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

Cellphones to track speeders?

[TheMidget]

So now you can get two tickets for the same offense:

• The first for speeding
• The second for leaving your cellphone on while driving (and no, hands-free sets don't count: even if they keep your hands free, they don't keep your brain free)

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

Re:Terrorists my ass

[MoneyT]

And this is exactly what you get when everyone and their mother blames the government, and the FBI and the CIA for allowing 9/11 to happen. Here's the tradeoff that people don't understand, if you want the government to be proactive instead of reactive, they need to powers to be proactive, and you're going to have to sacrifice a handful of freedoms for it. Else, stop bitching when the government can't do something like catch 8 people that are conspiring to hijack planes.

Um, OF COURSE it's watching you

[Saint Stephen]

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.

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).

Careful Note

[oGMo]

Is That Cell Phone Tower Watching Me?

Cell phone networks, FM radio towers and television antennaes could all turn into pieces of cheap and dirty tracking networks that use passive radar [...] 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.

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.

:-P

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.

This is a great idea!

[darkov]

It's easy to track terrorists by the telltale radar signature of their turbans.

They dont' use the Fastlane tags to track speeders

[Tokerat]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

[kfg]

And you think "they" don't know that?

Just look around you at all the things that are considered perfectly normal that our great grandparents (or great-great grandparents if you're under 30) wouldn't have put with for a second.
You can start with the very existence of the Federal Income Tax and the FBI.

http://www.fbi.gov/libref/historic/history/artsp ie s/artspies.htm

http://www.taxhistory.org/default.htm

They managed to "slippery slope" their way in, nonetheless, and are now regarded as little more than the natural political landscape.

Anything you can make stick over the objections of the parents eventually just becomes "normal" for the children.

KFG

Data from cellphone towers are used

[AchmedHabib]

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.

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.