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FCC Wants to Track Wireless
pin_gween writes "According to an article on ZDNet, the FCC wants the ability to track Wi-fi accessible phones like the ZyXel phone. The FCC's June report talked about several ways of realizing a caller's location: 'creating an "inventory" of every Wi-Fi access point in the United States, engaging in "mapping and triangulation" of those access points, compiling an "access jack inventory" for wired VoIP users, or even mandating that Net phones include GPS.'"
The war on terror has claimed another victim.
mandatory ankle bracelets they can use to track you all the time.
Can I just ask one question? WHY? Is tracking wireless really necessary?
This is just yet another attempt to monitor what we're doing and where we are. Who says that the transmitter in the phones would only transmit the location?
"(As a side note, I think it's cowardly for FCC officials to refuse to have their names mentioned, but it was a condition of attending the event.)"
Yeah, if you cant stand in front of a conference type event that you evidently called for, and have the press print you as a source, I think thats seriously pathetic.
We don't need an "overrated" so much as we need a "you completely missed the parent's point, dumbass..."
This could be used as a tool for big brother, not just 911 calls. You are as naive as a child if you don't see the dark possibilities in this. The FCC commissioners probably only see a new toy to play with in this tracking technology, and have no concept of the monster they are creating. Those who will exploit it are counting on the FCC to not "get it".
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
if the fcc is a government agency, paid by taxpayers, shouldnt we know the identity of the officials and who said what? why are they hiding if they want to know where we are? even if it is *only* for emergency responders...
always mosh clockwise
However, if they're not planning to use it as evidence, perhaps just a little fact-finding that leads them somewhere where they hope to find the real usable evidence, maybe not so much.
If you compare what they're attempting and what they're saying, you'll find two different things.
If they were just trying to locate 911 callers, this could easily be done with a caller-enabled location system. When someone dialed 911, and only when someone dialed 911, it could report the location.
But what they're looking to do is much more. They want a system to enable law enforcers to quickly locate any individual person in the country. In other words, locating 911 callers is just a rather transparent excuse.
Do you know how you can tell that the federal government just wants more power to fuck with the commoners? Look at things like this, the USA PATRIOT Act and like the and tremble. The government talks about homeland security, but the borders are still open, we're still butt buddies with Saudia Arabia (mainly on the receiving end in more ways than one), the government pushes for things that mostly target the general public and the push is always for more and more power while *gasp* not doing anything consistently pro-security with it.
This is a good example of why I vote libertarian in every election. The government doesn't need to be able to track cell phones because it already has the powers it needs to control the influx of terrorists: deportation, border security and wire-tapping regular conversations. If our government cared less about not offending people and more about really using its basic powers first to fight major crime and terrorism, we wouldn't be wasting our time reading about this stuff.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
This story makes the tin-foil hats cry out for tin-foil hats, wow.
Firstly: have each ap have a programmable text location in case the handset dialer dials e911. Make it part of the setup app that you should fill this address in if you want voip to work properly, but can be disabled if the owner overrides it.
Second: This is so over-the-top paranoid gay, why not say all ip-addresses have to have full gps location tags with each packet (which is close to what this means). "Hey user_bob01, wave at the sky, you're on keyhole camera!". I understand there is a risk of criminal use, but add a little control to the server side so if a number is being used it can be tracked to it's ip and you can guess where that is from the geoip tables. This shouldn't happen often enough for this to be regulated.
Man the FCC is going psycho lately, wtf? Do I have to worry that my next cellphone will rfid tag my balls when i put it in my pocket?
The first rule of USENET is you do not talk about USENET.
If the answer to the first question is 'no', the next question is "Is anyone getting sick of the lies being told by our governments as a matter of routine?"
Except it's a false dichotomy.
They want you to believe they need full-time, universal access to your location in order to locate you when you dial 911.
That's obviously false. They only need your location to be reported when you dial 911.
The way it should work:
1) your phone is able to determine its current location at any time
2) if you dial 911, your phone sends along its current location information
It's that simple. The idea that it's a choice between safety and freedom is a lie, and a pretty barefaced one at that.
...for a trade off of a couple bucks:
"For one thing, what if someone doesn't want 911 service on his or her VoIP phone? I already have a landline and a cell phone at home, and I might add a VoIP phone to the mix. I don't need 911 service and don't wish to pay higher prices for a GPS receiver or location-identifying hardware that would be included in it. Mandating 911 service would amount to a tax on VoIP customers."
I'll start out by saying I think the above reason is really kinda weak. There are other problems to be hashed out, but I'm just looking at this for the moment.
If anyone has read "This is Burning Man" by Brian Doherty, this will fall similarlly in line (its near the end of the book):
America seems to have grown up in an environment that gives the false illusion that they are safe. Child safety locks on cars and meds, etc. While there are a batch of people (and I'll personally go out on a limb and say over half as I'm an optimist at times) who can generally figure out whats safe and what isn't. There is still a large contingency (especially at large festivals such as Burning Man or Bonnaroo) who will push that limits to the point where they could/do die from their own actions. These people exist in society as we know it, and it isnt until they are in a dangerious situation that they dont realize it or choose to ignore it, and harm themselves.
Now, with that in mind, you and I both know, that there will be someone, somewhere, who does something insanely stupid (like making meth in a hillbilly home methlab), will need to call 911, and cant cause they were too cheap to get a real phone. Now, personally, i'm kinda ok with standing back and saying "well, Darwin was right after all", but the general public, in all of their emotional-based reactions and overzealous desire for safety , probably wont bode well with that***, and a nasty mess will ensue in the media and lots of other things. So, while there are other issues to be hashed out about who has access to what databases, I can understand why, from a fundimental level of ensuring access to emergency services, it (IMHO) should be required.
*** Steven Levett made an interesting point in Freakonomics: People dont have fear/outrage for the more probable, but very distant disasters, such as heart disease that can kill them, but instead focus their energy and fear/outrage on things that are very miniscule, such as terrorism attacks.
We don't need an "overrated" so much as we need a "you completely missed the parent's point, dumbass..."
The U.S. government engages in more surveillance than any other country in the history of the world. The U.S. government spends more on surveillance than any country in the history of the world, and U.S. taxpayers are not allowed to know true total amount.
The departments of the U.S. government such as the CIA and NSA and FBI function as a world-wide secret police. Sure, they have openly acknowledged purposes, but much of what they do and how they do it is hidden from U.S. citizens. There are departments of the U.S. government that do secret police work whose names are even secret. United States taxpayers are expected to pay, and vote, and they are expected to accept that they won't have the full facts of the activities of their government. United States citizens are not allowed to know enough to base their vote on the facts.
Historically, U.S. government surveillance has had some political or economic benefit for those who wanted the surveillance.
--
If you support dishonesty and violence, don't say you are Christian.
If you want to be located when you call 911, maintain a land-line. Where is the goddamn rocket science here, people?
You know what? If you don't have a land-line and you have to call 911 and can't speak...well, maybe you die. It happens. Sucks, but it happens. I hate this society...we've become obsessed with throwing huge wads of cash, effort, and legislation at the stupidest problems. 700,000 people die each year of heart disease; zero people a year die from terrorism. We spend billions on one, not on the other...and when Little Timmy dies because he choked on a marble 'cause mommy wasn't watching him, we get "Timmy's Law" which solves a Darwinism problem.
Please help metamoderate.
Well, fuck the FCC. They don't have that power.
Without SSID broadcast, it wouldn't even necessarily be possible to discover them all.
:) Just spread some FUD about terrorists using "hidden wireless networks" to spread evil, then push through an unenforceable regulation about requiring the broadcast of your SSID.
;)
The answer is simple young padawan.
Taking off my tinfoil hat for a moment, the goal isn't really to catalog all wifi devices. Its more about justifying your budget and maintaining the image of staying with the times and keeping the pressure on said terroists.
Just my 2 cents. Please don't flame me, it takes time to grow back eyelashes (I know this)
"Build something idiot proof, and someone will build a better idiot" - Samuel Clemens
My cell phone (a Samsung A660), like many others, has some sort of location-broadcast feature (GPS, probably?) built-in. By default it is on.
Even when it is off, 911 operators can determine your position. Good; there's no reason they shouldn't be able to - it's for safety's sake.
When it is turned on, this message is shown: "Sprint PCS and those parties you have given permission to will now be able to retrieve your location from the network."
What qualifies as permission given? Was there some small text in the service contract giving permission to some other party?
(fyi, I wouldn't know as I'm on a family plan and my parents signed the service contract.)
You are modded as funny and this would have been a great troll. But sadly, I think you are putting forth this argument in earnest. It is certainly an argument that is out there and is why many cities around the world have started putting cameras everywhere.
Where are all these terrorists? Can you show me convictions in a US court? I'd love to hear about some. And how does this capability make the US safer?
I'm sure quite a few of the 2 million people currently being held in US prisons thought the same thing. Perhaps you cannot imagine that there might be corrupt cops or the justice system might favor the white and rich over the colored and poor. The whole premise of this comment falls apart the moment you can no longer trust the justice system - and you are a fool if you trust ours.
The issue is not the nanny state. The issue is about a police state. It is why we have the Fourth Amendment:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
To recap, a system the FCC proposes violates the right of citizens to be secure from unreasonable searches. It is not based on probable cause and it is not particular as to what is being searched and why. In other words, it is unconstitutional. It is really that simple.
Well, you just proved their point. Anytime Bush is disparaged then the person doing it is unamerican.. go fuck yourself. Both Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson would flay the skin from your bones were they alive today to hear your kind of talk. They didn't want a country of blind obedience or they wouldn't have revolted against England's King George.. so we have the right to decent against ours. Asshole.
Tell me what you believe...I'll tell you what you should see.
Given any reasonable timeframe, the median number of Americans who die every year from terrorism is zero. (Granted, median doesn't give any weight to the number of people who died in a specific year, but a few thousand isn't much compared to just about any other cause of death and misery you're likely to see on the news.)
.50 Desert Eagles), those dehumanizing "most wanted" decks of cards, our very weak dollar, etc. etc.
I do not know how much we spend on heart disease research, but I highly doubt that it's anywhere near the cost of the Afganistan war, the Iraq war, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, extra security at the airport, time that the politicians spend debating inane but ostensibly terrorist-related issues, time and money our police officers spend on anti-terrorism training and security (I live in a backwater town in Florida that most Floridians have never heard of, and last Easter we had an entire freaking army of cops out to make sure the terrorists weren't going to steal our Easter eggs. I'm serious, they barricaded off a five block area and were at least a dozen of them walking through the crowd wearing unusually large sidearms... I coulda sworn they were
The two wars alone probably cost more than we spend on heart disease in a decade. It sucks that a few thousand people died back in 2001, and no one is saying that nothing should be done. But what we should do should be PROPORTIONAL to the threat, and terrorists just aren't that big a threat. Even the small threat they do pose is practically impossible to eliminate, at least by our current measures. What the hell is all this bullshit about GPS and Total Information Awareness and ID cards? None of that will ever stop a terrorists. Many (most?) of the hijackers were here legally. The only truly effective methods of stopping terrorism (refusing all immigration from hardline Muslim theocrasies and/or telling Israel that they're on their own) never seem to be brought up.
All we ever get is THIS... programs and technologies that are piss-poor at stopping terrorism, but awesome at tracking and controlling American citizens.
And awesome at wasting money too. Throw those billions at heart disease, and you save millions of lives every year around the globe. That's a hellofalot more important than pissing off the Sunnis and making sure Osama doesn't try to blow up our Easter Eggs.
C'mon, folks, I can't believe that if someone really wanted to mis-direct the government as to their physical location while using a computer-controlled phone, they wouldn't be able to fake the GPS info going out.
The REAL bad guys won't be caught with this, only the poor slobs who make mistakes...
They are competent enough to kill masses of people, whever they want to, about anyplace they want to, including the US if they feel like it.. They come up with laser guided missiles that work. they have satellites that work. they got planes tanks and various other whizzbangs that work. they got jails all over and a few million people locked up at any given time. They are competent enough to run multiple torture camps and get away with it. They can call anyone a terrorist and snatch them away, and don't have to tell anyone that it happened. You have no idea how many people have been disappeared, hardly no one does because so many people-disappear! Who's to know?? They *were* competent enough to whack JFK and get away with it. They are competent enough to manipulate the stock market for high level globalists and get away with it. They are competent enough to make a killing off the oil market and divert public opinion that it's all the ay-rabs fault that the prices are high. (hint: ay-rabs and opec DON'T make the bulk of the money in the oil market, it's whiteguys in suits in major western nations that do. They are competent enough to buffalo the entire US population into putting up with random roadblocks, which is as close to a classic police state action as you will see right before the major pogroms start (hint 2: check history books). They are competent enough to make everyone just eat blackbox voting and like it. They are competent enough to pull off a new reichstagg fire event and cover it up with a ton of lies.
In short, they are competent enough to mandate whatever they WANT and make it stick and you and the next 280 million "consumers" ain't gonna say or do boo about it.
That's how competent they are. Sometimes they screw up, but it really doesn't matter, most of the time they are so big and powerful just getting "close enough" is good enough for their purposes. Anything else that happens is acceptable collateral damage and what they consider a cost of doing geopolitical and economic "business".
This is especially bizarre given they are calling for universal tracking -- they want to know where we are and who we are but they won't even let us know who they are, yet they speak in the name of the public! This isn't just ironic; it's downright Kafkaesque.
Thats right. Now the spyware is going into the hardware. Now they can track our location. Which means they'll be able to track traffic patterns, congestion, lifestyles, spending habits, frequent and popular areas, demographics, studies, and more.
It will be a massive mining operation of information. For sale, for study, for research... who the hell cares. Nothing good can come from it.
People won't stop using cell phones because the technology is put in them to track. Most people are ignorant of the devices they use every day. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence people will even deny so they can continue to be in complete convenience without hassle.
Never underestimate the laziness of the populus.
Those two lines alone are a dead giveaway. Anyone intelligent enough to actually form a coherent, properly spelled rant is also intelligent enough not to say something so blatantly stupid and self-contradictory. Thus, we know he's not being serious, and is really against such gross invasions of privacy.
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." - Attributed to Benjamin Franklin
I8-D
In America it's not so much Goebbel's "Big Lie" that sways the crowds, but Bush's "Dumb Lie". The stupider the lie, the more Americans want to hear it repeated.