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.'"

Comments

EVERY access point?

[ArbitraryConstant]

They want a list of EVERY access point?

I can't even imagine the immensity of that task. There must be millions of APs in the US, and the list would change on a day-to-day basis.

Without SSID broadcast, it wouldn't even necessarily be possible to discover them all.

Triangulation is impossible

[Anonymous Coward]

The article states that there will occur a "mapping and triangulation" of the access points. Triangulation may have worked to sniff out the spies in World War II, but nowadays it's ineffective for one simple reason: the number of branches to and from each node is too high.

I've worked (someone with a job on /.!) with WiFi access points for some time, and we constantly came across this hurdle. It's interesting that as technology develops, the capacity of both surveillance and anonymity increases.

Food for thought.

I want my GPS!

[d3ac0n]

I dunno about you, but I WANT my phone to have GPS. Simply so they can locate me if I call 911 on my wireless phone. I think that would be the most elegant and potentially useful idea. Registering all Wi-Fi access points is WAY too intrusive and complicated. Simply making wi-fi phone providers insert an inexpensive GPS locator into the phone makes much more sense, and the phone makers can turn it into a feature! (Wardriving with your Phone! W00T!)

Lets just hope they go for GPS

[hotdrop]

Hopefuly they will just opt for gps and then manufacturers will include a "debug mode" like on almost every dvd player to turn it off. If theres no debug code cutting a few leads and bridging some wires will do the trick for extra anonimity :) Rember if they think they can track you but they cant its even better then if they cant track you at all.

milieu control

[Anonymous Coward]

The government wants to be able to control information. Sure, they are clueless as to how impossible that is, but that also means that they will try. It could easily kill lots of innovative businesses.. Perhaps thats the idea, the current GOP-led government is clearly obsessed with suppressing competition for their big corporate donors. The Dems are not angels, either..

Yes, Ultimately, it will mean that many businesses are started elsewhere, not in the US, but isn't that the case already?

The power elite cares much more about maintaining their hold on power than our 'national' future.. (nations are a quaint concept, but one which is useful in divving up the rights to you) Don't see what I mean?

Look at education.. they are clearly trying to defund the public education system (whats the point of training people for jobs that will be elsewhere anyway..public education was for training workers for industry, and without industry, it serves no purpose..prisons are more like where we are going..or 'recycling' like Leu's fate in George Lucas's early film, THX-1138.. America is being looted.. while it still has wealth..

'Milieu control' is what information blockades like China's are used for, filtering out information that causes 'cognitive dissonance'.. (Festingers' now-proven theory, also worth looking up)

Milieu control: its also a hallmark of cults and totalitarian regimes.. look it up..

Question on how???

[Volvogga]

I did RTFA, but I didn't feel like searching through a PDF for the answer to my question. How do they plan on identifying someone's location in one of these 911 incidents that they are so sure will happen?

To triangulate a broadcast location, don't you need at least 3 reciever stations in the immediate area?

If so, wouldn't that mean that you would already be in a decently populated area (we are taling about calling 911 in public, right?) where someone nearby should be able to find a land line while you are bleeding in the street?

Sounds like maybe 911 shouldn't be available with these phones, or that it should be a known risk in buying one that it may contribute to your death when operators have no idea where you are.

Re:When words and actions conflict...

[SpaceLifeForm]

Exactly.

Folks, if you didn't see this coming, you haven't been paying attention.

Re:Ye gods

[onecaribou]

Reminds me of a quote I read recently...

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

James Madison

The Bush administration makes me feel like I'm stumbling through a bad dream.

- E -

Japan-A-Madness
  http://jmad.blogspot.com/

This may not be so bad. But read on.

[Animats]

This isn't quite as bad as it sounds. First, the basic requirement is that VoIP services which interconnect to the wireline network must forward 911 calls into the wireline 911 network, along with enough caller location data to route the call. This only applies to 911 calls. The caller location data is just "the original location at which service was provided". If the system allows the caller to move around, the end user must have the option to update their location information. But, as yet, the VoIP service is not required to track their users.

Automatic routing of cellular 911 calls was introduced because manual routing worked very badly. California used to route all 911 calls from cell phones to the California Highway Patrol. As cell phones became more common, CHP dispatch was overwhelmed. By 2002, the CHP was getting over 8 million calls a year, most of which didn't involve freeway incidents, which is most of what the CHP handles. Call hold times on 911 were reaching 10 minutes during peak periods. The CHP was running a huge call center, which basically asked where callers were and forwarded their calls to some local 911 dispatch center.

That's the background for cellular 911. It's convenient that the dispatcher gets the location of the caller, but the real benefit is that the call gets sent to the right dispatcher.

If 911 routing isn't automated for VoIP, where should the calls go? Some call center in Bangalore? If the VoIP provider doesn't have some clue where the caller is, that's about all they can do.

There's worse stuff than this going on. The extension of the "Commmunications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act" rules to VoIP is much more of a Big Brother thing. If you aren't aware of how this works, the basic concept is that wiretapping has been built into the phone system, and wiretaps are now delivered to law enforcement over T1 lines. The US wiretapping system is run by Verisign. That's being extended to VoIP.

Re:When words and actions conflict...

[phoenix321]

This doesn't matter much, because to get somewhere indoords, you presumably travel through the outdoors. ;)

So if you walk from A to B, "they" will know your path from leaving the door on A until entering the door on B. Not hard to figure out where you are if "they" don't get a signal while you're indoors somewhere.

Noticed how the conspirationalist "they" becomes more and more fitting to the matter at hand? Imagine I'd left off the apostrophes and just wrote they and everyone reading would know what I mean. How long until that time? As a citizen of the former communist East Germany, I tell you: "they" was commonplace there. "They" is just what people from inside the country call what outsiders would name "the regime". And as the actions of various US branches of authority converge, it certainly will be called "the regime" from the outside not too far from now.

The change of power in the information age

[Simonetta]

It's an idea that is taking a long, long time become developed and it is very slowly coming into clarity among the power elite. The idea that the more that you use technology to focus the systematic application of violence for the control of society, the less of this violence can be used against those who create the technology.

    The people who develop and engineer technology that is used to direct violence (directed violence being the police, the military, and the mafia, as opposed to random criminal acts) can ensure that this violence is never directed against themselves by building safeguards into the technology that prevents it from being used against those of the technology 'guild'. Technologists need to develop a new consciousness that transcends nationalism and corporatism and focuses on the idea that we should put the needs of the global tech community above the needs of the various governments, corporations, and religions.

    High tech terrorism exists because the technicians are willing to give a higher loyalty to the religious fanatics who order other technical people to be randomly killed than they do to technical people that they are killing. This is wrong. We should protect ourselves first. Since we design and build the technology, we should ensure that the technology is not used against us. We should start doing this by refusing to use high technology against other members of the global tech community regardless of their nationality, religion, or corporate affiliation.

    It's time for a very quiet, very discrete shift in loyalty in the global tech community. We need to develop the deep idea that our primary allegiance is to our own people, and our secondary allegiance is to God, country, and corporation.

    Generals, CEOs, mullahs, and presidents can never make world peace or progress. They simply have too much gain from constant endless wasteful war. But since the modern means of directing violence is increasing based on technology, we, the designers and builders of this technology, have more control over the systematic application of violence than the nominal rulers of society.

    Why should we care if the government, the police, the fascist mullahs, or the mafia is using technology against the people? Just as long as they are not using it against our people.

    This meme is one of the primal ideas of the new Information age that is developing out of the excesses and breakdowns of the Nation-State Age.

Re:The change of power in the information age

[iggymanz]

"our people"? "My people" include my friends, family, neighbors, community. If the ONLY people you care about happen to be those who choose to be interested in electric gadgets or telecom or applied engineering, you don't have a healthy mindset. There are hundreds of other human endeavors just as worthy. There are billions of human beings just as worthy of care and concern There are actually politicians and policemen and even CEO who are NOT evil. Thinking that the solution to world problems will be solved by a bunch of geeks engaging The System in some kind of technowar is really just planning another kind of terrorism that will disrupt & harm good people's lives. Instead, how about spreading the word to all kinds of people on how there are alternatives to how we do things now, that there are long term consequences to our actions now, and that the power to vote could be used to quickly change the direction we're going?

Re:When words and actions conflict...

[Bimo_Dude]

it certainly will be called "the regime" from the outside not too far from now.

From what I understand from friends in Eastern Europe (former Soviet controlled states), this is already happening. Even on their local television stations, "they" are referred to as the "Bush regime." Also, the people in these former communist countries swear up and down that Bush and his crew are communist (they explained to me that they mean this in the Stalinist fashion, not Marxism).