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: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.

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.