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Your Cell Phone Is Tracking You
PollGuy writes "I had never heard until this article in the New York Times (sacrifice of first born required) about services that let regular people track the locations of other regular people via their cell phones. Nor this: 'A federal mandate that wireless carriers be able to locate callers who dial 911 automatically by late 2005 means that millions of phones already keep track of their owners' whereabouts.'"
turn your cell phone off when you dont want to be tracked!
Its possible to track the location of people who have landlines too. It's called a phone book.
Just bought a phone for my wife tonight and I was interested to see that it has GPS included. Interesting privacy and safety issue.
Suddenly I wish I hadn't sold my old Nokia phones on eBay recently. They might have been worth much more in the next couple years when all phones come with GPS-tracking included. Of course, it wouldn't make much of a difference if providers require the feature in the future.
'A federal mandate that wireless carriers be able to locate callers who dial 911 automatically by late 2005 means that millions of phones already keep track of their owners' whereabouts.'
Seems unnecessary... Wouldn't it be possible to just have the cell phone programmed to export the necessary coord data when someone hits 911?
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
this service isnt really new, i bought my phone about a year ago (samsung a500, sprintpcs) and it had this feature. I disabled it, but i think that only turns off the ability for joe schmoe to track me, not the gov't.
....
i personally see a good use for this (911) and dont see the big deal since you could just not carry your cell with you for that ultra-top-secret-underground tinfoil hat clan meeting.
i am more worried about things you cannot opt out of, like face scanning in public places. or non-approval required phone taps etc
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
On the few phones I've seen with this feature, they have a menu to enable it all the time, or to only have it on for 911 calls.
I think it's pretty easy for the phone to tell if you're dialing 911 or not, so when you turn it off, it probably means it's off.
Need a Catering Connection
they have been able to do this for a long time by triangulating on your location from 3 or more different cells. Every criminal knows not to leave their cell phone on exactly for this reason.
Investing forum
IANAMCE (I Am Not A Mobile Comms. Specialist) but I would think that tracking via this method wouldn't be very accurate given that most mobile handsets are locked into a particular base station. Therefore it is possible to track anyone with a mobile handset but not to any substantial accuracy.
For example here in Australia, if your in the Melbourne CBD - most carriers would have 'Melb CBD' written as the base station ID - hardly anything to get really paranoid about.
I recently purchased a phone from verizon wireless (LG VX6000) and being the true geek i am, i went to cellphonehacks.com and hacked my cellphone.
I discovered how E911(the location program) works and that i could use my very phone to tell me my last location! Very incredible... yet i could see hackers taking advantage of this
It's like 1984 for teenagers. Turning off the cellphone to move without being tracked seems too similar to avoiding the telescreen.
Another interesting device mentioned in the article is the FollowIt, a vehicle tracking device. Big Brother eat your heart out.
Now for the two minutes of hate...
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troll blacklist. Please mo
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
the usual privacy nuts objecting that it means and end to civil liberties as we know it.
I think it's a Good Thing.
there were the usual retarded complaints such as "your boss will know if you're lying and skipping work!!!!" and "peadophiles can track your kids!!!!"
jeez, if license plates were invented today they'd be screaming the same arguments and claiming they too will bring free society to its knees.
It would be great to have an application that tracked the locations of politicians and lobbyists, for correlation with bank and voting records.
Here is a link like the Google-Like Registration-Safe NY Times link, but this is longer lasting and weblog safe link
Your Cell Phone is tracking you
We're about to hit comment #7777777 (seven sevens). That's got to be lucky!
It's a question of signal emission. Your cellphone emits a signal, and cell towers can tell what direction it's coming from. Have two cell towers coordinate, and you've got a triangulated target.
The fact that this is becoming a commercialized service is pretty freaky though. At what point do the signals you broadcast in public become an issue of privacy?
There new phones out with full GPS built in.
So the phone will report its location with-in 30 feet.
On-Star use some of these in there systems.
Lost? Hiding? Your Cellphone Is Keeping Tabs
On the train returning to Armonk, N.Y., from a recent shopping trip in Manhattan with her friends, Britney Lutz, 15, had the odd sensation that her father was watching her.....
You've always been able to locate the position of a cell phone as it's making a call via triangulation with 2 towers. This is nothing new.
Phase II requires more precise location information be provided to the PSAP. Phase II requires the wireless service provider to provide the call back telephone number of the 9-1-1 caller, cell tower location, cell sector (antenna orientation) information, plus longitude and latitude (X, Y) information. Phase II E9-1-1 services exist today in a handful of locations, by a few wireless service providers, but these numbers will grow.
next time you decide to cut'n'paste-karma-whore, put some formatting in
My phone has it. I can turn it off or on within the phone software. It's a sprint PCS phone, made by Samsung. I don't know what good it is, unless maybe I die in the middle of the woods, which of course, would mean I'd be out of cell phone range anyway, but whatever. Is there a website somewhere where I can type in my number and pull up my cell phone on a little map? If so, I have only this to say:
Here's to sweethearts and wives, may they never meet.
because I have been enjoined by this Holy Office to abandon the false opinion which maintains that the Sun is the centre
Sounds like a bunch of FUD to me. What is this software and how would it work?
I couldn't help notice that Orwell's Big Brother (1984) might have to be updated for this New-World (2004) (in New-Speak) to
Big Daddy is Watching You, Yes YOU.
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
(hands hendridm a tinfoil hat)
Spouses should not have the ability to spy on one another either.
Can now. It's called a private detective.
Without guidelines, tracking very well might become widespread because it is forced down the throats of people who get their cell phones through their companies, schools, or otherwise don't pay their own bill.
He who pays the piper calls the tune.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
Where is Calum?
Jerold Surdahl, 40, an administrator in a building management office in Centerville, Ohio, said he started using the uLocate service to communicate with colleagues. Now, he is intrigued by the possibility of stashing a location-tracking phone in the trunk of his wife's car.
"I'm not expecting or hoping or wanting to find something, but I would just like to explore the possibilities," Mr. Surdahl said. "I'd tell her about it later."
Umm.. can you say BUSTED? Having your name and your intentions printed in the NYT pretty much ensures your secret is out.
BTW, whats with all these controlling people? Relationships are about trust. If you can't trust someone to tell you where they were, then something more serious is wrong.
-molo
Using your sig line to advertise for friends is lame.
As a civil libertarian, I have no problems with this technology being used to track children
As a civil libertarian, do you have a problem with
newlines
or separate paragraphs?
As a fellow civil libertarian, I suggest that you'll get your message read by more people if it's not one continuous block of text.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
The truly paranoid talk about the Government inserting chips into people neck's to keep track of the population; much like how the owner of a cat or dog will use one to identify his missing pet. With the ubiquitity of mobile phones almost reaching saturation point it seems the Government has found a convenient and non-messy method of achieving the same goal. What's more, they've even managed to convince the population that they should pay good money for this service. It's absolutely brilliant.
Hat's off to the American Government for the most original application of the free market.
And yet T-Mobile "can't" track my Color Sidekick that got jacked? Even though they are the only provider in the area? Here's me being glad my contract is almost up with them.
Note to self: No more arguing with the faithful.
Is there an article that explains how this works? I assume phones don't have GPS antennas built in.
However, I cannot see how it will affect the average person on the street. I doubt the government will be keeping tabs on individuals. It seems as insidious as store loyalty cards.
I don't see government agents appearing on my lawn due to information gleaned from my Sainsbury's Nectar Card.
Even if your cell phone is off, the police can still turn on the microphone and listen to what's going on in the room, which would presumeably also allow triangulation.
Take the battery out if you want to stay safe, only thing that works.
I'm a dreamer, the world is my playpen. But hey, I'm a serious person, I can't dream all the time.
For the curious, it's all described on the uLocate FAQ.
Only works with Nextel now and free until the end of the year.
Another reason to hate Nextel for me. After having a boss that gave us all Nextels and having managers that would use the Instant-On feature to speak to us night and day (10:26pm Manager: "Hello, Hello, are you there?? The mail server seems to be a little slow, are you there?"), I will never consider Nextel again. I'm scarred for life!!
NAYAAAT - (Nor Are You An Accurate Acronym Transcriber)
I work (outsourced) for a major telecom manufacturer that's been mentioned two times before in these responses. A majority of our phones as well as our competitions' have the ability to track a user. It's not GPS, it's triangulation. a spot between any three available towers can be pinpointed to within thiry feet. Works out great for e911 services, in the areas that can access them (most major metropolitan areas). Also, these services cannot be turned off. The location-based services can be interrupted on a limited basis so that advertisements and offers (coming soon through your telecom companies) will not reach your phone, but e911 will always have access. Interesting to think that the avarge user is starting to get access to these services, however. (Don't know if I want all my friends and relatives to be able to plot out a map of my whereabouts.) ...just food for thought....
I work for a cell phone company. don't let the movies fool you. we, in no way, can tell where you are at with any certainty. we can tell which tower you are closer too, but not any type of distance measurment. we can use the RF (dB) to say that you are closer to tower A than tower B-- the more towers to sample from the "better" the guess. if we could get your location with any kind of accuracy there would be no need for the e911 laws that the government put in place to help 911 operators.
Samsung has this GPS feature and it is set to turn on only when calling 911 by default. It can be set to always on however.
As long as that is the default setting which I was happy to see that it was, I see nothing to worry about. (unless ofcourse it doesnt work as advertised).
We have been able to do this in Norway for a couple of years now, and everyone could track each other, if they are on the persons white-list. (That is, you could say who you would like to be tracked by)
I am a Sheriff's dispatcher to a County of 1.5million people.
Cell phone tracking is currently available, and will always be available even without GPS. As you travel your cell phone communicates to various cell phone towers along the path.
Cell phone companies will provide Public Safety agencies with "tower" information and subscriber information for emergency situations. With the tower information, it will provide about a one mile radius to search if needed.
GPS ability is available to some beta site dispatch centers. Cell phone/GPS information is provided when 911 is dialed. Landline 911 will provide location, phone number(s) and subscriber information. Very important info for responding agencies.
GPS ability is very important to Public Safety agencies. I lost count of the number of times "we" were unable to find a cell phone caller. 911 cell phone callers often have a dificult time giving their location, especially in unfamilar areas. I've taken calls where the caller is in a trapped in a ditch or injured in the middle of nowhere. I have also taken calls where a victim or injured person has called and for one reason or another is unable to give the location. Dead battery, poor reception site, lost consciousness etc.
Put yourself or a loved one in that scenerio and think about it. You have to think of the worst case scenerio, it happens daily.
I leave my GPS data on all the time, never knowing when I myself will be involved in an emergency.
I have nothing to hide, and couldn't care less if anybody new where I was located. With hundreds of cell phones being used in any one region, the thought of somebody caring about your location is quite unrealistic.
The whole basis of the GPS cell phone data is in the interest of public safety. To assist you when you need it most.
I'd be more afraid of criminals my personal data for identity theft.
Each credit card/atm/club card transaction is telling somebody where you are and what you are purchasing. Nobody seems to be bothered with that.
I don't have an account, not because i'm a coward. I just have the desire to post here often. I'm also paranoid that somebody is going to steal my personal information.
-Ant-
I can't find the article at this time. However, this has already been posted on /. except it was in the UK.
-illumina+us "I put on my robe and wizard hat..."
Of course this technology has legitimate uses. If you'd bothered to read the article, you would have noticed that the privacy advocates were not objecting to the technology itself, but to the absence of control over who gets access to the data.
How would you detect if you were being spied on? Is there anything keep cops from planting bugs on you? I'm guessing you'd need to take your vehicle into a wired area and see if it's giving off signals, then do tracing to find out. Which won't work so hot if the bug is command activated.
If the bugs are small enough, they can be surreptitiously slipped into your pocket, your briefcase, or backpack. Or your computer (for LAN gamers).
-- Ender, Duke_of_URL
My phone seems to have trouble getting any reception when I am close to wireless internet hubs. This problem will only get worse in the future, unless my phone provider changes the frequency..
Who moved my sig?
I haven't really been up to date on the latest cell tech, but maybe a few of you who are can address what I'm wondering about -
The signal from the GPS satellites is pretty weak...How does the cell phone reliably get its coordinates? Most of the handheld GPS units I have used will lose GPS lock if you have it in the car, in buildings or even under trees because of the line-of-sight obstruction. If you require E911 service, the chances are pretty good you will be in a location that doesn't get very hot GPS reception. Is there some kind of secondary location service?
Antennas must be tuned for optimum reception of a signal, which means that in a GPS enabled cell phone there is probably two antennas - one for GPS and one for cell service. Can anyone confirm that theory? It could theoretically use the same antenna for both GPS and cell service, but either way if you wanted to disable it you could cut the trace that carries the signal to the GPS controller.
But if you do this, how legal would that be?
-R
Good thing I have AT&T! I get so little coverage I bet they have no idea where I'm at.
To everyone who is freaking out that this will be a new way to for The Man (or government, employer, spouse, whatever) to track your every movement, I have a radical new idea:
Don't carry the cell phone
This may never have occurred to you, but if you are doing something or going somewhere and do not want to be tracked, you actually have the option of not carrying the cell phone with you. Now I know what you are thinking, but yes, your pants will stay up without the cell phone holster connected to your belt. Try it in the safety of your own home if you do not believe me. And legend has it our ancestors traveled across the country side without cell phones back in the olden days.
Or for a less radical option, just turn it off. If you still do not believe it is really off and could still be tracking you, take the battery out.
Finkployd
What if you're that person that everyone talks about when you're not around? I've found out because people tell me about these conversations.
What if you're that hot girl that everyone wants to meet, and you despise all those creepy geeks? All of a sudden you keep bumping into the same stalkers, at every club you go to, at every store you visit. Everytime you step out of the house?
Cool, so don't carry your cell-phone with you. Great solution, now that they've eliminated most public pay-phones. You too can live in a communications-free world. Hello? It's like stepping back in time a 100 years. It's particularly disabling when your car breaks down, and nobody will stop to help you - and there's no phone around to call for help. It's a problem when people *expect* to be able to reach you at anytime - you become a social pariah.
Time for a new solution. We just need to out-innovate these stupid restrictions.
-- Ender, Duke_of_URL
For privacy freaks this is old, old news. It is also one of things that give us freaks bad dreams and sleepless nights. The 911 justification has all the ear-marks of that tried-and-true privacy buster maxim - "If it will save the life of just one child, it will all be worth it!"
BUT, after cogitating on it for a few years now, I think that the decision to go with GPS has a lot of benefits for us freaks (and the criminals out there too). Since the trend is towards embedded GPS in cell phones, it is likely that all the typical anti-privacy black hats will build their uber-spying systems on the back of assuming the GPS data is valid. It does not have to be.
In fact, I envision a GPS "relocator" device becoming somewhat popular in the same stores that sell mini-spy cams, electronic bugs and electronic bug detectors. Just attach your relocator to your phone and it will overpower the signals from the GPS birds with its own false signals and convince the phone that it is really somewhere else. Similarly, I would expect to see software only hacks to future phones to do the same thing. As long as the dark powers that be are too lazy to cross reference the phone's own reported GPS location with the actual cell towers in use (and you know that such laziness *will* prevail it is government agencies we are talking about) then those people who want to appear as if they are somewhere else can do so easily. Thus invalidating much of the benefits (beyond the stupid 911 misdirection) to Big Brother and helping to maintain the privacy of the common man (and all those criminals the Feds thought they were going to be able to use this scheme against).
Hey, just because you wear a tinfoil hat doesn't mean you can't see the brighter side.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The point is, they could. If they don't have the tools to do so, then they definately can't. This gives the government a easy tool to track people, especially as cell phone use becomes more and more widespread (as if it isn't already.)
While someone may not be sitting there tracking every movement, it would be feasible to assume that all your data gets dumped into a database for later use. We already store incoming and outgoing calls, why not locations?
Let's say a robbery took place at a store. You were on the other side of the building and didn't see it. However, the resolution of the GPS wasn't good enough to pinpoint which side of the building you were on, only that you were in proximity. The police come knocking on your door, and now your a suspect.
I go to public parks often to sit and read. I have no kids. I don't want some stupid computer program to assume I have no reason to be there, flagging me as a pedophile because I happen to read on kids playgrounds.
Umm, what fantasy world are you living in?
They've used OnStar to eavesdrop on people. The only reason that go shut down is because the person couldn't use OnStar to call for help - which will be solvable by the cops by promising to forward any such requests immediately to the OnStar system.
In '93 they were wiretapping all public phones in 'bad' areas in my town. I don't think they even bothered to get a warrant, which is why it made the papers.
Feds have *never* turned down an application for a warrant to themselves in Patriot related matters - which is not solely related to 'terrorist' activity - even when terrorist activity was rather loosely defined. They're now using it for domestic crimes.
The federal DB of records on every citizen is moving forward, all boat registration, car registration, credit records, etc.
Yeah: "Trust us, we're from the Gubbmint", sure, sure - as long as high standards are used, it shouldn't be a problem. As long as people follow the law, you should have no hackers attacking your computer systems, no viruses will be written, and all code won't cause catastrophic failure on your machines, or data corruption.
Must be nice to live in fantasy land.
-- Ender, Duke_of_URL
If you look up the definition here you'll see why they call it Cell Phone.
In 2005 every citizen on earth is tracked and monitored. Your government knows your every move and if you become a political enemy to the ones holding this power then kiss your ass goodbye. Imagine watergate if this technology had been present. All we would have known was that some journalist died tragically. ...meanwhile the terrorists dont use phones, the internet or ordinary mail services and go undetected.
HTTP/1.1 400
rofl mod parent up its so obvious but so true and i didnt think of it
When you call 911 on a cell phone, chances are good that a) you will be in a poorly-defined location (ie, "I'm underneath the tire of a car!"), and b) you will need a speedy response. Why must you be forced to describe your location well enough for police to find you, instead of simply lettimg them track your phone and show up to where you called?
Calling 911 implies it's an emergency, you need the police NOW.
What? you were expecting some long winded elegant response?
All I have to say is DUH!!!!
It's called triangulation. As long as a signal is sent wirelessly, it can be done. Seriously, if the slashdot crowd hasn't recognized this capability and its uses and misuses by now, I would honestly question the brain power of the readership.
Again, why is this news?
I'm sorry, but an important part of growing up is getting at least a taste of true freedom and yes, sometimes the risk that it entails. . When I was a teenager I probably did a few things my parents wouldn't have approved of, and I that was an important part of my experience.
I can't imagine imposing this on my own teenager, except (1) when he actively wants it, if say he goes into a strange part of town, or (2) as punishment if he gets into trouble - part of the punishment might be that he would be monitored for the next two months or whatever. If he wants to be monitored all the time,
Now Blockbuster Video can find out I went to Target to buy some blank DVD-Rs after renting a DVD. I swear, they were for umm, backing up my Linux .ISO collection, yea, that's the ticket.
I do feel kinda bad for these 16-year-old kids getting tracked by their parents. I mean, it's one thing for adults living in a democracy to have debates about privacy & technology, etc.-- that's all good-- but these kids don't have any say in the matter... which is too bad, because there are some legitimate arguments on their side.
As an adult, if someone were tracking me at least I would have some legal recourse. But what do you do when its your parents? Sue them? I guess that's been tried before too...
Time to make a mini hat for my cell phone..
(if I had one -- a phone that is)
--
"I'm not bright. Big words confuse me. But Wanda loves me and that should be enough for you." - Cosmo
So we can get evil spying technology but we still don't get GPS capability with our new cell phones. Fucking wonderful.
So I just got a new treo 600 and like all new cell phones it has e911. This means it has a GPS reciever and all that shit in it, however, like most new cell phones it lacks the code or chip to do the GPS processing. If you can now get commercial spying services why the hell can't they enable a GPS service without an expansion card.
Seriously though this is a somewhat worrying trend. Not so much because of the lose of privacy, although that isn't good but because of the *differential* loss in privacy. I think it was David Brin who commented that this was the real problem and while I don't know his reasons I agree with him. If corporate execs were as likely to have their minor transgressions traced as teenagers we would learn to forgive these transgression that have happened since the begining of time. As it is we will once again blame it on the moral failings of the youth.
Ironically it seems that it is our concern for privacy that will cause the problems. We will only let surveilance happen in certain specialized areas, those areas that "morally good upright" citizens won't be in. It will be okay to surveill only those people who regularly come within some many feet of a known drug hangout...but not a buisnessman who buys his coke from a friend at work.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Don't carry a cell phone. Progress always comes at a cost.
Similar services has been available for years in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. They are not so accurate as GPS, but can normally give you a good hunch about where you are.
The technique usues a system connected to the cellular network and instead of the more complex (and accurate) triangulation, it uses the time between the phone and the cell it is connected to, and calculates a sector where you most probably are.
In rural areas it is much less accurate, of course, since there is a greater distance between the antennas, so the sector can be quite large and give you results a few kilometers wrong.
The providers have things like "friendfinder" and virtual paintball "botfighters" aswell as fleet management (you can see where your cars/people are).
/tb
What guarantees and proof does JimBob SixPack have that this information/service will only be used by police/the government "as needed to apprehend criminals" as opposed to "we felt like snooping on YOU today"?
Last time I looked, even the RIAA could not just pull up your records (from an ISP) without going through appropriate legal motions.
It's my bet there's no existing legislation which covers (eg restricts) government (eg spooks) / police access to this GPS-from-your-cellphone information without (a) your knowledge (b) a judges knowledge and approval in the specific instance of apprehending a supposedly innocent-until-proven-guilty citizen.
"I'm sorry sir, your rights have been revoked - didnt you read the shrink-wrap license/EULA that came with your cell service?"
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
Next thing you know they'll make my home phone tracable so that if I need an ambulence or something they'll be able to trace that too!
Those evil bastards!
All the ISPs are fighting the RIAA, including the case you mentioned. Verizon has been appealing over and over again and they finally won.
I think there's some location-based services available in Finland already, although I don't know what they're like. I haven't had a need to use them so I haven't tried them.
ETSI and others have specified lots of LI standards. There's a nice summary here at the GLIIF.
Basically it means there's a unified interface over which the law enforcement agencies can request call records etc.
But seriously, why are you afraid your phone will track you? You can always turn off the phone. It's much more easier to track you as you take money out from an ATM, or use the credit card to pay.
While it has some benefits, it's also another tool for control freaks, such as some parents and SOs, who go nuts if they don't know where you are 24 hours a day. It isn't voluntary if you are a minor or have a SO with severe mental problems concerning trust.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
But privacy advocates say the lack of legal clarity about who can gain access to location information poses a serious risk.
Unfortunately technologies get deployed LONG before appropriate legislation get enacted. Governments are often like Dionsaurs living in the age of Mammals (ie they're just not built to react quickly to change).
"We are moving into a world where your location is going to be known at all times by some electronic device," said Larry Smarr, director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology. "It's inevitable. So we should be talking about its consequences before it's too late."
Unfortunately, most people subscribe to the DKDC model of living. (Don't know, don't care) And it's often left to a vocal (and knowledgable) minority who end up being painted as "the lunatic fringe" by the mass media.
Advocates of location-aware technology insist that its safety benefits -- like locating a 911 caller or a stolen car -- outweigh the privacy issues.
The technology itself is not the issue (the technology is NEVER the issue), the issue is who has access and under what conditions. They're completely missing the point - why can we not have a situation where the privacy and the technology play together nicely in the sandpit?
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
Anyways, back to the topic at hand. While the original "Find Friend" type services are generally harmless as long as the involved parties consent, and while similar use for real safety issues (i.e. firefighters on duty) is also generally harmless, further use of these services for other purposes than finding your mates in a discoteque queue or finding firefighters is obviously disturbing from a privacy standpoint.
It's unfortunate to see that these cellphones make parents think that they will make their kids tell the truth, etc. At the same time, it's unfortunate that the presumption of trust and goodwill is taken away from these children; children learn that they can't be trusted before they may or may not have done anything.
It's also unfortunate that parents are led to believe that if they think their kid is in danger, all they have to do is push a button and see where the kid is positioned and voila! Kid is found. It's not that simple. This quote was disturbing: Jason Pratt said there were advantages to being watched. He no longer has to call his mother to let her know where he is. Instead, she can press a "locate" button on her phone and see for herself. Not only do these devices break down communication between parents and children, communication which is necessary to provide good, trusting relationships, it gives a false sense of security. Jason could be mugged, his phone taken away from him. If he had told mommy where he was and where he was going, it would be easier to find Jason than chasing the cellphone which the mugger probably tossed into a trash bin some random location.
More than ever, technological devices are replacing good old fashioned parenting. OK, I don't have brats myself, but I used to be one. I was taught good common sense things like don't talk to strangers, call if we're going to be late home (and don't be afraid to call collect), stick to known streets and paths, be aware of your surroundings, etc. I never thought it was so diffucult to stick to. I did OK and so have a lot of other children from "my generation" (no, I'm not that old). Has society become so much worse today that kids have to be put under surveillance? Why don't good old fashioned rules work anymore?
If you have a kid that wanders away from "approved" areas or lies about which train she may have taken, then you have a problem that goes beyond what surveillance devices can solve. Somewhere, you f-ed up as a parent.
Another issue is the fantasy that these devices could be used to find kidnapped/missing kids. Problem #1 - most kidnappings are done by family members, not strangers. Technology may find the kid, but it doesn't resolve the real issue. Problem #2 - even if the kidnapping was at the hands of a stranger, the stranger (and even the family member) could throw away or destroy the GPS device.
Another thing is that children may be present in the "safety zone" or whatever you want to call it; parents check up on their kids and since they're in an area that is "OK" they let it be. Well, a kid may be in the "safety zone" but locked up in the pedophile neighbor's garage. So much good the cellphone has done!
Yet another issue is that this teaches children to accept surveillance, whether willingly or unwillingly. To go even further, "good kids think that surveillance is good." "If you don't accept us watching over you, then you're a criminal with something to hide." Again, this takes away the presumption of innocence, and children learn that their parents don't trust them from day one. What kind of society becomes created when nobody trusts the other?
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
Several messages here have covered the topic of persons/authorities beeing able to spot your current location.
Actually, it goes much farther. I dont' know about other countries, but here in Denmark, your location can not only be found but is actually continuously logged by the phone companys "for accounting purposes".
I know at least two criminal trials were these logs have been used by the prosecutor to prove that the accused was at a given location several months or even a year earlier.
they can triangulate... get your location pretty good too.
We should make cell phones really small.. kinda triangular shaped.. and pin them to our chest! We can have a speakerphone system and voice recognition, you can just tap it and speak!
And now people can go "Computer, locate Liutenant Worf."
Err.
Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast.
I'm surprised no one mentioned this anime series. Platonic Chain obviously never covers the issue of privacy as the series is meant to be light-hearted, but the sort of information you could gain from cell phone tracking and security cameras would be pretty amazing information. The biggest thing, though, is I don't think it'd help law enforcement nearly as much as people think.
It's the same issue with trying to track down a worm: information overload. A central core of people monitoring the world would never work simply because jumping on all misdemeaners which are happening all the time would so quickly clog up the legal system. The end result would be a rather large increase in the court system size. After people begin to realize they would be caught for their actions, the court system would become underwhelmed with actual cases.
At about that point, the court system workers (like any other "company") would try to artifically inflate the number of cases to justify their size and prevent downsizing. The end result would be either lighter punishments to get more offenders out on the street again to capture or stricter laws (thankfully the latter would require legistlation conspiracy which would limit the potentional).
And what about the people who are part of the court system? They'd probably be exempt from monitoring because of how it might effect their decision.. Overall, petty crime would go down and more nefarious crimes would just be done more privately. The only reliable way to stop crime from petty to nefarious is p2p monitoring. Nothing else can scale well or be blocked through associative allignment--ie, narcotics agents dress up like narcotics pushers to fit in for a reason. Arm-chair management wouldn't work unless everywhere in the world had a camera, split the world into three groups, and had each group watch the others. That at the local level still reverts back to p2p.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
It's true, Europe generally trails the US in all things stupid, but in one respect we're showing you how dangerous life can be:
http://www.mapamobile.com/
"mapAmobile is a service which can give you the peace of mind of knowing where your children, loved ones or colleagues are at any time, without intruding on their day to day activity. It uses the mobile phone network to locate a mobile phone anywhere in the UK. You can access this information from this website, via text message, via WAP or by making a simple phone call."
Has anyone out there compiled a list of what phones have and don't have the mandated E911-GPS sending capability?
I've got an old Nokia 5190 that I know won't last forever. I refuse to get any phone that has the GPS locating "feature" built in, so that limits me to older phone models... but I've seen some phones that Nextel has been shipping with GPS capabilities already.
Someone's going to make a fortune in 2005 by buying up all the old cell phones they can, and selling them at a huge markup to all of us...
I've often wondered about the ability to to eavesdrop with modern cell phones. Since they have voice recording capabilities and many of them are just audio terminals with an always on connection, there's got to be a way to snoop with them. Imagine having your cell phone in your bedroom with all those new really neat features. Completely unaware that someone can remotely activate the audio on the phone and listen to your sex life or intimate conversation. If you ask me, cell phones are destined to be just as big of a security hole as computers have been within the first part of the 21st century. Keep in mind that these "digital wonders" have little in common with their analog, wired ancestors. You can't really cut off the audio with a switch...
Un-news
This is hardly anything to be tinfoil hat wearing about. My phone is a year old and I was able to figure out within about 10 minutes how to shut the damn thing off (except when making a 911 call...it automatically turns on then). So this is a non issue....as long as Motorola and others allow the user to shut it off if they so wish.
Gorkman
I work in the telecom industry. I have been doing so for quite som time. Back in 1999, we did system test on locating in GSM. At that time, locating was based on using several measurements:
+ signal strengths measured at two or more towers,
+ the so-called timing advance measurements,
+ measurements done over several frequencies (GSM uses frequency hopping).
Usually, in urban areas, we'd get the location within 10 meters. In rural areas, it was more like 100 meter. It was a bit of a hassle to order the system to start the tracking, and there was no nice user interface for the resulting trace data. We made a few hacks to make our lives easier. Some of those hacks still lives... Today, the radio base stations comes with the option of a built-in GPS. That makes the position of the base statio very well known (that was a problem back in 1999). You can still use the measurement reports from the cell-phone to get the current location (cell-phones have to make measurement reports, or they won't work in the system). You don't need to have GPS capability in the cell-phone. But if you do, and it reports coordinates that doesn't agree with known data frpm the base stations, the cell-phones data will be ignored, and real measurements will be used. The user interfaces of today are mcu better. Using the IMSI (International Mobile Subscriber Identity) or even the equipment identity number, you can order the system to log all movements of the cell-phone. The only way to avoid this, is to keep the battery out of the cell-phone, and only put it in when you need the service.
If you have secrets, ANY secrets, especially BUSINESS secrets, under NO circumstances mention anything over the telephone!
1 0. html
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit200307
"The typical CALEA installation on a Siemens ESWD or a Lucent 5E or a Nortel DMS 500 runs on a Sun workstation sitting in the machine room down at the phone company. The workstation is password protected, but it typically doesn't run Secure Solaris. It often does not lie behind a firewall. Heck, it usually doesn't even lie behind a door. It has a direct connection to the Internet because, believe it or not, that is how the wiretap data is collected and transmitted. And by just about any measure, that workstation doesn't meet federal standards for evidence integrity.
And it can be hacked.
And it has been.
Israeli companies, spies, and gangsters have hacked CALEA for fun and profit, as have the Russians and probably others, too. They have used our own system of electronic wiretaps to wiretap US, because you see that's the problem: CALEA works for anyone who knows how to run it."
While you cannot turn off the E911 tracking in your cell phone it's actually only active when you dial the digits 911 and most phones will say "I'm in emergency mode" and you will have to tell it to exit that mode after the call. Irritating if you're reporting a wreck but it can be a lifesaver.
Location tracking (Where your phone has the gps chip active all the time) in every phone I've seen you have to activate it before it will work.
TURN THE FUCKEN THING OFF .... TAKE OUT THE BATTERY IF YOUR REALLY PARANOID .... Now you can carry it around safely!
(Sorry about the rude swearing, but heck, I can't slap you with a wet slimy fish ya dumb smuck)
Humans are undeniably greedy. And by this, humans are undeniably going to fuck up their own existance. This is something that is inevitable, people. I'm not saying it's good, or it should be done... But it's something that is going to happen, and there isn't anything that will stop it. Stories like this will water the concept down in words... such as:
"Mr. Bingham's parents use an AT&T service called Find Friend"
'Find Friend'?? What a nice, cuddly name for it. Even though you're appauled at the idea of tracking another human being like he/she is a fucking animal, 'Find Friend' sounds so innocent. Great. Now we're softened. Bring on the Borg! We all think as one, we all have no minds of our own. Thank you, O God of technology and time, as humans are undeniably going to destroy ourselves.
I just hope that the next beings that inhabit our planet are a little more democratic in nature.
Yes, it's a sad, doomed world.
Yes, I have been drinking. And yes, it does, in actuality, bring a queer sense of simplicity and truth to the matter before us.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Where were you?
... I don't believe you, you were working late again weren't you .... WEREN'T YOU?
At your girlfriends having a shag
Hmmmm let's see, neighbors on the left are 80 miles away, and the neigbor on the right is ... ahhhh .... getting a hair cut.
Plenty time to rob their house.
Racist cocksucker undoubtedly your mother is one....
Cheers
Anonymous Coward ESQ
...here's another dirty little secret of the wireless industry: many phones have the ability to enable the microphone without the owner of the phone even knowing it. I only recently heard about this, and I can't vouch for how valid it is (I don't have much intimate knowledge about how cell handsets work), but even if it isn't true today, it's interesting to consider the possibility that cell phone users are carrying 'bugs' around with them 24/7...
Instead of paying for LoJack for my new car, I'll just sign up for the family plan and leave a cheap Nokia in the trunk.
You'd have to be liable for the charges if you abused the system, and the "button" would really have to be something like a pull-out slip so i would be both permanent and hard to set off by accident, but imagine what a help it would be.
This is in daily use at 911 centrals, at least here in Scandinavia. Whenever someone calls 911 (or our local version of it) a trace is automatically performed and the operator can see the approximate position of the caller on the map. This actually works with information from just one base station. The directional antennas will know the sector of the caller and the signal strength is used to calculate the approximate distance. The area in which the caller is positioned is highlighted on the map. No GPS, no triangulation, just one single base station. And no, the police does not have access to the same information, at least not here in Norway. Maintaining this application is part of my current assignment so I do have some first hand experience... -Allan
I recently spoke with software developer who knew a bit about this. He claimed that the accuracy, even in areas with very good GSM coverage, were not better than 100 meters. He also said that in areas where there were coverage with only 1 or 2 stations the accuracy was about 1km.
Do anyone have supporting or contradicting information?
http://www.saundersphoto.com/html/body_hot6.htm
This are designed to shield film from X-rays at the airport. Can you store your cell phone in one to protect your privacy? Of course, if you actually wanted to USE the beastie, you just unzipped your fly, but at least there is some control here.
in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that
Francis Smit
Actually I am wondering at what point it will have progressed beyond this...if it hasn't already. No doubt someone has thought of this already and developed a way around it.
Most cellular phones have the ability to have GPS on constantly, or only to turn on when you dial 911. This way you dont have to sacrifice your privacy and can feel a bit safer if you need to be.
Tis better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt --Abraham Lincoln
in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that
Francis Smit
Well, how about just turning it OFF when not using it?
:-)
If your extra paranoid, remove the battery !
They need warrants to intercept content of your calls. Location data is, "outside of the envelope," and thus available on law enforcement request, without probable cause.
Ben Masel: 51,282 votes for US Senate in the Wisconsin Democratic Primary
Nebraska State Patrol has OCR for plates near Fremont on Interstate 80. So far a test program. So far used primarily to spot longhaul drug mules. With all traffic moving parallel, it's technically trivial.
Ben Masel: 51,282 votes for US Senate in the Wisconsin Democratic Primary
Can you install your own gps software on your phone and track it yourself instead of paying ulocate.com???
Apparently, not all of them have been fighting, given that the RIAA was able to get enough subscriber details to file it's hundreds of lawsuits so far.
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
Actualy with software radio's being used in modern cell phones implementing GPS isn't particualy hard with most chip manufactures supporting it in firmware.
Directional triangulation does require special gear but signal strength does not. The towers allready have signal streanth built into there calculations to pick one tower over another all things being equal a decent map and using the relitive signal streangth to scew from the center would provide an idea of where the phone is good enough for stalking etc.
No sir I dont like it.
in the netherlands this is used for a long time to track the whereabouts of criminals. it's also used as evidence (at least the phone was on the scene of the crome during the crime) and it's used for mapping the criminal network (who's calling who).
;)
criminals are aware of this and change phones regularly
Privacy is terrorism.
I see a new underground industry on the horizon, tweaked cell phones that mask your location.
If there is a GPS chip in them, hack the phone and screw with the chip. If they use triangulation, well, that's going to be hard to do.
One way or the other, people will find a way around this.
This is leading to something doubleplus un-good...
Whats a good material to block cellular/gps signals? I think that making cellphone holders that can block the signals would be a great product to sell....
For what it's worth, many years ago when I crossed paths with some cell-phone product design types, there was a hybrid product concieved, originally to improve service and battery life -- a pager/cell phone. (We're not talking SMS here, but plain old POCSAG paging.)
Anyway, with this approach you could work if you wished to retain positional anonymity -- have a conventional pager (which is just a reciever) notify you of calls, then choose to power up the cell or not.
As practically every other post has pointed out, positioning by radio has no requirement of GPS being present. Any transmitter can be position located. Amateur radio opertators actually have contests to do this -- foxhunts -- and the equipment to do position finding of non-spread-spectrum tranmitters is pretty trivial to make or buy.
If you want your whereabouts to remain unknown, don't transmit. Simple as that.
My company is far too small to contract directly with Brightmail so we setup an account with a Brightmail service reseller recommended by Brightmail. The very day we switched our MX record over to them the amount of spam we received actually skyrocketed. I even tested this theory by sending a piece of mail to a brand new mailbox with a GUID as the address through a telnet session directly to the service mailserver. Within an hour that mailbox started to receive spam!
They deny the possibility and called me a liar. We no longer use that service.
There is always the possibility that one of their employees is not so honest and the company has no knowledge of this activity but something is amiss.
"The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion." - Arthur C. Clarke
Personally, I will be thanking Big Brother as paramedics find me clutching my chest in a ditch after having a heart attack during a walk in a park.
--
Luck is just skill you didn't know you had.
Phone companies should just make it optional to use 911 with tracking or no 911 at all, they can market it as the 'Do or Die' service.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
My guess is two kinds of parents will use this. The first would be parents who are already restrictive, and the second would be parents whose kids have gotten into trouble in the past.
Heck, maybe this will be good for some kids - maybe instead of their parents not letting them go somewhere, they will let them go as long as they have their phone.
I have blog like everyone else
I have often been asked how I can live without having a cell phone, and I tell people that I don't need one because everyone else has one. It is the same logic as herd immunity -- if most people have cell phones, then those who don't (such as myself) can still be "connected" if they use someone else's cell phone to make the occasional phone call.
So, for those who wear tin foil hats, you can use this technique to your advantage, and avoid being tracked. I think at least 50% of people in the U.S. have a cell phone now, so odds are you can easily find someone with a phone. Europe undoubtedly has an even higher saturation. Granted, you can't speak at length on someone else's phone, but in the event of an emergency, you are most likely within a short distance of someone with a cell phone. Social engineering is all that is needed at that point.
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
I wrote the mapping application used by the combined city/county 911 here on the South Texas Gulf Coast. In the rural areas out of the city some towers have a reach of 30 miles and is *omni-directional* so you should call you minister first and be prepared to KYAGB [kiss you ass good bye]. The 911 center receives about 1000 calls per day. 70% [700] are cell phones in the city. Of these 100% have tower address and sector so you are within a 1-3 mile 1/3 of the pie area and that is mapped visibily with the other 2/3 lightly showing. 60% [420] of the 700 have valid longitude/latitude with an error factor and confidence. If the error is 100 meters the application puts a cirlce with the radius of the error around the cell phone symbol, a if it is greater than 1000 meters it reverts to the "tower address" which is always the address contained in the call data. How does GPS effect this for the newer and unsuprisingly more expensive cell phones work. My Sprint phone has a scope crosshair [plus inside a circle] showing when the system is getting good location values. GPS is used to validate the cellco's tower triangulation of the phone since GPS requires visibility of the birds. All towers are being equiped with GPS, so this provides a "software" differential as the exact location of the tower is known and the current reading is adjusted so the triangulation is more accurate. how does GPS not help. If you are in the house, turn the phone on, put it in your pocket/purse, get in the car and ride around then take it out to report a wreck or your own problem, chances are there is not a lock from the birds for the first 20+ seconds [typical GPS receiver standards]. 911 [here in the US] only receives the lat/lon when the call is placed. Your Privacy. By law, this information is recorded [Automatic Location Identification - ALI] along with the voice conversation, and retained by law for at least 30 days and up to 3 years, depending on the various laws and policy/precedures of the agency receiving the call. Many stupid people have received the "Darwin Awards" for calling 911 during an incident, like using an exhaust vent and getting stuck while trying to rob a business after hours. I you want your privacy then NEVER CALL 911, only call the appropriate agency's 10 digit administrative line [the one in the phone book]. Your call will still probably be recorded [we record all lines except for the "private" one investigators use] and in some cases the regular phones might even have "Caller ID" as provided by the phone company in use which, so the number you called from is recorded in the the records management system. TCYA [to cover yours ass] a pay phone becomes some what anonymous but you might have been recorded on the security cameras in use around the business where the pay phone is located and associating you with the call. In conclusion -- YOU HAVE NO PRIVACY.............. Tracking a phone is provided by some 3rd party providers. It is not in place in the US as it is in the UK and else where. A few years back I read about one company [UK] charging like $1 for initial location and $2 for each minute of tracking.
The description above is OK as far as it goes. But radiolocation by cellphone is MUCH more accurate than that, because it uses an extra piece of information.
In addition to signal strength (which varies not just with distance but with transmission path artifacts, like trees and moisture), digital cellphone base stations keep track of out-and-back signal turnaround time - to an extremely fine granularity. They do this to assign timeslots for the phone-to-tower signals, to make maximum use of the channel.
Assuming the strongest path is the line-of-sight path (rather than, say, a bounce off a building), this gives them the distance to the phone, within a few feet. (This assumption is usually true.)
The geometry is the same. But with the distance information added, each tower can put the phone on a sphere of a particular radius around the tower. Assuming the phone is on or near roughly flat ground (not in an aircraft or climing a steep mountain - also usually true), that becomes a circle where it intersects the ground, with an uncertainty stripe width of a few feet.
Add a second tower and you get two intersecting circles - and two lozenge-shaped patches where they intersect. A third cell tower can tell you whitch patch (and shrink it further by cutting off the long ends).
The advantage of adding a GPS to the phone is that you only need a SINGLE cell tower to interrogate the GPS in order to locate the user to GPS acuracy. This is handy for trouble calls where only one or two cells can reach the phone, so you don't have to dispatch two ambulances (for two cells) or a search plane (for one).
The distance information is available any time the phone is on. When it's switched on, switched off, and about every five minutes in between, it checkes in with the cell system. (Get one of those "cell-phone jewels", a blinky antenna, or a battery pack with a blinks-when-transmitting gadget to see when. Or just lay the antenna on a cheap transistor radio tuned to a quiet spot and listen to the pops and buzzes.) This is to update the system's database so it knows where to send incoming calls. But it also updates the distance information necessary to locate the phone within a few feet.
This information has been available to law enforcement for a while.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Signal strength is a very bad way to determain position. about all you can tell is "these three cell towers can get bits of this phones TX, must be in this general area (around the size of an entire cell coverage). Think about the problems involved with obvstructions, landscape etc. All of a sudden the guy is 5 miles away from where you thought he was because he stepped into an automobile. Much more accurate methods using signal reception times and even interferometry (spell?) are ways to locate within a cell. And if you want to go hunting for em... a directional antenna can do a lot. Note that most cell towers have directional antennas spliting their cells into a three or more portions, yeilding more info about where a phone is.
is there any kind of mobile java program that takes advantage of the gps chip in phones, to show your current coordinates? I've always been on the hunt for such a thing.
...It's on to precrime! Hail the minority report.
It seems like it would be pretty easy to jam the GPS signal with a little gadget that sat right next to the phone. This only solves half the problem. You could still be tracked by the towers, but might sell well to the paranoid crowd. Open source hardware anyone? uPower 1575.42 transmitter
The people who are so "worried" about this are the same people that are freaking out about rfid tags. Like I care if someone knows what kind of jeans I wear or what city I'm in. I could care less if someone knows if I'm home or not. People freak out before it becomes mainstream and then when it does they get all silent because they realize how much NOT a big deal it really is.
It is true that it takes non-trivial effort to implement triangulation based upon the signal strength of your cellular phone, but it also would take non-trivial effort to put a GPS solution onto a cellular phone. What is more important is which system is more precise, accurate, and reliable -- that would be GPS.
No, that would probably be the cell-based system.
It's not really "triangulation". Triangulation uses the observed DIRECTION of the signal, locating the transmitter on a (hopefully) narrow fan based at the reciever. Two receivers locate the transmitter where the "beams" intersect, and the "beams" plus the baseline between the receivers form a triangle.
This system uses the round-trip transit time, much like radar, to locate the transmitter on a circle around each "receiver" (actually an active transciever), putting the transmitter where the circles intersect. (You still get the triangle of the locations. But it's a different system than "triangulation".)
You can also locate the transmitter if all, or all-but-one, of the receivers is passive, but they can compare notes on signal arrival time.
If all are passive, two receivers locate the transmitter on a hyperbola, three narrow it to two intersecting hyperbolas, four pin it (or three if one or more can distinguish the two intersections by antenna sectoring).
If one "receiver" is active, it locates the transmitter on a circle, the second adds a hyperbola intersecting the circle at two points, the third (or sector antennas) adds another hyperbola that intersects differently with the circle to distinguish the points. (This is much like LORAN.)
The accuracy depends on the angles, the accuracy of the arrival-time measurements, and the accuracy of the knowlege of the locations of the base stations. Ground-based systems have an advantage in the angles (being roughly in a plain with the transmitter). They also have better knowlege of antenna location than orbiting satellites. Both have comparable time bases (based on atomic-clock-referenced Stratum-III clocks in the cell base stations and atomic clocks in the satellites). GPS was optimized for location tracking so it MAY measure the signal arrival time more accurately. But that's a "maybe", since the base stations need it accurate, too, and can throw more electronics at the problem than the portable GPS receiver. (Anybody have the real stats?)
Now that selective availability is turned off GPS MIGHT be as accurate as cell systems. But it's still fighting some handicaps, so I'd be surprised if it's better.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
If you're really worried, select "OFF" from the main menu, then remove the battery for good measure :>
There were no injunctions/stays provided by the courts, therefore the earlier rulings by the lower courts stood until they were overturned.
So the ISPs had to comply out of fear.
So now to prove I wasn't at the scene of a crime, I just have
to leave my cellphone at a friends house for a few hours.
Please, if this is news to you at all, it is time you start thinking a tiny little bit about how cell phones work..
If someone calls you on your cellphone, would the network know approx where you are? or would it go try each cell to find you? what do you think is more efficient???
Sorry, cellphones have done this for as long as they exist, it is inherent to how a cellphone network works.
What changed in the last years is that it is at times permitted to use this information for other purposes then operating the network.
As such, there is NO WAY to stop a cellphone from being locatable unless you turn it off. Also, it is not the cellphone reportign on its position but the network reporting where it is.
Perhaps get two cell phones, and alternate use randomly. And the phone that you're not using you could put in your spouse's car for the day, so it looks like it is moving around too. And simply set up call forwarding on the unused phone so you don't miss calls. Not perfect, but it does make it a little more difficult for people to track you (for the paranoid amoung us).
No, I don't trust in god. He'll have to pay up front, like everybody else.
Critics of the new technology do not dispute its usefulness, but worry that it will become ubiquitous before legal guidelines are established.
This article examplifies the strong tendency in mainstream American media to convey a very dangerous assumption: that we should always legislate new technologies before we understand what they are and how people will use them.
(Yes, location-tracking tech has been around for years. But it's still very "new," especially in the U.S., because it hasn't been in widespread use among the general public long enough for society and the markets to define its applications.)
I think you should more clearly define what you think of as things that people can opt out of. If there is face scanning, you can opt out: just don't go there. If your car has a tracking device, just choose not to drive it. My point being that "just not carrying your cellphone" may not be a big deal to you but to some people it really is.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
To me the big problem is that the cell companies won't let me use this information myself. I would love to be able to get the id of the tower I am connected to. The lat/lon of most towers is available on the internet, making it a poor man's gps.
Problem is very few cell phones let you actually see the tower that you are connected to. I have only seen one "GPS" enabled cell phone that actually let you see the GPS coordinates. I asked a sales guy at Best Buy about one of the gps enabled phone. He said the gps coordinates were only accessible by the phone company to provid E911.
If everyone else is going to track or cell phones, that at least let the user have access to the same info!
http://www.windmeadow.com/
I don't know if it is possible in US, but Down Under (New Zealand and Australia) most cell phones purchased are on pre-paid plans. The latter means than unless you specifically contact the mobile phone provider - they have no idea of who owns the cell phone. You never sign anything - just buy the phone in the shop and keep buying prepay cards in the petrol stations. On the contract, of course, they learn your name, and possibly credit card. Hence, with pre-paid cell phones, they can be tracked, but they have no idea who the people using them are, as opposed to the contract plans.
if you lost your cell phone...just ask a friend with a cell phone and you'll at least get a general idea where it is.
Okay, when I originally got my sprintpcs-capable phone, a Sanyo 4900, I read up on the location feature and it essentially told you that if you turned it off, the only ones who would have access to your location info would be the police. I didn't like the way it sounded, and between the bad ears and Big Brother, it went back to The Shack inside a day.
I later bought the same phone again and decided to use a headset for the hearing problem.
The real problem with the technology is not that the cops can track you. As far as I know, they have *always* had that ability: the machinery knows that the signal from your phone is strongest between n points on the network and if you make a call, your approximate location is knowable by the system in realtime.
Another problem, of course, are what they keep mentioning on 'Law and Order,' your LUDs or 'Local Usage Details.' It's a record of everyone you call and everyone who calls you.
Big hint, before calling anyone for a criminal transaction from your own cell phone, try on some bright-orange clothing and make sure you look good in it. It is one of the stupidest things you could possibly do--especially when you can buy anonymous, 'pay-as-you-go' cell phone service for minor amounts of money.
The real problem that the 'Law-and-Order' people, the ones who never met a form of privacy they didn't loath, is not that the cops can track you, illegally search you, or sweat a false confession out of you. All in all, American police can be great, but they can and have done all these things at one time or another.
The problem with technology is that the law is a game and it has to be a game for it to work. It would be bad for society if it were possible to automatically find someone guilty and technology is bringing us closer to the day when that will be possible in more and more areas.
From traffic-cams to face-recognition software, technologies are bringing us closer to a national security state where you don't do only good things because you want to, but because common sense tells you you should be scared shitless of doing anything else.
To mail me, remove the 'mailno' from my email addy.
"Yeah. It smells, too..."
This isn't news ppl. In fact, I believe /. is where I first learned that cell phones will have built in tracking - sometimes back in 1999.
-bZj
.sig
GPS tracking, and automatic phone bugging (CALEA) is here. The -next- thing will be to force combo cell-phone/PDA manufacturers to surreptitiously transmit the data in your wireless PDA (your memos, calenda, address book) to the authorities/spooks.
Why not carry your cellphone in a tempest shielded pouch when not in use? It's like a tinfoil hat for your phone.
It can't give it's location to anybody if it's unable to recieve gps info and no RF is leaving the pouch.
This would enable you to have positive control over the balance of availability and privacy regarding your cellphone without limiting the advancement of the technology or passing nasty laws.
And remember, if the message or your location is so sensitive, don't use any electronic communication. Use a dead drop or send a messenger you can trust.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
Next up, lasers that kill people from outer space ;-)....
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
And, if business really takes off, why not full-body suits, too ? ;-)>
You've never heard about 'kin infighting? No leverage too sordid?
Nice planet, yours!
I knew you europeans were a bunch of campers, lying and claiming it was lag that made it seem like you were camping... prolly using wall hacks as well
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
with the signal and cause position information to be wrong when inside a house.
A lot of people here mentioned that they have seen this feature on their phones, and/or methods for disabling it.
Anyone have a website on phones with this feature and how to disable, etc... if not how about we start one?
I'm an escapist (aren't we all), so take this with a bit o' salt, but...there is always a way out.
Yeah, you could conceivably live in a police state. Or you could take the next flight out of Casablanca, so to speak.
Let's just get it over with and have position/mood/political persuasion-sensing chips embedded in our skulls. True, ideal American-style freedom is too difficult to achieve anywhere. However, the U.S. can't afford to operate without AT LEAST THE ILLUSION OF FREEDOM.
impressive - now someone is stating to get it - it is a 3d issue - that is why the new phones (and it isn't only the us calea that requires this...) are starting in with gps - because it offers the potential for not just a traingulation but a fix in space i.e. how high is the xmiter
within 10m is possible now - but it IS very geographically chllanged and useless with 3rd party mCells/repeaters... certain technologies introduces a few years ago, didn't disappear for no reason. if it had been after 0/11 i woulda be less concerned (too much govt interference) but because some technologies for "forwarding" a cell signal got canned almost immediately on or right before market introduction, makes me wonder how many have finally agreed with the govt;s compromise.... 'give you a break on spectrum costs - but give us traceability/trackability'....
in any case - the gps in phones was pitched for commercial apps - (following the progress of a delivery guy, e.g.) vs the black suited guys that just wanted the tracking... and it does resolve the 3rd d issue and provides more resolution. but know that at every single second your phone is on - we can find you within 50 meters (at ground level)
the gov wants 10 meters
Tracking a person might be bad... but what about tracking people?:
http://www.pressi.com/int/release/79405.html
LogicaCMG devised a system to create alerts for traffic jams... It seems to work too!
Maurice
Apparently, the teen(s) cited in the NYT article never thought to just turn the phone off or leave it at home when they didn't want their parents tracking them. They must subscribe to the Paris Hilton school of Personal Priorities.
DOH... the 3G phone tech is so old news that my wireless tech textbook from four years ago has details about it. When is /. going to post some breaking news???
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves
Pablo knew to shut his phone off everytime he finished using it and to be constantly moving between calls just in case, except once. He left his phone on for more than 1/2 hour, calling his closest relatives and saying goodbye it is supposed, and stayed in that location afterwards as if he didn't want to run anymore and wanted to get caught. He got his wish, within the hour he was surrounded by US agents and gunned down.
What a great rant. Thank you.
"Just because they can, doesn't mean they will" is intrinsically no less true than "Just because they can, doesn't mean they will not."
<grrr>I'm not sure why this is such a hard concept for many people to grasp... other than denial, and fear.
I'm a big technology advocate, but I also hate all the big brother technology emerging. Even with EZPass, I have it, but it makes me nervous every single time I use it, and I've thought about dropping it. Not only is big brother a problem, but the latest cell phones are seriously making everything worse. My cell phone broke about 2 weeks ago, and although I was eligible for a brand new phone for free through my provider, I spent about $60 on Ebay purchasing the phone I had (which is about 3 years old). Because its a phone. Its not a personal babysitter, with ring tones, games, etc. I'm a fan of the simple stuff. I use BSD instead of Windows, not because its free, but because its so much easier for me. GUI's can get confusing. I like simple. Anyway... Technology really needs to slow down, otherwise, its going to hurt people's intellegence who abuse it, and invade the personal rights of everyone.
You can buy anonymous 'pay-as-you-go' cellphones for minor amounts of money? I had to fill out forms with my life story before I could take my new P-A-Y-G home!
I just got a T730 to replace my broken StarTAC portable. In going through the manual, I discovered that it is GPS-capable, and keeps a running internal record of the phone's geographic position.
However, Motorola apparently anticipated the privacy concerns inherent to such a feature. The phone's configuration allows three explicit options for the location-transmit feature: Disabled entirely, enabled ONLY for calls to 911, or enabled for all calls.
For my part, I don't mind at all if 911 has a record of my position for a call. I'm moving (in a vehicle) for 99% of my calls to them in any case (usually reporting stuck motorists or actual accidents). With that in mind, I have mine enabled for 'Report when calling 911 only.'
The point is that, if Motorola is designing their product so that the feature can be controlled by the user, other phone manufacturers would be foolish to do otherwise.
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies