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Legal Battles Over Cellphone Tracking
stupefaction writes "The New York Times reports on recent successful court challenges to police use of cellphone tracking information in the course of an investigation. From the article: 'In the last four months, three federal judges have denied prosecutors the right to get cellphone tracking information from wireless companies without first showing "probable cause" to believe that a crime has been or is being committed. That is the same standard applied to requests for search warrants. [...] Cellular operators like Verizon Wireless and Cingular Wireless know, within about 300 yards, the location of their subscribers whenever a phone is turned on.'"
You know, when the police don't need warrents for searches your country is called a police state. On a related note, nice to see the patriot[sic] act extended for another four years.
Shh.
This is something slightly different. All networks can triangulate signals to a degree - based on the antenna array that most networks use, signal strength, location of transmitter etc they don't need the phone to support anything.
The E911 service is, I believe, an implementation of AGPS where the phone assists in tracking to get an even closer match.
Matt Thompson - Actuality - Insert product here.
'Cellular operators like Verizon Wireless and Cingular Wireless know, within about 300 yards, the location of their subscribers whenever a phone is turned on.'
They may be able to track the location of the telephone, or the SIM card,/b> but not the subscriber.
A different thing alltogether - if you think about it. This cannot be used to locate a suspect on a crime scene, only her phone.
"If I'm on an investigation and I need to know where somebody is located who might be committing a crime . . ."
I don't see what everyone's worried about. They just want to track anyone who might be commiting a crime.