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Tracking Via Anonymous SIM Cards
Noryungi writes "The New York Times reports that Al Qaeda operatives were tracked using the ID of the GSM phone chips sold by a Swiss company named Swisscom. Very interesting."
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The terrorists were lulled into a false sense of security when they kept changing phones, but took their SIM cards from one phone to the next to keep their number and minutes. Therefore, while the hardware changed, the identity didn't. That's what did them in...
Before anybody thinks the spooks were monitoring the "anonymous" prepaid cell phones randomly... RTFA. What got the investigation started was that they found a list of phone numbers when arresting another terrorist, and they all turned out to lead into the hands of high-value targets and the people who spoke to them.
Perhaps you should read it again, then. Investigators were not listening to random calls taken in by a broad net. Prior capture of other terrorists had yielded all sorts of phone numbers, addresses, and other contact and location information. Intelligence agencies then homed in on these particular phone numbers, recorded everything, and then analyzed it later. But I'm sure it sounds much more interesting if you try to paint it as some sort of grand conspiracy.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Someone please mod this guys as insightful. Law enforcement and various governments have the ability to track cell phone calls and draw conclusions based upon the interactions of various callers and call'ees. If you're doing something nefarious, you run this the risk of being monitored and apprehended.
In other news, when I woke up this morning, the run had risen, I had to go to work, and traffic sucked.
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
Actually, if you RTFA properly then you would realise that they were NOT routinely monitoring calls.
What they WERE doing was monitoring calls to / from numbers which were on a list of numbers they found when they arrested another terrorist.
PLEASE try to keep your conspiracy paranoia uner control.
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
TDMA is just as trackable as GSM. The only difference is that the identity of a GSM phone is stored on the chip... move it to new hardware and you still ID to the network the same way. They confused GSM with TDMA...
Big deal...
This 'top secret tracking" is available to consumers and companies in the UK see:.
http://followus.co.uk
http://www.fleetonline.net
Of course you need the phone owners permission.
Actually your wrong. There are different technologies for cell phone antenna's. The old ones simply relied on your cell phone saying "I am getting the best signal. Now they have "Directional Antenna Array's" (google search it), and basically it triangalets your exact location based on the signal from multiple sources, quite a bit different then "Which is the best signal". The good news: Cell phone reception went WAY up, the bad news, they can track where you are to within a few metres. Is this good or bad? Who cares, as /. pointed out already, they can track you with your cash, your cc's, your bank card, your car, etc. etc. etc..
Big Brother(x) = 1984 + 20 = 2004.
Mod +5 Drunk
If the argument is that they don't have your location down to a 10-meter square block, you might wanna guess again; by watching the way that your phone moves through the spheres of influence each tower generates it becomes mathematically trivial to triangulate your position with a precision that GPS would find envious.
That statment is vastly exaggerated. In fact triangulating the position based on signal strength gives vastly inaccurate results. Simply passing behind a wall would make you appear 20-100m further from the cell station, making triangulation hopeless at accuracy.
The most accurate method availible is called time advance. Basically the towers keep a very accurate record of your latency, and transmit their signal slightly in advance when you are far away to make sure it reaches you at the time your cellphone expects it. IIRC this value is measured in 1/10ths of a bit, and yeilds an accuracy of 500m. No methods of tracking cellphones are as good as the = 10m GPS provides.
Has a story on this as well.
-EB
Do you ever walk alone like a drifter in the dark?
The NTSB Flight 800 Page seems to have the evidence contrary to your own beliefs, and if you are really nice, and try not to sound like you are a conspiracy theorist, they may let you see the evidence for yourself, under a press pass - or "I'm a collage student writing a paper on", etc. Of course, there have been plenty of (non-government employed) people whom have already seen it, and it's probably been warehoused, but no harm in trying. What I'm saying here, is if you show me proof, I'm on your side, until then - I'm letting you know what I'm basing my beliefs on.
Kindest regards.
The executive order referenced exempts a specific group in the Navy from federal labor law, adding them to a huge list of intelligence agencies that was instituted by Exexcutive Order in 1979 by President Ford, as provided for in Section 7103(b) of Title 5 of the United States Code. What the hell does that have to do with a coverup? Are you asserting that Clinton exempted that Group and then threatened to fire them all from the Navy if they tried to form a labor union, which somehow got them to be quiet about shooting down a plane?
No one's asking you to remove your tin foil hat, but please, if you're going to provide "evidence" of a coverup, at least make some sense. If the executive order had suspended some part of the uniform laws that prohibits shooting down civilian planes, you might have something.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
You should be aware of the fact that the cell-phone itself has an ID number, EIN (Equipment Identity Number), which is stored in a database in the GSM system. Until 1999, it was rare that a GSM operator used this, but in 1999, a large db was created on Ireland. Since then, it is common to have one.
This db is used to keep track of stolen and faulty cellphones (well, terminals, really), refusing service to those classes of equipment. However, nothing stops the operator from using this information instead of the IMSI on the SIM card for tracking purposes.
Also, in modern GSM O&M software, it's a builtin feature: you tell the system that you wish tp keep track of all movements and calls of this IMSI number, or EIN. It's then logged to file.
It gets even better: you can of course record when the EIN is changed; moving the SIM card then just means another EIN will be tracked (as well as the old one...), and of course the SIM-card that is next put into the phone you just monitored might get monitored too...
It's all just a few clicks in the GUI away. Disk space is cheap. Welcome, Brave New World.
It is indeed ridiculous to even think the Navy could ever shoot down a civilian airliner.
I just bought a prepaid SIM card for 5 euro. It has a prepaid credit of 5 euro when I choose to register I get an additional prepaid credit of 10 euro.
The mobile carriers also have the abillity to track you with the unique IMEI number of your GSM. With Software it is possible to change the IMEI of your GSM. A new SIM and an IMEI change means you are anonymous again.
Dutch police routinely asks the Mobile Carriers for subscriber data from customers who where in the same area where a crime has been committed.
Padilla is getting it easy: he deserves the firing squad. That is what treason gets you.
Treason is tightly defined by the constitution. It can't exist except in time of DECLARED war (which we DON'T have at the moment.)
This is why Jane Fonda got to marry a billionaire rather than twist slowly at the end of a noose.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way