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."

Comments

Yes.

[geggibus]

Lalallaal ;)

RTFA

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Why bother

[cyril3]

In Ireland, AXA Insurance is testing a GPS gadget called Traksure. It continuously checks a car's speed and location, then compares that data with the local speed limit, obtained from digital maps. But Celldar might do the job more cheaply

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.

Passive vs. Active Systems

[billstewart]

The article's pretty good, though the author does spend a couple of paragraphs confusing what you can do with active vs. passive tracking systems.

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.

Re:Perhaps the very first use for smart clothes. .

[AlecC]

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.

Re:Um, OF COURSE it's watching you

[srboneidle]

It really depends on the density of cell phone towers. I think it varies from around 2 km if you are out in the middle of nowhere, to a few meters in the city.

In the UK people have been convicted based upon evidence provided by mobile phone companies, which pinpointed their location. In one case a man was convicted of murdering his niece when it was shown that he had been using both his and her mobile phone to send messages back and forth in order to create an alibi for himself. Both phones had been using the same base station, which wasn't anywhere near where the man had claimed to be at the time.

I also know that in Germany some companies will allow you to use your mobile phone as a house phone and will charge you land line rates if you are within a certain distance of your house (I think 500m).