Cell Phone Tracking Reveals Users' Habits

DinkyDogg writes "'New research that makes creative use of sensitive location-tracking data from 100,000 cellphones in Europe suggests that most people can be found in one of just a few locations at any time, and that they do not generally go far from home.' More interesting than their conclusion, however, is how they got their data. 'The researchers said they used the potentially controversial data only after any information that could identify individuals had been scrambled. Even so, they wrote, people's wanderings are so subject to routine that by using the patterns of movement that emerged from the research, "we can obtain the likelihood of finding a user in any location." The researchers were able to obtain the data from a European provider of cellphone service that was obligated to collect the information. By agreement with the company, the researchers did not disclose the country where the provider operates.' Any guesses which European country requires cell phone providers to record where their customers make calls, and then allows them to give that data away without disclosing that they have done so?"

Comments

Well, there goes the myth of the EU saner than U.S

[plasmacutter]

The researchers were able to obtain the data from a European provider of cellphone service that was obligated to collect the information.

well.. im not going to feel vindicated or anything, the implications are that orwell is rolling over in his grave fast enough to generate free energy for the entire planet if you were to assemble a turbine around him.

so now they know what youre saying, or browsing on the web, and are able to watch you marked on a map as you move from one place to another.

so, when are you voting out the people who did this? at least most western nations outside the US have more choices than tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum

Odd conclusion

[thedrx]

Any guesses which European country requires cell phone providers to record where their customers make calls, and then allows them to give that data away without disclosing that they have done so?

This is not necessarily the type of data they collected.

Here in Europe, in some countries, cell phone companies offer a service that can reveal a phone's location (with the precision of a fraction of a kilometer/mile) at any given time from any place actually. It's useful for tracking your phone when it gets stolen, or spying on your spouses.

However, the owner of the phone must consent to this service. Any tracking (except maybe for aid in criminal investigations?) without the owner's consent would be very illegal. And I suspect what happened here, is the company collected data of such consenting owners.

Whether they consented to having their data used in research, well, that's another matter.

Re:Germany!

[fluch]

T Mobile? I would not be surprised.

The country is definitely Germany. You can get the publication in question from the authors homepage Then take figure 1a (as suggested in hweimer's blog) and lay it over some google map, appropriately scaled.

The data is definitely centered around Germany, but tracks reach to Austria, Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium, Poland and Cech Republic...

Re:Some countries use it to track traffic jams

[jabuzz]

The data is *VERY* useful in retrospect for tracking down criminals and terrorists after the event, and providing evidence to secure convictions. Within a couple of days of the failed 21/7 bombings in London for example telephone records had enabled them to track one of the suspects to Rome where he was promptly arrested and deported back to Britain. The whole lot where tracked down within a week.

As for anonmyization, you may be able to track individual users, but if you have scrambled the locations so they are no longer meaningful (ie. they do not represent any real coordinate system) I guess it would be pretty difficult to unpick it. That is the x,y location information is arbitrary coordinates and not the lat/long or whatever local grid is in use.

The upshot of this...

[MikeRT]

Is that it gives the government even less excuse to use no-knock raids for crimes that could easily be handled by regular police work. Take the case of Ryan Frederick, for example. The police created a situation where they ended up losing an officer after they attacked the house of a suspected drug dealer (who shows all signs so far of being completely innocent). Had the police gotten his cell phone information and mapped his daily routine, they could have discretely caught him by surprise in a public place, taken him in for questioning, and the only one going to jail would have been the police informant who lied his ass off and victimized both sides. This cell phone tracking actually gives civil libertarians an argument as to why these raids cannot possibly be justified in most cases because the police can figure out where the person is going, and ambush them when they have the advantage (something they don't have when assaulting a home).

Tin-foil hat time!

[Capitalist Piggy]

Any guesses which European country requires cell phone providers to record where their customers make calls, and then allows them to give that data away without disclosing that they have done so?"

It's funny to watch headlines attempt to troll out tin-foil hat crowd. This data seems much more useful for the development of cities than it would for evil advertisers or jack-boot government thugs who can find you through any number of measures and come get you whenever they feel like it.

Personally, I don't care much about folks knowing my routine. Wow, I go to work, come home, go shopping, go for a walk, and head off to the same few places every weekend. If data for a better mass-transit system or better roads was to result, that'd be great.

Re:Pretty sure it must be the Netherlands

[Z00L00K]

I read it as official numbers are the number of taps by "normal" police, i.e. local and FBI, probably mostly FBI.

And then we have NSA, CIA, DHS... Do you believe they will provide any kind of statistics? It's all about deniability.

And of course - there is a rule of evidence in the US, this means that illegally acquired evidence can't be used. So that in turn means that "anonymous tip" can be an acronym for wiretapping, which in turn can lead to other means of surveillance and evidence gathering. To add to this it's possible to do a setup to obtain plausible deniability. Why do you think that the US have so many different agencies that overlaps?