty tracking networks that use passive radar, according to this fairly comprehensive article. These new systems are only a couple years away from roll out for uses such as small airport radar coverage but wild possibilities abound including using cell phone networks to track speeders, terrorists or even individuals walking on city streets."
a new technology seems evident. Based on early reports speculation ranges from likely, to doubtful, to laughable.
When are people going to stop tossing the obligatory terrorist reference into these articles? Like that makes it ok?
Percent of civilians tracked by stupid new technology: 100%
Percent of "terrorists" tracked by stupid new technology: 0%
What's the percentage of civilians likely to turn into terrorists because of stupid new technologies?
I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing to be able to track people. However, there must be some limit placed upon the government to prevent them from tracking people beyond their warrant.
I think it'd be a good idea to just set the cutoff at 18 years of age, or whatever age of adulthood is in a particular country, and make it legal to track minors. That way these towers could work in partnership with parents instead of being some dark government bogeyman.
... don't have a cellphone? Or more correctly, turn my cellphone off? What about different providers? Different networks? Someone would need access to the whole shebang in order to reliably track a phone.
Tracking speeders I could see happening, but not people walking down the street. A few terrorists have already been nabbed by cellphone calls IIRC. Maybe you could track lost cellphones though, that would be kinda cool
Is this news to anyone? If the thing can send you a call it can draw a little blip on a computer screen showing (within 600 feet or so) where you are walking.
I asked an Army Special Ops guy one time: Is Big Brother here? He said: When he wants to be. So I said: but most of the time he's just not interested in looking right? And he said, of course.
Lalallaal ;)
I'm gonna go post a giant pic of goatse right in front of em to give em a damn good reason not to watch
Doctors do Massage in Longview WA now, who knew?
Note: these will not have any effect if you are wearing your tinfoil hat. In fact, I can sell you one right now for just $19.95 plus S&H. If you order now, I'll throw in a free pair of tinfoil shoe covers so they can't see where you've been, either.
Prices shown do not include sales tax. Void where prohibited.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Why is it that issues brought up articles such as these that could have far-reaching implications for privacy and even the day-to-day functioning of people in general, are always an afterthought? I mean, c'mon, does this, "Once the passive-radar cat is out of the bag, there's even a chance it could evolve into a means of tracking people on the street," really cover all the ground for an advanced technology such as this?
Maybe I'm just expecting too much from Business Week and the like.
At any rate, at least the passive radar functionality is mostly software. That means it'll be on Usenet the day before it's released, so we can get a jump on all the action.
Interesting. Ross Anderson describes in his Security Engineering book how the military these days don't always use "active" radar to track enemy movement. Because if the enemy detects radar, they know that you are somewhere in the area, which you might not want. So they developed passive radar technology that measures the influence of, say enemy airplanes on publicly available signals, like TV or satellite. That way they can track the enemy without the enemy knowing that they're being watched. Wickedly cool technology.
With all these new technological advances we are on an ever increasing slippery slope. Everything is usually said to be in the interest of public saftey, but how long is it until everyone has a mandatory GPS chip implanted at birth? Tracking people constantly all the time. The days of Minority Report are headed soon enough.
Somehow I don't see a problem in the immediate future, considering how, er, 'whiny' cell phone companies were about that 911 tracing mandate that came about. However, if they can squeeze a few more bucks out of their subscribers by adding this new 'feature,' they might have a bit more incentive.
Of course that's just my opinion, I could be Dennis Miller.
-Mr. Fusion
http://www.ulocate.com/
I'm surprised the article doesn't mention the applicability in detecting stealth aircraft. The idea of using cell tower transmissions to do this has been floating around for some time now: http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2001/e20010 619stealths.htm
It's easy to track terrorists by the telltale radar signature of their turbans.
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Putting the word "Terrorists" in the presentation will justify such a method of tracking people.
No sig. Go away.
A cell tower can give the approximate position of the cellphone user (tens of miles max), then a second tracking device "tuned" to the cellphone after reading the info that came from the tower can find it on a much finer resolution.
In the early years of the war in Chechnia, a big representative was killed by a missile that followed his cellphone signal.
I remember that news, but couldn't find references on the net. If someone knows what event I'm talking about, a link would be useful.
In Mass we have the FastLane tags to automatically pay tolls on the highway. NY and surrounding states have E-Z Pass. Never once have I gotten a speeding ticket on the Mass Pike, and indeed never from FastLane. There is technology already in place to do this, and they don't. It's far too big a pain in the ass.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
we'll really need is the personal Faraday Cage.
Think about it. I'm serious.
This is the next entreprenurial niche market for tech. Personal privacy devices.
KFG
RTFA -- this has nothing to do with your cell phone being on or not. They passively track the reflections of the cell phone radio waves emitted by the towers to track all kinds of objects, not just cell phones. It's like radar, but with a separate transmitter and receiver.
So you can catch a speeder without setting off their radar detector.
The Traksure device is I presume able to identify for the insurance co which vehicle it is tracking. Unless there is a similar device in each vehicle the passive system would not really be able to tell which 98 Dodge utility is tearing down the highway at 120mph. Or more likely moving along the freeway in heavy traffic with other 98 Dodges. Is it me or Mr Terrorist.
You'd need a transponder of some kind to identify it for the system. You might as well get the Traksure. I'm sure the appropriate authorities have a way of interogating them from a distance without your knowledge or permission.
With a mixture of CCTV and mobile phone emissions it quite easy to track someone within modern cities. Of course you could just cover yourself in tinfoil but that might attract even more attention
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
In post Artificial Intelligence America, let's call it 0 AE (After Emergence), the network watches Big Brother...
Here in Hong Kong we've Location-Based Tracking System. On average a person is surrounded by 6 base stations. The system is the calculate the approx. position of that person in these 6 base stations by the strength of signal the cell phone with these base stations. The person doesn't need to be involving in conversation to be tracked and the accuracy is around 10-50m in diameter.
:)
Sounds simple enough, looks like easy to implement; however there's a lot of limitations in the system. First, lesser base-stations around him, the lesser the accuracy you'd get; second, it's totally useless when the person is travelling on the sea.
That can be good to track terrorists when they turn on their cell phone in a dense populate area, but I'm sure it can't catch Bin Ladin.
using triangulation they can already work out where you r mobile phone is. Gosh are you all so bind that you can't work out this simple fact. GSM and CDMA can do it better than Analog.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
How is this possible? Doesn't emitting a signal require power that wouldn't be there without the battery?
Apparently CDMA phone towers already do it well.. they have to, that's half the beauty of CDMA! It can use the same set of frequencies for multiple concurrent callers, by directing the different mobile phone links of the same frequency from different sides of the tower. Can't remember how many times over it can reuse a set bands, but it allows CDMA to be fairly efficient. Perhaps GSM towers do it as well though, in which case my point is moot...
I remember a story about ebillboards that would change their display based on what radio station you were listening to while in proximity of the device.
Could this be scaled down and used to locate police, who would be tuned into police radio frequency?
if someone's going to make a million dollars off that idea...please toss just a few bucks my way.
I know it's somewhat off topic, but eh...
In yesterdays newspapers, here in finland, was a little news that parents would be permitted to obtain tracking for their kids cellphones without any reasons.
Also, im aware that there has been many cases when missing people have been located with cellphone tracking (I remember atleast one case where elderly woman was lost in the forest when she was collecting blueberries).
yush
Of course, a business with an address in the Langley Place building on Langley Road might just be hinting that it's really working for someone else...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I know everyone out there saying how bad this is for the dawn of big brother are really dying to build one for themselves.
Is technology inherently good or evil?
My feelings are neither, it depends on its use. As with many things, something doesn't become a problem or nuisance until enough people speak out against it. Hopefully, if this project comes to fruition as a civilian use, it will be closely guarded so as to prevent against abuse.
In Mass we have the FastLane tags to automatically pay tolls on the highway. NY and surrounding states have E-Z Pass. Never once have I gotten a speeding ticket on the Mass Pike, and indeed never from FastLane. There is technology already in place to do this, and they don't. It's far too big a pain in the ass.
One wonders how long it will be before the toll paying transponders, the road tax transponder, or the insurance company transponder will be used to automaticly issue speeding tickets. Think of it as a new form of the red-light camera or photo radar that works on all roads all the time.
I seriously doubt local authorities will be able to pass up such a lucrative revenue source for long.
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
It's really really hard for a passive system to track a specific car mixed in with a bunch of other cars, especially if you don't have a solid identification of when it enters and leaves the system, or when there are bridges, tunnels, etc. That's a good job for active systems, like GPS-transmitting bugs or simply the regular signals from cell phones. Passive systems are much better at telling you that _some_ airplane just showed up. Passive systems could tell you that the average speed of cars on the freeway is 25 mph, but it's probably easier to dig that kind of information out of a cell-phone system that tracks the motions of cars into and out of cells, or to use a video processor on a camera, or for that matter those old rubber-hose-across-the-road detectors.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I'm sure they'll just find a way to sneak an RFID circuit into it somehow.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
http://www.ulocate.com/
Please, don't let my wife know about this. Can you imagine?
"What were you doing at that strip-bar, AGAIN?"
My god! What are we in the process of doing to ourselves? Hmmm, then again, maybe I can sign her phone up for it and just keep it to myself.... Hmmm....
All jokes aside, I believe that the truth is, we are morally messy thinking meat. We are not supposed to know some things, for our own good. These types of technologies will someday threaten the very foundations of our society.
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
Does the article state how many Celldar receivers one must install in a densely populated area to acurately locate objects moving within it.........?
Du kan glomma dina ensama stunder, du kan lita paa teknikens under - Wilmer X
five.org.uk I'm not going to say any more
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Turn the damn thing off.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Try sending an SMS to another phone with just the text 'P' in it.
It sends your current address (accuracy depends on city/county you're in)
Johns: Well, how does it look now? Riddick: Looks clear.
With this system you are looking at the radio waves bouncing of solid objects. Thats okay for general analysis of traffic situations (and it could be fun having such a device) but it is completely useless for tracking persons, as it is nearly impossible to identify the objects.
Cell phones can be tracked anyway: I can log in to a website of my cell phone provider and locate my mobile phone. When it is switched on it will be located to a few hundred meters.
This is a lot more useful for tracking people, because I can see a specific device. "Mr. Does cell phone is there" is a lot more interesting than "there is some random car, the size of a minivan".
I don't feel particularly comfortable about being watched and tracked by an invisible network. But I can't help looking at it in the same light as file-sharing. Just as that technology can't be stopped and will radically change life for copyright holders, neither can tracking technology be stopped, and likewise will it change life for "privacy rights holders." Whether we like it or not, other people eventually are going to be able to know where we are and what we are doing pretty much all the time. Maybe first the government, but eventually anybody who can plug the pieces together. Not because we let them but because they can.
The alternative to adjusting to a new level of privacy is to whine like the RIAA, and fight the same no-win battle. We've seen in the past that new technology tends to have many faces, and that not all of them are likable. But as we continue to push ahead into new territory I think we have to accept the demise of some aspects of life that we cherish. Instead of trying to stop the use of things like surveillance cams and RFID tags, it would be smarter in the long run to embrace these things and make sure everyone can do them as well as the government can.
Not Funny.
That is what Tamara class antistealth radar is based on. It sees F117 and B2 no problem. And cannot be destroyed by antiradar missiles because the radar itself is fully passive and they have nothing to home on.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
I'll leave my transponder inthe trash then, thanks, as I'm sure thousands of others will do. (Everyone speeds on the Mass Pike, even the cops known this and honestly don't really care, as long as you're not reckless and as long as you dont' ride the left lane) If it becomes required then the bastard who legalized it gets voted out and the only person i vote for agrees to repeal it.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Data from cellphone towers/antennas has already been used for tracking people. In different criminal cases, the location of a cell phones and the calls made in that area from that phone, has been used to establish proof of guilt. It has also been used to contact people who were possible witness to the crime or other events that could help solve it.
If you have a GPS you can be watched, and this basicly is the same only using a more common tech. You still need to be able to triangulate your position by using 3 cell phone towers. And it has already, a while ago (few years) been experimented with...
Warning: Excessive usage of stupidity may be harmful to your health
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I sold you and you sold me
There lie they and here lie we
Under the spreading chestnut tree
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It doesn't matter if they sneak an RFID tag in if it's signal can't get out. That's the very point of a Faraday Cage.
One of the interesting things learned by the NSA selling off some of its old facilities into private hands is how they handled their computers. Really sensitive date was kept in a standalone computer in a room that amounted to a vault. That room had a Faraday Cage impebeded in the concrete it was made from. No RF signal could get in, but more importantly, none of the RF produced by the computer could get out to anyone who wished to try to gather what data they could from those signals.
RF is just electromagnetic radiation. EM is extremely easy to block entirely. You just put up a wall that's opaque at its frequency. This what the walls of your house and your window curtains do.
No, blocking RF from getting out (or in) is comparitively easy if you really want to. The hard part is letting out what you want to let out, like your phone call, without "betraying" yourself.
"The first rule of not being seen is to not stand up."
A hard rule to comply with if you feel the need to have a look around.
KFG
You *can* get phones with GPS, but they cost a fortune. What on earth would a mobile phone need to have GPS for?
Such tracking really needs oversight by the courts, and what I really see this as being useful for is replacing the "home arrest" anklets currently in use with one that can track via the cell grid. I personally don't want to get into exactly which crimes would be most suited for this, but I'm sure it'd work out quite well for verifying the movements of paroles/probationers.
Jonah Hex
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
When I was at Berkeley, a few friends of mine worked off-campus at the Center for Extreme Ultraviolet Astrophysics. This was connected to the campus network via a microwave relay mounted on the roofs of two buildings.
The story I was told by one of the sysadmins was that one day, the thing just stopped working, with no technical explanation. After doing all manner of tracing and debugging, they finally went to go check the campus-side transceiver, and found it turned 180 degrees in the other direction, with a note saying something to the extent of I know what you're doing, this is a CIA mind control device, if you try to keep reading my thoughts and fix this, I will find and kill you.
They fixed it and put a nice laminated piece of paper on it, explaining that, no, it's not part of the Orbital Mind Control Lasers, but rather an innocuous network component used for space research, and please don't mess it up, you could fall off the roof and hurt yourself
It never happened again; I guess they could have just ordered a few aluminum foil deflector beanies for the general public.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
That would be a bummer for the SULEV vehicle owners who get 50+ MPG. So much for savings based on less fuel used. If they do that and eliminate the gas tax (highly unlikely) there would be no point in driving a higher cost low emision high effeciency vehicle. This looks like another government department that needs to be payed out of your paycheck just to administer yet another hole in your checkbook. Why do we keep hiring redundant government tax collectors? Currently the fuel savings don't quite offeset the higher cost of the vehicle.
If Oregon implements this, I would have to either re-locate my residence or place of employment. The savings of a fuel effecient hybred would vanish. Commuting would be no longer an option. Hopefully they don't impliment this until after I retire.
The truth shall set you free!
Is this anything to do with the demo I am running?
Get your own free personal location tracker
RTFA. It works if your vehicle reflects the enetgy transmitted from the cellphone tower. It has absolutely nothing to do with the cellphone in your pocket. It is treating the cellphone tower system as a country-wide array of searchlights detecting anything which reflects their signals.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
Actually that was an informative link about a Swedish mobile phone service 'FriendFinder', used to locate other people who you know nearby based on their mobile phone position.
Whoever moderated it as a troll is 'stupid'.
There is a much bigger transmitter of higher frequency (hence more accurate) radiation already in place. It beams signals which can be used, by means of very similar secondary sensors, not only to track vehicles and people, but to detect identifying markers and distinctive patterns, allowing both vehicles and individuals to be uniquely identified.
This transmitter is called "the sun" and the secondary sensors which use its radiation are called "eyes" and "cameras". When "the sun" fails, local governments have installed hundreds of millions of small-area transmitters called "streetlights". Voters petition to have these privacy-invading devices installed, despite the fact that it infringes their freedom to skulk in and out of their homes unobserved, and lurk in wait unobtrusively in "dark alleys".
This technology does not identify individuals. It is no more intrusive than CCTV, and probably less so, because it cannot identify people/vehicles: it can only track them. Not that endemic CCTV is without its problems, but there is nothing new here.
As the article says, it will be difficult to track humans, because of their porr reflectivity. But it will probably track tinfoil helmets quite well.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
This is getting ridiculous. Slashdot use to be a place about new technologies, about new software, new ideas and generally all things good in the computer world. But lately it has become a full blown conspiracy website. "Is That Cell Phone Tower Watching Me?", "Is Microsoft going to shutdown Mono?", "Are the FEDs looking into wiretapping voip?", "Will Longhorn DRM us to death?", "Did Microsoft pay off PivX Solutions?", "Are London subway cards really tracking devices?". Seriously people, the speculation, conspiracy theories and general FUD on slashdot needs to stop. It use to be that every article on slashdot was worth reading because they were all factual and relevent news articles. If you want to post this shit then start a spin-off of slashdot, conspiracy.slashdot.org but dont post it on the main page or people will start leaving in herds because the site is unrecognizable from its former relevent news days.
we'll really need is the personal Faraday Cage.
Which will make you more visible to this technology, not less. This is about reflecting radiation from outside, not emitting it from you or your equipment. A Faraday Cage will probably make an excellent radar reflector, whereas (as the article says) the human body is a rather poor reflector and hance rather difficult to see with radar.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
Seems that I'm not following Western clothing fashion close enough. I didn't know that turbans were that much in fashion in Northern Ireland, Corsica or Basqueland....
It seems like an ideal Free Software project: low cost hardware, high cost of writing the software, very smart brains required to write the software...
What about modifying Linux's WiFi drivers to perform passive radar (or just running it as a background application on top of the WiFi diver)? Someway would have to be found to distribute accurate time over the Internet so samples coming out of the WiFi card could be timestamped. Perhaps GPS could be used to locate each antenna,or it could be inferred from the received signals? The processing could be done in a distributed manner (like SETI@home) with every antenna (WiFi card) owner cotributing to the processing. Results could be fed to a distributed network, such as a Freenet, so anyone in the world can view the results on a world map? It's very 'pie in the sky' but I don't see any impossibilities there (only major challenges).
Why should those with money have all the fun? Tracking all those UFOs coming out of airforce bases would make a fun hobby.
But it is still a good joke, you insensitive clod!
sounds scaring, but how do you know in wich car the phone is? i mean, i could be in a car, with my phone, driven by my crazy friend. i'm not the speeder, but my friend. how can they relate the phone with the right car?
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
A spam add found its way to /.One those PE pill adds,you know
or are you just glad to see/hear/know where we are?
the daze of the felonious phonIE georgewellian fuddite southern baptist freemason payper lisense software gangster corepirate nazi stock markup FraUD execrable, is WANing into coolapps/the abyss.
lookout bullow. consult with/trust in yOUR creator....
for each of the creator's innocents harmed, there is a badtoll that must/will be repaid by you/US, as the aforementioned perpetrators of the life0cide against humankind, will not be available to make reparations, after the big flash.
Since February anyone has been able to track my cell phone
What is the big deal? Get it while it is still optional
Free cell phone tracking
This can already be happening they don't have to wait, the newest phones connect to more than one mast at a time so triangulating the actual position of the user isn't hard.
The Research going on in my department at uni tracks keycards (not so different for phone signals) around the building and used neural networks to learn peoples behaviour and predict where they will be at any one time.
This isn't as hard to implement in mobile phones as you think.... They most definately ARE watching us....
As far as I know speeding tickets based on transponders has mostly been passed up. I think either New Jersey or Pennsylvania does it on one of their Turnpikes but otherwise no one around here seems to really want to implement this.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
There needs to be some sort of public service announcement to make everyone aware of this. Perhaps it can be punctuated by an audio clip of the 1984 Motown hit "Somebody's Watching Me" by Rockwell featuring Michael and Jermaine Jackson.
Ohh yeah.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Wake up. Noone, including the government is interested in watching your boring life 24/7. Quit being so friggin paranoid. You are not that important.
-Cnik
Question is who wrote the book as I would love to look it up again...
---- The Open Source Record Label : : LOCARECORDS.COM
turn off your friggin' cell phone.
That will not help completely. You and your car are still visible to the passive radar using the signals from cell masts.
Read the article.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
... was based on tracking all manner of radiation emitted by the Stealth aircraft it self such as IFF, Nav radar, Communications etc... I was not aware of it using cellphone network radiation. Of course the Pentagon is claiming Tamara is crap but then they would having spent multiple billions on stealth. In reality the performance of both radar-stealth and systems like Tamara have been hyped up by ignorant TV journalists beyond what they can deliver.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
The point is that there are now others looking at the use of passive radar. It appears to be viable (Roke Manor has been doing defence related electronics back through the second world war with emphasis on radar and comms) and it is very interesting. Particularly as not only reflection can be used but the RF opacity of the target - generally if something is stealth, it absorbs radar.
HARM type missles chase down radiating radar transmitters and destroy them. If every RF source can be a potential RADAR emitter then it means that all cell transmitters, TV and VHF radio transmitters would need to be destroyed - a very large number and blurring the line between civillian and military targets. Note that the Serbs rigged microwave ovens (essentially just with disabled door interlocks) as decoys against HARMs.
See my journal, I write things there
I saw this on "The Outer Limits" almost 2 years ago.
AND I am sure one of those SuperMarket tabloid papers ran a few stories like this too.
=)
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Oooh, a radar can track me while I walk on the street along side half a million other pedestrians.
This is why I filter YRO.
The amount of processing involved to discard clutter, resolve doppler discrepancies, etc. is fairly high. Using only cellphone towers doesn't give you enough resolution to do meaningful tracking-- add in VHF/FM carriers, and now you're talking.
I think it would be pretty hard to get a speeding ticket on the mass pike to begin with. I've had a statey pass me when I was going 20 mph over the speed limit... he also then passed the guy going 25 mph over the speed limit.
this is the most important sig ever! In your face 446154!
they can't track the bastard who stole my color sidekick? cause they want his money when he activates the thing I am sure.
Note to self: No more arguing with the faithful.
Likewise, you are still visible to any random cop who decides you look suspicious and need to be followed for a while to see what you do.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
In Ontario, Bell mobility already has a trace capability on location via signal strength (and triangulation) which can be done in mere minutes. Other carriers are a few of hours, but they're getting there too.
Jeez, this article was on Slashdot exactly a year
ago!!!
It should be possible to build a "stealth" faraday cage. One that blocks EM but doesn't reflect the radiation well.
this just creeps me out. A lot of what they had in that article about being tracked, being required to be tracked! That really scares me. I have nothing to hide, but I do have privacy. That is important to me. I have no idea why it is not fair to tax the gas, but it would be fair to tax actual useage! A small, light car that does not damage the road has an automatic advantage over the gas guzling Stupid Utility Vehicles, why bother to make this more complex? It's hard to get around a gas tax, but getting around an electronic tax like this could be trivial, as soon as someone figures a blocking signal {poof} no more tracking. I'm not sure about you guys, but I'm going to be spending a lot more on tinfoil the way things are going.
md5sum
d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
Those who would trade thier freedom for saftey,
will lose both and deserve neither!
Track terrorists Ha, It will be used in divorce cases to see when the guy visits his mistress.
If it werent for bad karma Id have no karma at all.
...crimethink...
I couldn't agree more with this. When will people realize that the U.S. government *isn't* out to get the average American and they aren't even monitoring us. In fact, in secret documents created in late 1952, a high ranking Pentagon official said "There is *** CARRIER LOST ***
once you're on the highway the fastlane/ezpass would essentially be useless as a tracking device.
Would this technology really be of any use in urban areas? If I recall correctly, RADAR requires direct line-of-sight with respect to the to-be-tracked object. I would asume that seperating the transmitters from the receivers will only make this problem worse.
They don't need to pin it to a specific moment. They could take the time you enter the Pike, the time you leave it, and the known distance between the toll plazas, and nail you on average speed. I read an article in the Boston Globe, however, which says that they specifically decided not to do that.
For what it's worth, I've received a mailed warning for blowing through an EZPass toll plaza too quickly. It's funny - in NYC, the toll-plaza limit is 5mph, in MA 15, and in PA it's 45. The transponders themselves, however, are good to go up to 120mph.
of course if they did it that way, wouldn't people just not use fastlane? they'd just pay with money and get the little stubs. :)
of course, then you could always track speeders using the stubs too.
You don't need transpoders to do this on the PA and Jersey turnpikes. They already have the technology (and have had it for decades): the paper tickets you get when you enter are date and time stamped. A simple calculation, done when you pay the toll upon exiting will indicate if you were speeding.
They don't do it because they know if they did less people would use the turnpikes. Which would mean more traffic on the local roads and less revenue (and jobs) for the turnpike commissions.
lol
I can see the military applications for use of this technology as radar. However, what is to stop a more advanced country with electronic warfare capabilities from jamming the frequncies this type of equipment uses?
Is this guy the UberGeek or what? Sahr Bio
I'm drawing a blank on the source from a few years back. The best thing about this technology is that it can also track stealth. Stealth if you recall is designed to both absorb and reflect away from the source. Problem is that the receiver is not at the source. Even better there are multiple sources. Glad the governement spent $2b for every B2. Though I suppose this is the way of warefare technology.
I understand passive radar can light up Stealth aircraft... Aren't we building cellular infrastructure in Iraq and Afghanistan?
This was brought forward years ago. There were rumors that the Yugoslavians were able to track the stealth planes by the interrupted cell phone tower signals.. basically looking for the moving black holes in their phone systems where the planes blocked the signals.
Rescuers also use cellphone and beeper signals to try and find victims at Ground Zero.
"I drank what?" - Socrates
Indeed, the only time they ever give me any shit is when I'm riding the left lane (it's usually clear, so you can bomb down it easily), and then they usually just tailgate me until i pull a lane over and then they pass.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
"ok were tracking him now"...... no signal
What makes you think, that turning your cellphone "off" will protect you? The only indication, that your cellphone is off, is that the screen is blank, and thats not really convincing, now is it? I would rather recommend removing the battery.
My cell phone (a Sanyo SCP-8100) has a GPS receiver built right into it, for "emergency call tracking". I imagine it's for law enforcement tracking as well, although the manual doesn't say that explicitly. I'm a bit miffed that they won't at least allow me to see my own GPS coordinates...
Come on! This has already been done. Not in a few years, it is here already. The police uses this in Sweden, Estonia and other countries. It is also possible to use for privately if your friend gives you his/her permission by clicking on her cellphone.
It would be much easier to base the road taxes on a function of milage and vehicle weight. Not only is this technologically easy but it protects privacy, too. As far as average wear and tear are concerned, the government should care only about total milage and aggregate statistics for certain roads and bridges. There is no need to tie everything down to where your kids were at 10pm on Friday.
These celldar technologies are really only for government empowerment when used outside of the context of air defense/airport management. The sad thing is that most people are too distracted and/or ignorant to realize it.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
I heard that a worldwide consortium of Masons, Elks, and Sonecutters are behind a plan to use cell towers to eliminate the Pope and replace him with one of their own, then steal the source code to Half-Life 2 and add subliminal messaages in the game to convince players that Captain Picard is better than Captain Kirk.
There is a major problem with the millitary use of passive radar. The radar still has a transmitter - but the transmitter isn't the regulary military radar site, but instead every cell tower, CB radio, TV station, etc., in the vicinity.
Using a civilian transmitter for a military use makes that transmitter a legitimate military target.
Many countries are exploring the use of passive radar technology since the US has become quite good at taking down radar sites. Instead this simply invites the strategy of blowing up anything with a transmitter. It actually simplifies weapon design - you'd make a cluster bomb with individually guided bomblets that seek out radiation sources. Drop 20 over a city and every cell tower, TV station, radio station, police dispatcher, ambulence dispatcher, and leaky microwave oven in the town is destroyed. All would be legitimate military targets - as they are all being used for a military purpose (though not with the willing participation of the owners of these transmitters). It is just as likely that the military would attempt to reduce the carnage by bombing power plants first - that would kill most of the radiation emmissions in one fell swoop, but would also have drastic consequences on civilians.
Military operations should only use military equipment - then nobody has an incentive to go bombing every transmitter in a city. If governments do not do this, the next war is likely to have a much higher human toll.
In PA, as well as NJ, I would assume it is mixed 15/45. NJ's only "high-speed" 45 mph is at Exit 6 on the Turnpike (there will be a new high-speed Exit 1 soon). I have only seen EZ-Pass on the Penn. Turnpike, and there were no high speed booths. I have used a 65 mph booth in Delaware, which I hope becomes the standard in the future.
That's because this was made an issue when the system was first proposed. I know for EZ-Pass, they cannot write speeding tickets based on it. They know it can be done, but know it would be a PR and logistics disaster. NJ EZ-Pass has enough problems sending out just the routine no-tag/dead-tag violations. There was actually a whole month where they shut the system down because it was too error-prone. They also said that for many months, the system was only able to send out 10% of the violations that actually occured.
I remmeber when FastLane has just come out in Mass, I let a friend (heh) borrow my car to move some stuff from Pittsfield to Boston. Well they used FastLane, which is fine and dandy and all, except for the fact that at the time I didn't have a transponder. I promptly was mailed a picture of my car running the toll booth at Lee, MA (Pike Exit 2), and a $50 fine. Dunno what's wrong with NJ's system, MA is on our asses about the violations. I promptly picked up a tag, though, and I must say, it's been great since... unless traffic is backed up, there is literally never a line.
However, they'd really have to ticket everyone in order to make it fair on the Mass Pike, which would probably discourage use. Even the cops speed ridiculously.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
There's NO way they're going to be able to track anything with this technology. At least not with existing cell towers and antennas. I've heard of similar systems in an Anti-submarine Warfare environment that used pings emitted by other ships as a way to detect submerged objects, but those systems depended on phased arrays with a large acoustic aperture (think $$$).
Given how dynamic the cellular environment is and the fact that they're only talking about $3000/site * many many sites for hardware, they're not going to be able to get any useable accuracy (nor will they be able to differentiate between objects on the ground or in the air since they don't have an array that can form beams vertically).
If you're concerned about being tracked, there are technologies that are much more capable that don't use GPS, nor do they rely on the phone being used. It just has to be turned on.
The infrastructure-based systems use either the arrival times to each antenna (which requires VERY good time syncronization) or they calculate the angle of arrival to a set of antennas. It is also possible to use a combination of the two techniques and use an angle of arrival combined with a time of arrival and get a cross-fix that way.
In general, the time difference of arrival method is subject to multipath errors, while the Angle of arrival method is more resistant.
I've seen the AOA system work over very large distance and come very close to meeting the FCC-mandated limits of accuracy.
I worked for a company some years back that did a lot of the early development on the angle of arrival method. They were WAY ahead of their time and ended up selling out to competitors. Such is life.
Don't anthropomorphize computers, they don't like it.
Are you sure this isn't old news? I mean, CALEA was mandated to be implemented by wireless carriers over a year ago. It's software in the wireless switch that allows approved government agencies to track an individual to within a city block from any cell tower, plus access any live conversation on the target phone. This is nothing new. http://www.askcalea.net/
This low a frequency radar (88 MHz, 800 MHz, 1800 MHz max.) would have very poor range and azimuth resolution. Go into a crowd, the crowd appears as a blob on the radar screen. There is no way to track an individual (with his cell phone turned off) in a crowded environment, too much clutter. Even cars close packed in heavy traffic could likely not be differentiated from one another. Anti-personnel and intrusion detection radars typically operate in the millimeter bands in order to get decent resolution on a small target. Much ado about nothing?
They stopped basing car taxes on weight because federal regulations allowed the deduction of local taxes based upon value of the vehicle, but not local taxes based upon weight of the vehicle.
So a loss of a tax deduction caused them to switch to a stupider system.
If Sprint would spend this much money on making my signal better, I'd be a much happier consumer.
Did the music change when you walked around the room? That is what this system is doing on a grand scale. It does not require you to have a cell phone.
I suspect given the revenue problems many states are facing that it is simply a matter of time before somebody starts doing it, particularly for cars doing well in excess of the posted limit.
To the powers that be new automated ticketing technologies eventually prove irresistable. Witness the proliferation of photo-radar speed traps and red-light cameras.
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
Won't be long before we are all where tin hats
The NJ experience is vastly different from MA. What happened with the violations system is that a poor company was chosen, probably because of their low bid. This company actually went out of business during the contract, and the state had to bring in another firm (Parsons) to continue running the system. Parsons in turn decided that it was better to overhaul the system now, rather than attempt to continue forward with a broken system.
The Big Brother implications of all this might unleash a massive public backlash. But just as plausibly, people may decide to put up with technology's double-edged sword to regain a measure of the security they have lost.
In what way does this technology restore a measure of lost security?
The US lost nothing but the illusion of security on 9/11. If a psycho wants you dead, and doesn't care if he dies achieving that goal, there's very little you can do to stop him. This has always been the case. It always will be. There is no such thing as perfect fore-knowledge, or unbreachable security.
All this technology does is give anyone (including the terrorists) a cheap way of tracking other people using near-ubiquitous devices. Gee - that makes me feel safe, how about you ?
I meant 'into' the actual smart clothes. Sometimes the worst security is a false sense of security.
I'm sick of how screwed up this is. I can't stay in hiding anymore! I don't want this patriot act; none of us DO! "...If the government is to become destructive of these ends (life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness), it is the right of the PEOPLE to alter or to abolish it..." (Declaration of Independence) Now, this basically states, "if the goverment is screwing with us, we can get rid of it." Why dont we? Think about it. How can police, government officials, withstand ALL of us, when there's more of us! I say that we either a) Do something about this, or B) Leave the United States of America.
Now this report, penned for Cheeney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, etc. in 2000 reads like a modern day Mein Kamph.
Look for the bits where they talk about deploying biological weapons to attack certain genetic types, the part where they claim North Korea, Iran & Iraq are seeking to dominate their own regions - against the US's interests - and the part where they say that ramping up their ability to attack anyone at will will be a slow process, short of some sort of Pearl Harbor type event.
Get the Hell off my planet, you slimy mobster Bush!
So that's where they implanted the tracking device.
Do me a favor and double it!
Think of the positive outcome of the emergency personell being able to find your body after you drive off a cliff by finding out where your cell phone was.
BTW... you can already do this this, just not at the precision. Call up your local cell company with your cell phone, their switch manager will say which switch you are on, if you are roaming. You can be pin-pointed to about a 3 mile radius from just what the customer care people can see, and the technicians can get signal strenght readings from the cell sites and that would triangulate where you are.
See.
I agree that there are Big Brother aspects to this I don't like at all. But don't act like this is news - the FCC had MANDATED that phones be equipped to track position in the near future. Two outfits are going cheep and using triangulation others are building GPS into the phones. My Samsung has a little radar dish to show me it has a position lock. the reason is so that in case 911 calls come in the position can be verified easily. Most people don't have a clue as the precise location they happen to be at in an emergency. Yes - they can in fact track you - curse on one hand - blessing on the other. The europeans have used features similar to this to offer innovative services tailored to your location - phone the nearest pizza joint to have one waiting get directions while your on the phone, are there any single chicks nearby that fit my profile? Message her with an offer to have lunch. There are some cool uses for this technology without getting Orwellian about it.