Track People Using Their Mobile Phones

Richard W.M. Jones writes "A couple of new services have been rolled out in the UK recently which allow you to track people when they have their mobile phones turned on. Mapminder states 'It's important to know where your loved ones are for your own peace of mind'. 192.com asks 'Do you want to know where your children are?'. Of course the police have been able to do this for a long time, and evidence from mobile phone positions has been used in high-profile court cases in the UK. Silicon.com has an article."

Comments

the moral is

[iggymanz]

if you're going to whack someone, first hide your phone in a restaurant a couple miles away....then you can "prove" you weren't at the crime scene.

Re:the moral is

[Zeinfeld]

if you're going to whack someone, first hide your phone in a restaurant a couple miles away....then you can "prove" you weren't at the crime scene.

A while ago, before 9/11 I was sitting in a bizare meeting with a bunch of wireless execs who were breathlessly telling us how great their new location finder service was going to be. They could send you adverts targetted at people in a particular location.

I was rather unpopular when I asked if the customers would buy a product if the chief benefit was going to be to enable a new kind of spam. "Perhaps they don't get the choice"

I was even more unpopular when I pointed out that the regulators in Europe would blast this type of thing on privacy grounds. "Oh the regulators tend to be more sensible than the general public".

I pointed out that my cousin, one of those regulators has survived two assasination attempts and may have an opinion about a technology that gives away his position. In Europe privacy is not something that you muck arround with.

Today the risk of this type of scheme would be obvious even to a US legislator. Now right to life will be able to stalk doctors who provide abortions by telephone, Saddam loyalists will be able to stalk senior Republicans and Al Qaeda will be able to stalk everyone.

So they are finally working out socially acceptable ways to package up the same technology. Was it really necessary to have the dotCOM bust before some folk got a clue?

Re:the moral is

[An Economist]

You are mixing 2 cases here:

1. was the sad case of Daminola Taylor, a 10 year old schoolboy, murdered. It was expcted a gang of only slightly older kids killed him, but this suspected group 'got off' because their mobile phones were traced to a distance too far away from the murder scene to be credible. The ganag was mainly Afro-Carribean (Daminola Taylor was Nigerian, the racial aspect centered around Afro-Carribean vs. African violence, a serious friction point in London's black community).

2. The infamous racist killing in SOuth London was that of Stephen Lawrence (late teens IIRC) whose alleged attackers (racist white gang) 'got off' on technical details.

Both were killings and in both cases the attacters were not convicted.

Amazing how the truth comes out

[rebeka thomas]

Back around 1999 & 2000 there were rumours/news stories about the possibility of being tracked by mobile phones, and much discussion about how it wasn't really technically possible. Phone companies denied it could be done, many law enforcement agencies denied they used it (although some were forthcoming enough to say more). The general consensus was that it was something out of the XFiles.

Now it's commercial a scant 3 years later. Who'd have guessed.

Great for me...

[Realistic_Dragon]

This way my mother can find out I'm at a strib club, and won't ask me any inconvenient and embarrising questions when I get home because she will be too embarrised.

Re:Great for me...

[skinfitz]

...or perhaps she knows which clubs she should avoid dancing in so YOU don't get embarrassed!

Doubled edged?

[mikeophile]

The danger isn't so much in you knowing where your loved ones and/or children are at all times. The danger is me knowing where they are.

No, I'm not a deviant, I'm just making a point.

This can save lives too, you know....

[menscher]

During a family vacation in New England, we were driving on some windy mountain road somewhere near the border of NH and VT. We came across an accident (motorcycler ran into a tree). Well, there were lots of tourists there, and all had cell phones. But nobody knew where we were (not even which state, since we were near the border). Spent about 15 minutes arguing with operators who wouldn't send an ambulance without a specific location, while the guy lay bleeding on the pavement.

That was about 10 years ago, but certainly shows how cell-phone signal triangulation can save lives.

Carriers have been using Triangulation for a while

[PureFiction]

This is all pretty well known to those watching the E911 drama unfold.

The easiest and simplest method for most carriers to comply with E911 is using triangulation. Indeed, bellsouth even posted a nice article about the various ways location can be obtained for cell phone users.

Obviously, with a GPS stuck in the phone itself this becomes really trivial, but even with normal phones you can use a variety of techniques, like Time Difference Of Arrival (TDOA) and Angle Of Arrival (AOA) and even Enhanced Observed Time Difference (EOTD) to triangulate the location of a wireless caller.

The carriers are already using this technology across the US, and many phones are now available with GPS integrated.

Welcome to the future.

Phone off but you can still be tracked

[bored_SuSE_user]

I found out this when I was working over the summer. Your mobile can still be tracked even though it's switched off. The only way to ensure it is not tracked is to physically take the battery out of it. This can be proved by listening to the interference caused by the phone when it's off and near a radio/stereo for example.

Blue tooth in Denmark to track your kid.

[Saggi]

Track your children.

Some of these services come in Denmark as well. Today we already use some tracking systems to track children, preventing them from becoming lost. The below article describe a blue tooth system installed in Aalborg Zoo here in Denmark.

http://in.tech.yahoo.com/030620/137/25bu3.html

The system is in principle (but not technically) the same as triangulation of a cell phone to track your child between school and home. The main issue arises if tracking is allowed without the cell phone owners consent.

By the way; if I was a kid who didn't want mom and dad to know where I was, I would borrow my phone to someone else, or just turn it of. Kids are not stupid...