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.

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.

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: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.