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

Terrorists my ass

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Terrorists my ass

[kfg]

You are mistaking the point of most of the new "anti-terrorist" laws and technologies.

They have nothing to do with anti-terrorism, and never have.

They are for catching the guy who grows a few weed plants in his basement to suppy his friends and send him up for 20 years instead of the 3 months they could previously nail him for.

Ashcroft is actually now teaching local law enforcement how to misapply anti-terror legislation to petty crime.

And he's pulicly proud of the fact.

None of these initiatives are ever likely to catch a terrorist and they know it. They've always known it. The terrorists will simply work around them and start passing encrypted coded messages on flash paper "post-its", or take out coded classified ads in the papers or call "home" and ask, "You want me to stop for some chicken on my way home from work?"

No, anti-terrorism was, is and always shall be nothing more than an end run around the Bill of Rights for perfectly normal crime.

KFG

Public TV: Military radar replacement

[fungai]

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.

Re:I think this is a grand idea -- for minors

[TCaM]

Children that are raised knowing they are essentially lojacked will become adults that don't understand the idea of privacy.

AT&T uLocate

[Corpus_Callosum]

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.