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Man Stalks Ex-girlfriend With GPS
grouchomarxist writes "According to this article at CNN: Police arrested a man they said tracked his ex-girlfriend's whereabouts by attaching a global positioning system to her car. Police said Gabrielyan attached a cellular phone to the woman's car on August 16 with a motion switch that turned on when the car moved, transmitting a signal each minute to a satellite. Information was then sent to a Web site that allowed Gabrielyan to monitor the woman's location." A ruling last year stated that police need a warrant to track individuals in a similar fashion.
This has also been covered briefly on Engadget and more thoroughly on BoingBoing, where links to the original article and the District Attorney's report are provided.
p
In Korea, long hair is for old people!
"transmitting a signal each minute to a satellite." WOW - this guy had a SATELLITE too? ...Why does the News continually report GPS technology as sending data TO a satellite - GPS receivers are completely passive.
Either our media/news is completely ignorant, or they assume that all their readers are completely ignorant.
The only PT Boat Journal on the web: http://www.PT171.org
Laughing On Rolling Floor.
;)
That's what happens when you read posts like this one while trying to tie up your yacht at the dock in the middle of Hurricane Frances. I'd provide a link but I can't seem to find any clips from that video on the Web. If you've seen any news in the last 36 hours, you'll know what video I'm talking about, though.
p
In Korea, long hair is for old people!
See this archive on The Smoking Gun from a man arrested for doing the same thing in 2002. I guess someone else just took the hint and tried it again 2 years later.
;)
"Meet Paul Seidler. The 42-year-old Wisconsin man was just busted on charges that he conducted a high-tech stalking campaign directed at a former girlfriend. Kenosha police allege that Seidler placed a Global Positioning System tracking device under the hood of the woman's car and began monitoring her movements."
Hey, it's a slow weekend, so I think a near-dupe of not-so-cutting-edge news is forgivable
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
Suncom has an unlimited plan for $50/mo in the south and Sprint allows unlimited internet usage for $15/mo..
-dk
This kind of stuff has been done for years by hams. Google for APRS (Automatic Position Reporting System). It's a very cool protocol whereby a GPS unit can interface with a ham radio which reports its position to internet-linked repeaters via packet every few minutes. Many hams have installed these on their cars or boats and provided a website so you can see where they are. It's a very cool technology - my friend had a unit for a long time. He finally took it out of his car and put it in his boat after his wife started calling him and telling him to slow down when she saw he was speeding on the website. :-)
Hams do this sort of thing all the time (well, broadcasting their location, rather than stalking their girlfriends.)
Here is a list of stations currently broadcasting their coordinates near my house ...
She was his ex-girlfriend so that does make it pretty different. you could say you have a right to modify your own property and track your wife and if she has nothing to hide then why should she have a problem with it? but why should she have to be put in a situation like that? its no different from government cameras in your home - if you have nothing to hide, why should you care? but why should you be put in that position? there are all sorts of conflicting rights going on here and the whole thing needs some looking at.
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Based on some of the news reports the device used was likely some Nextel GPS enabled phone, like the i58sr with the AtlasTrack 2.0 software and service provided by Networks in Motion.
Phone
Software
Service
Not connecting the phone to the car battery becomes less suprising when you realize the solution in available at the mall.
That was a ruling by the Washington State Supreme Court (the state I live in) and I remember reading about it. This ruling has no effect in the other 49 states or on the Feds. While the ruling may influence other judges, the Washington State Constitution generally has more citizen friendly rules on privacy and related matters than the U. S. Constitution or most state constitutions, which may narrow the applicability of the reasoning in this case to other judicial venues.
No electrons were harmed creating this post, though some may have been subjected to electrical and/or magnetic fields.
It's not rocket science to set it up. Some of the nicer motorolas can run a little java applet and have GPS units built into them. All they do is install the applet and point it at the right servers to update the maps. I'd find that way easier to do (and then attach it to the outside of the car) than to get into the car's electrical system and tap the power. Faster, too.
I had a sucky sig.
Wow you are definitly a /.er who never meets girls. I'm am a guy and I know damn well that women should regularly visit the gynaecologist on a regular basis once a certain age is reached, regardless of what your social life entails.
Regards,
Steve
?
Do you know what they do? You're thinking of an obstrecian (sp), who handle pregnancies. Gyns do routine check-ups and handle anything else related to feminine sexual health, which can affect a woman regardless of relationship status.
Geez, you geeks really are clueless.
From the Gentoo desktop of Luke Harman
As far as I am aware, none of these illicit "GPS tracking" devices actually use GPS to do any of their tracking. These devices have no GPS receivers and don't receive any GPS signals. But I wouldn't blame shoddy reporting in the press, because the manufacturers of these devices blatantly false advertise their products.
The reason why they're not using GPS should be pretty obvious to anyone who has ever used a GPS device. GPS devices need to be pointed towards the sky in order to read the GPS satellite signals. Without line of sight access to the sky, GPS devices just won't work.
And since law enforcement (or stalkers) really don't want the people they're tracking to know they're being tracked, GPS devices are of no use to them. Even the smallest GPS device would be pretty obvious once placed in a functional location on a car. The devices would have to be installed in plain view to be able to perform any tracking.
Since the real need is for devices that can be easily hidden in or under a car, they need to connect to a transmission system that is not line of sight. Each and of these I've researched actually use cellular phone networks to triangulate the target position. Sure, these devices might report that position correlated to the GPS coordinate map. They could just as easily report the location in longitude and latitude, but since they report it in GPS numbers, they call them "GPS trackers". In my mind, every advertisement calling these devices "GPS Trackers", are complete and total lies.
An added benefit to these devices exclusive use of the cellular networks would make it seem damn simple to protect oneself from them. A simple, cheap and easy to find cell phone jammer (available over the net from Canada or Israel) should make all of these trackers totally useless.
(For informational purposes only)
1. Buy car power adapter (12V) for that cell phone.
2. Take apart cigarette lighter box thing. Save the circuit board with the voltage regulator on it.
3. Attach wire to the positive (+) input (the part that was attached to the tip of the cigarette lighter plug). This wire will go to the battery. Maybe attach either a alligator clip or some kind of pin that can stick through any existing power wire (follow one from the battery, they commonly use red insulation for +12V).
4. Attach a short wire and an alligator clip to the negative (-) input. This can attach anywhere to the car chassis. Try to make a good connection. A good connection will make the device more reliable.
5. Hide the thing so the victem won't find it (consider painting it black).
(I am not endorsing this kind of behavior at all).
My other first post is car post.