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Man Stalks Ex-girlfriend With GPS

Posted by michael on from the oh-look-it's-you-again dept.

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.

5 of 415 comments (clear)

  1. Nice device ... by TheGavster · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It actually sounds like a neat project, just a sketchy application. I wonder if its legal to attach one to, say, your child's car. Perhaps make the sensor a bit less sensitive, so it only broadcasts a signal after an impact-type shock.

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  2. Changing the battery? by Qender · · Score: 4, Interesting

    All this and he couldn't figure out how to hook the thing up to the car battery?

  3. How is this different that widespread surveillance by smiff · · Score: 5, Interesting
    For all of you people who say it's okay to put surveillance cameras on public streets, RFID tags on store merchandise, RFID readers on store doorways, and RFID toll-pass systems on highways. The general argument is that no one has a reasonable expectation of privacy in public.

    Yet it is illegal for a private citizen to follow someone in public. What is with the double standard?

  4. Re:WOW - this guy had a SATELLITE too? by penguinoid · · Score: 4, Interesting

    GPS receivers are completely passive

    I'll explain that better for everyone's benefit. Since GPS was a millitary technology, it was designed to allow you to find your position without yelling "I am here" to all your enemies. Now there is a difference between GPS tracking and cell phone tracking. Cell phones constantly communicate with the towers, which can triangulate and thus find the location of the cell phone, in this case it is the towers that are more passive (you could set up three recievers and track cell phones without sending out signals).

    So, that is why GPS is cool, and cell phone GPS-wannabe isn't.

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  5. That'd be useful for my ex-wife... by rthille · · Score: 4, Interesting


    But so I could _NOT_ run into her.

    I kept running into her with my new girlfriend (obtained after the breakup with the wife). It was awkward, to say the least...

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