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Indian Government To Track Locations of All Cell Phone Users

asto21 writes with this excerpt from The Indian Express: "As per amendments made to operators' licences, beginning May 31, operators would have to provide the Department of Telecommunications real-time details of users' locations in latitudes and longitudes. Documents obtained by The Indian Express show that details shall initially be provided for mobile numbers specified by the government. Within three years, service providers will have to provide information on locations of all users. The information will have some margin of error at first. But by 2013, at least 60 per cent of the calls in urban areas would have to be accurately tracked when made 100 metres away from the nearest cell tower. By 2014, the government will seek to increase the proportion to 75 per cent in cities and 50 per cent in suburban and rural areas."

151 comments

  1. Great by mr1911 · · Score: 4, Funny

    No doubt this is for the good of the citizens. I hope the US follows suit soon.

    /sarcasm

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    1. Re:Great by Stizark · · Score: 1

      Yeah. When it does happen in the US, I'd have a perfect reason to finally rid myself of this cell phone addiction.

      /lookatthebrightside

    2. Re:Great by bobamu · · Score: 1

      I'd be seriously amazed if they aren't already doing this.

    3. Re:Great by CimmerianX · · Score: 1

      Honestly, for the first 30 years of my life there was no such thing as a cell phone. Why can't I live without it now?

      I swear of the US does this mandatory tracking, this will make us all go back to beepers circa 1992.

    4. Re:Great by mitgib · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I'd be seriously amazed if they aren't already doing this.

      I tend to agree, and while shocking about India, it is also refreshing they are being upfront about it.

      --
      Being a spelling & grammar Nazi is a sign you do not poses the intelligence to contribute to the conversation
    5. Re:Great by GameboyRMH · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Oh please the US has been doing this for a long time, along with most first-world countries. In the US there is even a handy web interface for the cops to use whenever they please:

      http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/12/gps-data

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
    6. Re:Great by Stizark · · Score: 2

      For the first 19 years, here.

      I guess I'll have to buy a real doorstop, instead of relegating the most recent yellowbook that honor. With the money I'd save, I could afford one of those really fancy 'stops.

    7. Re:Great by chrb · · Score: 5, Informative

      Indeed. The NSA refuses to answer as to whether it is tracking cell phone locations. NSA Lawyer Questioned Over Cellphone Location Tracking of Americans Senators Ask Spy Chief: Are You Tracking Us Through Our iPhones?

    8. Re:Great by PPH · · Score: 3, Funny

      No cell phone? You must be a terrorist.

      In fact, if you aren't buying the latest consumer gadget, we will have to sent you to a retraining center.

      --
      Have gnu, will travel.
    9. Re:Great by Paracelcus · · Score: 1

      I only rarely use my cell phone & when it's in it's house (otterbox 1000 lined with a conductive coating) NO signals are sent or received.

      --
      I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
    10. Re:Great by MysteriousPreacher · · Score: 1

      It depends on how accessible this information is, and how accountable government officials would be? I'm fine with such requests, made via a court order or under pretty strictly defined emergency situations, so long as these requests are made a matter of public record. Not necessarily a big list showing who's been tracked - stats, broken down to agency and geographical area will do. If disclosing that a request had been made would harm an ongoing investigation, then set a confidentiality period measured in weeks or months - not years. I want to be able to contact a regulator, who will within months of a tracking request, be able to tell me when I was tracked and give me contact details if I wish to raise it with the agency that requested the track. Such access, like a search warrant for a property, should not be used for fishing.

      It really depends on how India plans to address these issues. I'd sure be happy to have my phone tracked if I'd collapsed somewhere, and no-one knew where the hell I was, but only if I have visibility of this. What I don't want is for some fucker to request my location, on a whim. If aforementioned fucker makes a habit of unnecessary requests then I want to know that they'll be suitably punished, and such a thing is only possible with transparency.

      Given the Indian

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      -- Using the preview button since 2005
    11. Re:Great by jellomizer · · Score: 1

      Why not be upfront about it?
      I mean if you are going to invest millions of dollars into something like this, then you keep it secret to the public that means you are going to spend even more money to keep it under wraps. Only to have to make it public after you arrest a few people from it, because you need to use it as evidence, thus will get out publicly.

      The bigger the conspiracy the harder it will be to kept under wraps, I mean if you need to hire hundreds or thousand people to keep up an infrastructure of a top secrete organization the bigger it is and the longer it will take the harder and more expensive it will become.

      --
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    12. Re:Great by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you read your own article, they specifically say that aside from tracking locations from which emergency 911 calls are made, finding missing children and with the express permission of the phone's owner. A court order is required to have access and the court order is good for 60 days during which the officers can ping for that specific phone's location once every 3 minutes. Which accounts for the high number of pings.

      Working as intended. No tinfoil hat required.

    13. Re:Great by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We have had this for years - it's called 911 service provider compliance (technically E911 compliance for wireless providers).

      Of course, I am sure you think the whole 911 call system is a plot by the illuninati for a one world government run by aliens at the NSA.

      Evidently I am in the /. minority thinking that the ability to use 911 in an emergency and have *GASP* "Big Brother" locate me (e.g., an ambulance dispatched by THE GOVERNMENT) is good thing.

    14. Re:Great by JTsyo · · Score: 1

      Doesn't that kill you batteries? Best turn it off in that box.

    15. Re:Great by Rasperin · · Score: 2

      They know where you live, fairly to safe if it doesn't have a signal a good place to check for you would be home. They want to know where you are going, who you are meeting with, etc. The best part is, doing something like that (and if they did track all records) you lose an alibi. "Sir person x, who we know you had a disagreement with, was murdered between the hours of 1am and 2am, being that you claim to be home but your phone was shut off just prior to the murder, I think we can safely assume you are guilty as the circumstantial evidence is clear. Would you like to accept our plea bargain of 15 years in jail, or we could come after you for multiple life sentences".

      They present something like to a jury and show a motive (even a strawman motive) and good luck, welcome to our system. They want you in prison if you don't conform with everyone else. Trust me on this, I've seen people convicted and sent to 10+ years (because they thought there was no way they would lose) in jail for things they truly didn't do. Either a, at the wrong place at the wrong time or b, no alibi and motive was there (however they were in bed, but young children don't count as an alibi).

      They claim "innocent till proven guilty" but the fact is, they have to arrest someone, innocent or not. If they can't find the real guy, or the real guy is too wealthly, integral, important, they don't think it would be an easy conviction; they will do what it takes to find someone with motive, no alibi (or wrong place wrong time), that doesn't fit in the aforementioned categories. It's a fucking joke and everyone knows this, people may cry out, but then the DA goes on a smear campaign to make this person look evil (the news doesn't help) and guilty as sin. It's the truth of the fact and I had to spend 8 years without my mother as a young child because of it. But anyone who has had to actually deal with the system really knows, I'm not just jaded.

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    16. Re:Great by Onymous+Coward · · Score: 1

      Procedural and even legal barriers to spying on citizens are not very effective.

      https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_controversy

    17. Re:Great by crakbone · · Score: 1

      Unless of course its the Apollo space missions. Then you can keep that crap under wraps for over 40 years. /joke

    18. Re:Great by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      this is the country where - just last week IIRC - the CIA stated ( in relation to releasing historical documents etc / about the Bay of Pigs I believe )
      "releasing these FACTS and DOCUMENTS will only confuse people" - only in the US could the FACTS - confuse people!! this is, as we all know, the society which has been subjected to 60 odd years of complete disinformation from their governemnt in - EVERYTHING!! from Roswell and even before, the facts are starting to trickle out, and only after you overthrow these criminals will the people actually understand the level of the Crimes which have been commited against us all, and more specifically the USians in general. Facts confusing - and they got away with saying it, and have not been impeached etc!!

    19. Re:Great by mr1911 · · Score: 1

      Evidently I am in the /. minority thinking that the ability to use 911 in an emergency and have *GASP* "Big Brother" locate me (e.g., an ambulance dispatched by THE GOVERNMENT) is good thing.

      OK, I'll bite.
      1. Your ambulance is not dispatched by the Federal government. There is a big difference between your local sheriff knowing where you cell phone is to dispatch fire/police/medical services than three letter government agencies monitoring your whereabouts.
      2. Having the ability to pinpoint any given cell phone when requested by the user while not actively monitoring movement or storing history is significantly different than knowing your location and movement with indefinite history and record keeping.

      It is OK if you are willing to accept intrusion and control in the name of safety. However, there is no reason to have such a negative reaction to those that prefer to hold our government overlords at arms length and within the reins of the Constitution.

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    20. Re:Great by Paracelcus · · Score: 0

      Turning it off does not turn off the GPS feature, you have to remove the battery for that.

      --
      I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
    21. Re:Great by Paracelcus · · Score: 1

      Sorry man, I believe you, but the real problem with GPS is that it reports where you've been as well as where you are!
      And facts don't matter, evidence doesn't matter, truth doesn't matter, all that matters is money.

      --
      I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
    22. Re:Great by Catbeller · · Score: 1

      I'd be careful - they label you crazy out here if you state the obvious truth.

    23. Re:Great by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >>I'd be seriously amazed if they aren't already doing this.

      >I tend to agree, and while shocking about India, it is also refreshing they are being upfront about it.

      My sentiments, precisely.

    24. Re:Great by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      We should take high technological civilization away from them. Destroy their military, power, communications, transportation and shipping infrastructure including roads, wall them off from the rest of the world with autonomous mines, air interdiction systems. Continuously monitor and destroy any attempt at achieving anything that appears to be modern technology.

      Do this with an iron will for 50 years and then see if they like censorship.

    25. Re:Great by pev · · Score: 1

      Do you not mean re-education centre?

  2. So many people by RazzleFrog · · Score: 3, Informative

    Having been to India narrowing a persons location to within 100 meters still could mean thousands of people. It's like when they tracked the long island serial killer when he was calling a victim's sister from Times Square. They had little chance of picking out the guy from the hundreds of other people there.

    1. Re:So many people by Anne_Nonymous · · Score: 5, Funny

      >> within 100 meters still could mean thousands of people

      All of them brightly adorned and doing a complexly choreographed, extended dance sequence.

    2. Re:So many people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >>extended dance sequence.
      Bombay badonkadonks in action!

    3. Re:So many people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It is only within 100 meters of accuracy if they are not using the GPS and are using cell tower triangulation which even then is only that bad when you are only in range of 3 towers and in highly populated areas you have more towers allowing for even greater accuracy with a worst case scenario of 300 meters under the worst conditions that allow it.

      If they turned on GPS tracking, they are accurate to within about 20 feet using consumer grade GPS. Garmin is within 3 meters, military grade is accurate to within about 3 feet.

    4. Re:So many people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And singing! Don't forget the singing.

    5. Re:So many people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The magic 100 meters number is just so that they can't put location tracking within the realm of a drone strike, duh. That's the real goal.

      But seriously, in terms of strategy and tactics, 100 meters still works fine for apprehension and "less-lethal" countermeasures. Consider that once authorities are within a 100 yard radius, they can erect police barricades and stampede people any which way they want, with mounted police, tear gas and what have you. They an electronic surveillance team can watch the signal move in real time, and poof! Presto! You have exerted tyrannical authority over your subjects. And then the UN says "shame! shame!" and all the diplomats and warlords call it a day, and go home and sleep like babies.

    6. Re:So many people by Catbeller · · Score: 1

      If only we had some sort of computing device that could analyze and winnow down the movements of hundreds of people at a time, esp. since we know where each started and each ends in a time period... but that's just crazy talk. Tin foil underwear nonsense, no one could pull that off.

    7. Re:So many people by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      Having been to India narrowing a persons location to within 100 meters still could mean thousands of people.

      Especially if they're on a train.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    8. Re:So many people by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, the traffic management's amazing...

  3. Just implant a chip already. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That way, it can't be turned off...

  4. data by Poeli · · Score: 4, Interesting

    With 1B inhabitants, that's a hell of a lot of data to store. Privacy issue aside, I really wonder if there're not drowning themselfs in data...

    1. Re:data by DamageLabs · · Score: 1

      Easy to store, even easier to search. Location data compresses nicely when you have lots of it.

    2. Re:data by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, they are The GOVERNMENT.

    3. Re:data by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is about real-time information. There is no need to store it.

    4. Re:data by CimmerianX · · Score: 1

      But storing it provides historical and statistical info. Companies pay big money for access to data like that. Universities doing 'studies' also want that data. Once the tracking is in place, it would be foolish to think the cell provider is keeping historicals for future sales.

    5. Re:data by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      It's okay, Oracle claims MySql is shmegazillion times faster now.

  5. What will happen? by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Seems pretty obvious to me that the biggest result will be that people who are actual criminals will take pains to either turn off their cell phones, use stolen phones or just go without any time they are doing something criminal.

    Meanwhile all the regular people are now even more at risk of the government or anyone else with access to this information like ex-boyfriends at the telco using this information against them.

    --
    When information is power, privacy is freedom.
    1. Re:What will happen? by rsmith84 · · Score: 1

      Back to the days of having rats physically deliver hand written sentiments that are then eaten or burned.

    2. Re:What will happen? by gstoddart · · Score: 2

      Back to the days of having rats physically deliver hand written sentiments that are then eaten or burned.

      Ewww ... the rats, or the messages?

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    3. Re:What will happen? by CohibaVancouver · · Score: 1

      Seems pretty obvious to me that the biggest result will be that people who are actual criminals will take pains to either turn off their cell phones, use stolen phones or just go without any time they are doing something criminal.

      You have forgotten that the vast majority of criminals are utter and complete morons. I have a friend who is a RCMP officer and you'd be amazed with his stories of criminal idiots.

    4. Re:What will happen? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 1

      I'm assuming that, in addition to the general spirit of gung-ho surveillance zeal, they are operating under the wishful assumption that this will give them the capability to act more competently in the case of something like the Mumbai attacks in 2008, which were coordinated in large party by cellphone...

    5. Re:What will happen? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Seems pretty obvious to me that the biggest result will be that people who are actual criminals will take pains to either turn off their cell phones, use stolen phones or just go without any time they are doing something criminal.

      Meanwhile all the regular people are now even more at risk of the government or anyone else with access to this information like ex-boyfriends at the telco using this information against them.

      That sounds correct, it will not prevent actual criminals from committing a crime, so what other gain would a government have from mass-surveillance?

      Germany sometimes uses mobile phone data gathered during events where a lot of people are present like demonstrations for example, to be able to analyse the events afterwards.
      Now consider what effect the Arab Spring and the OccupyWallStreet movements had on the governments and what the reaction of those governments was.
      If a government detectes many people gathering at a certain location, asking other people to join them, then those people can be taken care of long before any news media is present at the scene.

    6. Re:What will happen? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      sentiments

    7. Re:What will happen? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The responsibility of the police is to catch (i) idiots; and (ii) those who the people in power particularly dislike.

      You're not going to get many stories of smart criminals from the police.

    8. Re:What will happen? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Back to the days of having rats physically deliver hand written sentiments that are then eaten or burned.

      I for one welcome our sentimental hand-written-note-writing rat overlords.

    9. Re:What will happen? by firex726 · · Score: 1

      Pretty much yep.

      Generally speaking if you're smart about a crime you don't go around talking about it. So you'll only hear about the idiots who posted the pictures they took of the crime on their Facebook.

    10. Re:What will happen? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Most criminals have somebody front their purchase of pre-paid phones, so the record of that phone doesn't tie to them. (Not hard to do in the ghetto, a litte bit of extra cash or drugs goes a long way in having some lackey buy a phone for you. Or they go to one of those seedy corner stores or pawn shops and get a phone where purchase records aren't so great to begin with.) At least those criminals with any street-sense do that. And they don't keep the phones for very long either. Cops may end up chasing some kid that got a free phone left out on a bus or something.

      Tracking phones is one thing, but without knowing who they belong to it's not really as useful as you'd think.

      This system may only be good in cases involving white collar people who tend to hold on to their phones (fancy smart-phones with all those numbers and data) or tracking people that actually want to be found.

    11. Re:What will happen? by rsmith84 · · Score: 1

      The messages. Inspector Gadget style.

    12. Re:What will happen? by kilfarsnar · · Score: 1

      Seems pretty obvious to me that the biggest result will be that people who are actual criminals will take pains to either turn off their cell phones, use stolen phones or just go without any time they are doing something criminal.

      Meanwhile all the regular people are now even more at risk of the government or anyone else with access to this information like ex-boyfriends at the telco using this information against them.

      That's a good point. It's almost as if the point is massive surveillance for myriad purposes, rather than catching particular criminals.

      --
      "What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
    13. Re:What will happen? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      vast majority of criminals are utter and complete morons

      Really? Most of the bankers and politicians I've met don't come off as rocket scientists; but I wouldn't call them complete morons.

    14. Re:What will happen? by Rakishi · · Score: 1

      You have forgotten that the vast majority of criminals are utter and complete morons.

      So since only 30% of crimes are ever solved in Canada (15% for property crimes, 55% for violent crimes) the police must just be utter morons.

    15. Re:What will happen? by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 2

      You have forgotten that the vast majority of criminals are utter and complete morons. I have a friend who is a RCMP officer and you'd be amazed with his stories of criminal idiots.

      The thing about that argument is that those guys would almost certainly be caught with current methods since they are idiots after all chances are they screed up in plenty of other ways too.

      --
      When information is power, privacy is freedom.
    16. Re:What will happen? by Catbeller · · Score: 1

      New law requires credit card and valid photo ID to get a prepaid phone. It'd take a fool to give a criminal a tracking device, registered to the fool, so that they can take the hit when the manure hits the windmill. Poor and ghetto doesn't mean stupid. Stupid people don't stay in one piece very long. You want stupid, get a teenager. A suburban one. That thinks gangs are cool. It's a large crop.

    17. Re:What will happen? by wwphx · · Score: 1

      This will surely stop the bad guys because it's unpossible for terrorists to get credit cards and photo ID's! Or break in to a shop, steal and activate some pre-paid phones, possibly with the help of the shop owner.

      --
      When you sympathize with stupidity, you start thinking like an idiot.
  6. time to get that ham radio license! by webanish · · Score: 1

    on a more depressing note, most govt-regulated mass-communication systems are open to this type of abuse :-/

  7. Like it would even matter. by StoutFiles · · Score: 1

    India is so overpopulated that even if they could track your general location, they wouldn't be able to spot you in the thousands of people if they wanted to arrest you.

    1. Re:Like it would even matter. by CSMoran · · Score: 1

      India is so overpopulated that even if they could track your general location, they wouldn't be able to spot you in the thousands of people if they wanted to arrest you.

      But if they want to prove you were at A when you state you were at B, the crowd does not matter so much.

      --
      Every end has half a stick.
  8. It won't be long now ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It won't be long before this same stunt is pulled in the United States. They could make an argument using the health care bill (since just about everything can be considered as pertaining to someone's "health") so that if an emergency exists they know where the individual is. Of course, they'd set it up so that they know by default where you are all the time rather than transmit the information only when an emergency call is made.

    1. Re:It won't be long now ... by softwareGuy1024 · · Score: 1

      Given American politics, the magic word would be terrorism. I have yet to see health care used as an excuse for privacy invasion.

    2. Re:It won't be long now ... by CimmerianX · · Score: 1

      You don't think they do this now?

      Do you use google latitude, or any of the myriad of GPS/Navigational services?

    3. Re:It won't be long now ... by rednip · · Score: 2

      They could make an argument using the health care bill (since just about everything can be considered as pertaining to someone's "health") so that if an emergency exists they know where the individual is.

      Since you brought up that much maligned health care bill in an apparent effort to slander it more, did you know (and I doubt if you did, or if you did, that you'd actually want it publicly known) that in 2014 all health plans in America will no longer be allowed to deny coverage because of a pre-existing condition? Also, the working poor (up to 133% of the poverty line; or roughly $12/hour for a full time worker who supports a family of four) will receive the same excellent Medicare that our elderly do. Similar worker who make up to 400% of that line (about $88,000) will have part of their coverage rebated by the feds based on a sliding scale to 97%.

      --
      The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
  9. Governments with Control Issues by justinlw · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Really, why is it that governments feel they must track our every movement, our every interaction? The answer is that governments - no matter how well they start off - all eventually end up seeking to fully control the lives of their citizens: it seems to be some sort of unavoidable emergent property of large aggregations of people. The idea of a citizen having some degree of personal sovereignty just falls by the wayside and everybody just gets swept up in the imperatives of the government. This may seem innocuous - or even benign to the naive - but the long term result is that it is a seeking of control for the sake of having control. Being traced like this can hardly be considered to be in the best interests of individual people.

    1. Re:Governments with Control Issues by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I read it in the Dictionary. Freedom is Self Control. Either take care of business or business takes care of you.

    2. Re:Governments with Control Issues by MrQuacker · · Score: 2

      Because after the attacks on that hotel, and a few other terrorist acts caused by foreign parties, the Indian government wants a way to track such suspects.

      They can do that already if they know the cell number, but by knowing all numbers and locations at any one time, they can data-mine and compute probabilities of what each cell phone user is doing, relative to both historical and real-time data, and if it is suspicious or not.

      For example, if you see a phone go from a known hideout to another target of interest, you can now track that. Before you would have no way of doing that without knowing the exact phone to track. But when you can see all the phones, you can pick what to follow based simply on where it's been, and then find out who it belongs to. The exact opposite of what they do now.

      Also, in India there really are next to no landlines across most of the country. Yet everyone owns a cell phone, and runs their online life through it. So, you see, it is quite brilliant.

      The optimist in me wants to believe they will also use it for mass transit, infrastructure planning, and health/sanitation. But data sharing like that is unlikely if the system is in the hands of security forces.

  10. there are legit reason's also... by darkob · · Score: 2

    If the purpose of providing user's location in real time is strictly for saving life and health of the same user (eg. if user dialed in for emergency, or is being actively searched for as a missing person, or as a person under stress as in danger of committing suicide, or a person suffering from Alzheimer's and known to wander off, etc..) then this measure seems logical and justified. However, if the purpose of the measure is to track all the people all the time, and recording this for yet unknown reasons, than the measure is to be feared and rejected as unjustified and unproportionate. There's never a question whether or not technology helps in fighting the crime. The real question is whether society (especially democratic society) wants that kind of intrusion in lives of law obedient citizens.

    1. Re:there are legit reason's also... by MysteriousPreacher · · Score: 1

      Sure, it's fine, so long as it's properly regulated and we know who's making these requests and how often they're doing it. I want the right, with reasonable consideration given for ongoing investigations (not the endless war on terror shit), to ask a single agency to tell me who's been requesting a trace on me? This should go via court order or exceptional and well defined emergency circumstances, and anyone tracked must always have a right to an explanation.

      Consider stop and search laws in the UK. We need stats here so we can see if a particular police force has become a little free and easy with civil liberties.

      --
      -- Using the preview button since 2005
  11. useless, unless by gurps_npc · · Score: 1
    1) Will people be required to own/carry the cell phone?

    2) Will people be legally prevented from removing the battery?

    Because I would do one of those things if I found out someone was tracking everyone with them. Yeah, I know the US government has the power to track us, but they don't do it all the time.

    Frankly, I have no idea why so many idiots think they have to take each and every call right away. I see no problem with letting a call/text go to voicemail and getting back to them on MY schedule.

    --
    excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
    1. Re:useless, unless by CohibaVancouver · · Score: 1

      Will people be legally prevented from removing the battery?

      Go try to pop the battery out of your iPhone and let me know how that works out for you.

    2. Re:useless, unless by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 0

      Because unscrewing 2 screws, sliding off the backing and removing the battery is so hard?

    3. Re:useless, unless by softwareGuy1024 · · Score: 1

      Frankly, I have no idea why so many idiots think they have to take each and every call right away. I see no problem with letting a call/text go to voicemail and getting back to them on MY schedule.

      I'm generally like you, but don't make the assumption that everyone falls into your use case. Some people may have jobs where they need to be completely reachable at times. They may be taking care of a sick relative, and need to be reached in case of an emergency. What works for you and me may not work for everyone, and that doesn't make them idiots.

    4. Re:useless, unless by Lumpy · · Score: 1

      Dont need to, the iPhone is really off when you actually turn it off. Those of us that have bothered to check by using an RF spectrum analyzer know this as fact.

      In fact one of the engineers here was a real nutjob like the others here until we all started taking him cellphones to test. EVERY PHONE when turned off is actually off and not transmitting anything. The nutjobs that claim," you have to take out he battery" are just that. Nutjobs that have nothing to back up their claims.

      he even left an iphone off and monitored it for 4 days with a recorder on the display and it NEVER transmitted anything on any frequency.

      He is lot less of a nut now. Although he still claims that UFO's and aliens are real.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    5. Re:useless, unless by Dr_Barnowl · · Score: 1

      Here's the thing : pagers emit zero RF, but are still able to do their job.

      Since a cellphone probably contains all the circuitry that you'd need to make a pager (and then some), it's not unreasonable to suppose that it could be programmed to function as one.

      Who is to say that a cellphone in standby mode doesn't have a "pager command" mode that will induce it to power up the transmitter, disclose it's location to the network, and then go back off again - but only on command. Monitoring the RF emissions of a cellphone doesn't prove that this feature doesn't exist, it just proves that no-one is using it on your phone right now. I will grant that it does provide some evidence that such a system is not in ubiquitous constant use.

      I find the idea stretches credibility - that governments and phone manufacturers could successfully collude to create such a system, operate it, and manage to keep it secret at the same time beggars belief. But RF monitoring a small sample of cell phones for a limited amount of time does not prove it's absence.

    6. Re:useless, unless by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      that governments and phone manufacturers could successfully collude to create such a system, operate it, and manage to keep it secret at the same time beggars belief.

      So it's plausible if they create and operate it without managing to keep it secret, right? Based on this it sounds plausible enough to me, though of the details are too fuzzy to be felling.

    7. Re:useless, unless by Catbeller · · Score: 1

      They can listen to the microphone pickup whenever they want, and that isn't exactly well known. My belief would only be beggared if they didn't have a wakeupandtelluswhereyouare command. It can be done, so it has been done, or could be with the next update. It would have to be implemented that way, or people would notice the considerable power drain GPS engenders on a phone.

      A cuter trick would be an inertial tracker chip for the times the phone is shut off, or the phone can't get a signal, or GPS is blocked by a ceiling or trees. It could extrapolate location based on last GPS lock, accelerometer readings, and gyroscope. It could reconcile on next GPS lock. And your phone wouldn't need to be on at the time - the inertial tracker would use minimal juice. And the iPhone does have two batteries... one you can't shut off or remove, the other you can, last I heard.

  12. Over-reaching Powers Internationally by realsilly · · Score: 1

    So if some person from India calls me via his cell phone, should that government have my phone number information? Will they demand to know who I am based on that information? How quickly and readily will my government hand this info over to the Indian govt.?

    We are no longer simply a police-state, it has become a Global police-state.

    This is very depressing for it's possible further implications.

    --
    Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
    1. Re:Over-reaching Powers Internationally by Lumpy · · Score: 1

      ever called DELL tech support? They already have it.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    2. Re:Over-reaching Powers Internationally by sgunhouse · · Score: 1

      Government? In this country, government doesn't know who cell users are per se. And if you have a prepay (no contract) phone, your carrier might not either ... which is why drug dealers (supposedly anyway) prefer prepay phones.

      As far as the original story, I'm sure they're pushing it more along the lines of emergency services and/or civil protection orders ("We can prove from your cell phone data that yes you were on her property" sort of thing) as real-time location is pretty useless when it takes cops too long to get to the scene.

    3. Re:Over-reaching Powers Internationally by Catbeller · · Score: 1

      Prepay requires photo ID and debit/credit card. That hole was filled a while back. No anonymous prepaid phones, that's over.

    4. Re:Over-reaching Powers Internationally by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is that in India?

      Because I'm pretty sure you can still get one with cash (and no ID) in the US.

  13. HAHA taking tips form canada by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Guess india doesn't have people living in it that care about democracy....LIKE we do in canada.

  14. Opportunity Knocks by A10Mechanic · · Score: 1

    Be the first on your block to set up a pre-paid throw-away burn-phone stand. Sheer volume of transactions, you'd be rich beyond the dreams of avarice, as long as you don't get caught...

    1. Re:Opportunity Knocks by mehrotra.akash · · Score: 1

      You need to submit a lot of verification documents to get a phone connection in India

  15. Good News : Now record the Politicians Microphone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nice idea to record the politicians locations and enable remote microphone and use publish that data in wikileaks. It remove 99% of corruption and brings accountability.

     

  16. Who's this for? by Compaqt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For "normal" people, obviously:

    There are 1,170,938,000 people in India.

    The Taj attacks were carried out by 10 men.

    Meaning 99.9999991% of the people to be affected by this are NOT the poster children/excuse for this kind of tracking.

    It seems all the governments of the world are in a race to be the most onerous and most oppressive. They learn from each other, and so must we (normal peeps).

    --
    I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
    1. Re:Who's this for? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just like we should've learned how "wonderful" communism was?

      Simple: don't use a cellphone!

    2. Re:Who's this for? by MrQuacker · · Score: 1

      In India there really are next to no landlines across most of the country. So its cell phone or nothing.

  17. "The GPS is there in case you need to dial 911!" by Catbeller · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    2002: laws passes making GPS mandatory in all phones made and sold after 2005. It is done, we are told, to Make Us All Safe, so that you can dial 911.
    I post that it is for tracking. People tell me that I'm paranoid, that you can shut it off, that no one cares where we are.
    Turns out you can't shut off tracking, that phones will not work if you manage to disable GPS tracking.
    This is ignored when commented on.
    Turns out that they can turn GPS on when they want to, without you knowing, of course.
    People tell me, oh, so what, no one cares where you are.
    Now it it turns out, they want it on all the time, you can't turn it off, and of course they care very much where we all are. It's a tautology: they track us because they can, no other reason necessary. Power wants more power.
    And people tell me privacy doesn't matter anymore, that no one cares. Of course, the people who shoved this down our throats are not tracked; Wikileaks and Assange show us what happens when the powerful are tracked & outed. We don't even know who "they" are. But they sure get what they want.

    Now they want to "save us money" by tracking our cars with GPS and providing that data to insurance companies, who of course have nothing but our welfare in mind. But, privacy is dead, it'll save us money, I'm a luddite...

    The end result, so painfully, infuriatingly obvious ten years ago, is that you will not be able to move around with a phone, take a train, or a plane, or an automobile without you every move precisely recorded. Such tracking does not apply to the actual shadowy trackers, whom we can't even name without going to jail.

    Freedom without anonymity is impossible. That's why those who ordered this and who use this have no names and no locations. The power is all one-way. If you can't anonymously speak or move around, you are a prisoner, no matter how pretty your cage is.

  18. Next step by scsirob · · Score: 1

    Why not implement the next step right away? Just attach a collar to every world citizen and track them. Add remote control by giving electrical shocks to the left and right, and you have 6 billion living drones. If one steps out of bound, declare them 'defective' and kill on the spot.

    This just disgusts me beyond belief.

    --
    To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
    1. Re:Next step by CimmerianX · · Score: 2

      RFID implanted into the forehead that is used to verify identity for any transaction. Don't have the ID, you can't buy/sell goods once the tracking is required for every transaction.

      He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.” Revelation 13:16-17

      ---- I don't always quote the bible. But when I do, I make it about the end of the world.
       

  19. Wrong by necro351 · · Score: 3, Informative

    What are you talking about? If you have a tuple with 8 bytes each, that is still only 24GB for just the data. In terms of storage, buy a machine with 128GB of RAM that asynchronously writes back to a RAID volume, what's the big deal? Maybe networking would be more of an issue, but that is probably very solvable too.

    --
    --"You are your own God"--
    1. Re:Wrong by CimmerianX · · Score: 3, Informative

      Probably a little more because you need to date/time stamp each location for tracking....

    2. Re:Wrong by hobarrera · · Score: 1

      *A little* more. Still not even close to being an "issue" to store all this information.

    3. Re:Wrong by Artraze · · Score: 2

      First, I'm guessing you meant 8 x 32bit values, not 8 bytes, which is pretty fair... Technically larger than needed, but probably better than real world with indexing/filesystem/etc overhead.
      Here's the thing though:
      It's 24GB PER SAMPLE.

      What's the sample rate? Certainly not 1 second like GPS. Maybe 5 minutes? That would be 288 * 24GB = 7TB every day. Now, certainly some compression is possible (e.g. don't record samples if it didn't move in that period) and you could get by with maybe 10min samples, but you'd still be looking at storage on the order of TB/day. Solvable? Sure, but I'd still think that it counts and drowning themselves in data.

    4. Re:Wrong by Rakishi · · Score: 4, Interesting

      That's not a lot of data, if you think it is then you haven't seen how much data some corporations have. At my last job I didn't even notice a stray terabyte here or there.

      Let's say you end up with 1TB worth of data per day and 400TB per year. Facebook has 21 petabytes in it's 2000 machine hadoop cluster . Every day they add 12TB of compressed data and scan through 800TB of compressed data. Yahoo had 40000 machines in it's various hadoop clusters.

      400TB a year is nothing. You'd need maybe 100 of those 12TB facebook like servers for that (with replication, etc, etc.). Let's say 300 across two data centers for true redundancy. A moderately sized cluster as such things go.

      The cost of a server is I think $10000/year. So that all comes out to only $3million per year, make it $10million with all the usual corruption involved in such things. Basically peanuts to a government.

    5. Re:Wrong by sgt+scrub · · Score: 1

      Why would you need 8 32bit values to record coordinates? 8 bits for Latitude, 8 bits for Longitude and a 16 bit identifier should be sufficient. If you consider an ISP typically stores the first 4 bits of every packet on a gigabit network, a 32 bit per second storage system is not much of a stretch. Cisco already has a product that wraps co-ords up in SNMP packets for wireless devices. That is in addition to all of the other netflow information.

      --
      Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
  20. and can easily be foiled with.... by Lumpy · · Score: 1

    a directional antenna.

    If they think this will let them catch a criminal easily, they will be foiled over and over by the smart ones.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    1. Re:and can easily be foiled with.... by Geminii · · Score: 1

      Almost every crimesolving technique and power is aimed squarely at making it easier to identify and round up criminals who are either stupid or who forgot to account for _all_ of the evidence which might be collected.

      Smart criminals are always going to be harder to catch, because they're smart. But they're also a vanishingly small percentage of the criminal element. Eventually, in order to get away with a crime, luck aside, a person is going to have to be so smart that there's not really much chance of catching them at all. Even then, if the numbers of smart, successful, lucky criminals are reduced sufficiently by the percentage slivers new processes and technologies bring, that means that more resources can be brought to bear per case, and specialist crimesolving resources and teams (including things like the FBI in America) will be able to take on a greater proportion of the top cases.

      As an example, if the FBI can handle, oh, ten thousand cases a year (completely guessing this number), and you're a smart successful criminal amongst 20,000 others like you, you still have a 50% chance of having the FBI after you. If new processes allow the regular police to track down, apprehend, and charge 5,000 of those smart criminals, your chance of being on the FBI's radar go up to 67%.

      (Yes, I know the FBI doesn't operate like that. Replace it with any specialist resource. The point being that the more crims that can be nicked by the plod, the better the chance that the remaining ones will come to the attention of the big guns.)

      Really, the smartest criminals are the ones committing crimes for which are are no laws yet. Even if they're caught, they can't be charged with what they actually did. And the best of the best make sure they have enough influence at the right levels so that they're protected from law enforcement in the first place.

  21. Re:"The GPS is there in case you need to dial 911! by Lumpy · · Score: 5, Informative

    "Turns out you can't shut off tracking, that phones will not work if you manage to disable GPS tracking."

    And this is complete bullshit. I have a nokia from 2 years ago that I can in fact make the GPS go completely off and the phone still works.

    hardware Hacking with iphones also shows that the GPS is NOT required for operation and jailbroken phone show that the GPS really is OFF when set to off, same for android phones.

    You know if you want to make things up, at least do a little bit of fact checking it makes people write you off right away when they see a blatent fabrication.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  22. Re:"The GPS is there in case you need to dial 911! by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 2

    You can disable GPS completely, moron. Hell my Galaxy S has GPS that doesn't even work most of the time anyway. Not to mention there are plenty of phones with no GPS at all. Don't let these facts get in the way of patting your own back though.

  23. Re:"The GPS is there in case you need to dial 911! by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 2

    Not to mention he doesn't even tell us the name of this supposed law that was passed. Apparently the people making feature phones with no GPS didn't get the news about GPS being mandatory by law.

  24. Current utilizing it in a case.. by babai101 · · Score: 1

    In kolkata cell phone location tracking is already being utilized to solve a rape case where the female victim accuses 5 people who have raped her, but the locations reported by the cell phones of those accused persons show they never been in the area where the victim reported of being raped.

    1. Re:Current utilizing it in a case.. by rwise2112 · · Score: 1

      Of course they could have just left their phone at home, or with a friend. How can that be proof?

      --

      "For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert"
    2. Re:Current utilizing it in a case.. by orphiuchus · · Score: 1

      It can be reasonable doubt.

  25. Re:"The GPS is there in case you need to dial 911! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    He exaggerated slightly. There was no law about GPS, but LOCATION is required. It's obtained by location of nearby cells, in the absence of GPS.
    As far as the law? It's teh E-911 requirement.

    So he misstated a few of the details. Still essentially right. The point still stands.

  26. Re:"The GPS is there in case you need to dial 911! by javilon · · Score: 1

    Wait another five years and you'll find that even without a phone, the millions of cammeras embedded anyware will give enough biometrics to big brother's computers to track anyone outside their houses. All this they will cross reference with license plates, rfid tags, cell tower information, gps inside your phone, IP addresses you use, credit card transactions, electronic wallet transactions, and some other things that I miss.

    The end result will be a historic log with your every physical movement, electronic communication and economic transaction.

    No way to avoid this. We are going straight to distopia. At least I can't see any way to stop it, although I hate it as much as you.

    The only way to make it barely acceptable would be to get the governments and corporations to be more transparent. Good luck with that. Child pornography, terrorism and Chinese corporate spies will be used to make sure that more and more information is hidden from us.
       

    --


    When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
  27. Re:"The GPS is there in case you need to dial 911! by i+kan+reed · · Score: 1

    To be completely fair, while you are crazy and using made up facts to support your argument, tower triangulation can pretty much be used trivially to locate any one self-identifying broadcast signal(i.e. a cell phone keep-alive) with relatively accuracy. Tracking you does not require a GPS, just good coverage.

  28. Re:"The GPS is there in case you need to dial 911! by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 1

    It was not a misstatement. It was making shit up. 911 calls have always required the relaying of location otherwise the system would be wireless. That E911 also requires location to be relayed was not some government post-911 plot, it's simply applying the same rules to wireless 911 calls. How would calling 911 on your cellphone be useful if you can't be located?

  29. Re:"The GPS is there in case you need to dial 911! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you can't anonymously speak or move around, you are a prisoner, no matter how pretty your cage is.

    Or how big it is; it's still a cage.

  30. Nothing New Here... by Ronin+Developer · · Score: 1

    A company here in the US, TruePosition, has been offering the capability to law enforcement and military to identify the location of all active cell phones in a specific area and time. This technology has implications that go beyond simple surveillance - Here is a link: http://www.trueposition.com/national-security/

    Basically, if you have a cellphone or mobile device and it is on...you can't hide. And, the profiles that can be developed from when and where a mobile device is used can be used to prevent and solve crimes and terrorist activity.

    While it's not exactly as shown in the TV show "Person of Interest", had similar technology been deployed in the hills of Iraq, Afghanistan and over Pakistan, the whereabouts of OBL probably would have been known to our forces much sooner. And, for other "would-be terrorists", you should think twice before making that telephone call for your next goat sex appointment - Little Miss Molly might be bringing more than just a good time. How baaaaaaad is that?

  31. Welcome to the club.. by lucifron · · Score: 1

    Norway (the promised land of freedom and liberty, my ass) enacted a similar law last april, and we're implementing it this very monent.

    We've already seen mass-dna-screening using phone based location data (before the law was even in legislation; seems the police already had access to this kind of data..), and lobbying for making retained data accessible to rights holder organizations without a court process (our law lumps cell phone tracking and internet access tracking together).

  32. Re:"The GPS is there in case you need to dial 911! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Same AC here.
    Of course you really do need location to make 911 work.
    But...you can't turn off that location tracking, it's there. It's handy. It can and is used for law enforcement as well as 911 location.

    I'm not saying "location all bad, no 911 for you, die because the ambulance can't find you"

    I'm just saying that his points of "Tracking can't be turned off ... they track us because they can ... freedom without anonymity is impossible" stand or fall on their own.

    The details of which law requires tracking, or the fact that there are real, valid reasons for tracking are irrelevant to that argument. If the tracking was ONLY for 911 compliance, it could be triggered by the 911 (or 99999, or local equivalent) call itself. It's not. it's always there. Partly because it's easier to just always have it. Partly because someone might call their local police department directly instead of the emergency number, and still need to be found. Like I said, there are valid reasons for location tracking services for cell phones.

    But that still doesn't mean that the alarmists are wrong. Things that have a valid reason to exist can be used for other purposes and abused. More and more news stories seem to support the argument that cell phone tracking is one of those things. Even if it's not being abused yet, these laws are making it easier and easier for governments to abuse it in the future.

  33. Re:"The GPS is there in case you need to dial 911! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You can speak

  34. Re:"The GPS is there in case you need to dial 911! by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 1

    I agree with you on many points. The problem is that the person above was spreading blatantly false and made up "facts". This is why most people shrug off what privacy advocates say, because the most vocal and shrill exaggerate and make things up to back up their statements. So again, the person I responded to was not make misstatements he was LYING.

  35. No difference to the oppressed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Oppression is oppression, irrespective of whether the rulers try to justify it publicly or not. You seem to be implying that public disclosure somehow lessens the impact of oppression. Objectively, the relationship between the ruled and the ruler is no different.

  36. Ha! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They can have my azimuthal and zenith angles, but they will never take my radius!

  37. Tech Support? by retroworks · · Score: 1

    As a silver lining, will we know where exactly our tech support call is going now?

    --
    Gently reply
  38. Oh Good! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I left my phone in a Mumbai taxi...is there a nice government employee in New Delhi that can help me retrieve it?

  39. This system is likely to have bugs... by lcam · · Score: 1

    I could turn my cell phone off for a while and they wouldn't know where I had been...

    Next law, citizens must own a cellular and have it fully charged and turned on day or night.

    1. Re:This system is likely to have bugs... by rwise2112 · · Score: 1

      ... and implanted in the body.

      --

      "For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert"
    2. Re:This system is likely to have bugs... by lcam · · Score: 1

      strike body, right hand or forehead...

  40. No good by lazycam · · Score: 1

    At some point the bad guys will stop carrying their cell phones, so the only people left to tract are citizens. First Skype/Google, then blackberry, and now this. Does India even have or even enforce privacy laws?

    --
    my mom posts on slashdot.
    1. Re:No good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Indian laws are weak. There isn't any thing called "privacy law" in India. The only "privacy law" that the government is proposing aims to punish to the agencies who hold personal data for security breaches. Note that India also has freedom of speech, but it is subject to "reasonable restrictions"*.

      *"Reasonable restrictions" is a term quoted from the Indian constitution itself.

  41. Giving up on India by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I've canceled my subscription to Asian Babes. I'll somehow have to live without the monthly struggle to keep an erection while staring in disbelief at those corpulent unibrowed mustachioed beauties.

  42. It's India's E911 Law by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's the equivalent of our E911 compliance rules/law/regs that have been around for years - you can take off your tin foil hat, idiots.

    http://transition.fcc.gov/pshs/services/911-services/

    http://transition.fcc.gov/pshs/services/911-services/enhanced911/Welcome.html

    1. Re:It's India's E911 Law by Catbeller · · Score: 1

      I find your tin foil hat insult puzzling, because 1) the story is utterly true, and 2) wrecking your insult, tin foil actually works.

      So the intended mockery only shows that you just don't care... it has no other meaning. You imply that to think otherwise is crazy, or the facts are wrong, yet we are sane and you only pointing out we were right all along and somehow this makes us crazy... my head hurts

  43. Time to go back to pagers and use VOIP. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Time to use a pagers to receive calls, and call back using a VOIP phone over Wifi.

    1. Re:Time to go back to pagers and use VOIP. by Catbeller · · Score: 1

      VOIP providers are required to log IP addys of incoming and outgoing, or they were about to be required to do so, last I heard. VOIP if anything gives them even better location data.

      I'd go with a TOR-like mesh adhoc WiFi system, encrypted end to end. Which would be made illegal in less than a week.

  44. Re:"The GPS is there in case you need to dial 911! by Catbeller · · Score: 1

    No, you can press a button that tells you it is turned off. It indeed turns off. But they can turn it back on, and you wouldn't know it. They can't-not have the capability - the hidden power is the real reason why the phone won't work if *you disable the GPS circuit itself*. I'm not talking about the feature, I'm talking about the the circuit board itself. Years ago, I read about people trying to disable the GPS hardware itself - the phone, if they succeeded, stops functioning. chop the wires, the phone won't work. They integrated the phone with the GPS. They don't want you to shut it off. They may say it is for safety's sake, and that may be, but the auxiliary purpose is to make sure that phone is tracked. The cops and the DEA use it for drug enforcement almost exclusively. People are convicted for standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.
    And always, the future is not like the past! Because they don't have a capability today doesn't mean they won't five years from now; the GPS tracking of cars will be like that. Using the phone's firmware as an example, I will not even take bets that cars won't even start if you disable the GPS tracker integrated into the car's systems. It's a no brainer. Power=power, if they can, they will. And we're watching them do it.
    And YES, of course they could use the towers to almost kinda track you. And phones had physical locations before cells.
    That's why they tore all the pay phones out, or placed cameras to watch those that exist. There are a few that are still anonymous, but you must admit they are a precious and dwindling few. The object is to remove anonymity for us, but not for "them".

  45. Re:"The GPS is there in case you need to dial 911! by Jah-Wren+Ryel · · Score: 1

    911 calls have always required the relaying of location otherwise the system would be wireless.

    I think you mean "worthless" not wireless.

    The thing is, before ~1995 few if any phones had location functionality, but you could still call 911 and tell them where you were. I would very much like to see a report of the number of 911 calls where the caller could not tell the operator his location (they always ask in case the computer is wrong). At which point we could have a debate over whether that number of cases justifies the extended cost in both dollars and privacy risk of the system. I've looked for such information in the past and strangely enough it doesn't seem to be made public.

    --
    When information is power, privacy is freedom.
  46. Re:"The GPS is there in case you need to dial 911! by Catbeller · · Score: 1

    I am hyperbolic because I don't have time to post too much nuance, but here goes; yes, they can use towers. But if so, they didn't need GPS, did they? Of course it's for tracking, for pete's sake that's what the article is about! They are mandating GPS tracking, full time, for everyone, forever, soon, in India. I can't absorb why you are calling the description of the very point of the subject crazy. It is what they are doing. *stonkered*facepalm*

    GPS gives tracking precision, and probably speeds it up a tad, granting them the future ability to track everyone in real time as storage costs drop and processor speeds increase. What was not possible in 2002 (or extremely expensive) will be trivial in 2015. They laid the tracks, now here comes the train.

    The E911 excuse was issued immediately after 911 and during the Patriot Act era, when they just ordered up their wish lists of must-want toys for surveillance.

    We've got bureaucratic assassination laws that we can't see, we now can be dragged away in secret on American soil by military operatives, never to be heard from again, we're being set up to be tracked to the blinking atoms we breathe on, and somehow saying the truth is nuts? I'm not being dramatic enough, in my opinion. This is unprecedented, this is evil, this is insane, this is the takeover of the world by the anal and the deluded who think everything will be safer if we all sit at the table with our hands where they can see them, if I can borrow some Pratchett here. Cops, of all stripes, don't like anonymity, as it makes things complicated and unmanageable. My way of thinking is that they crimes they are looking for which actually matter are few, and the crimes that don't matter take up all their time and are used as a justification to make the world into a ever-constricting place where you have to sit in the desert to not be watched, (if an RC airship camera doesn't notice your campfire and zoom in to see what you are doing). If we are lucky, very lucky indeed, they'll go broke before they get all their toys deployed in the next half century.

    We don't need this junk. They are charging our descendants a fortune for it (we won't raise taxes, so it's all borrowed money). I've a feeling a lot of it won't even work right. But that won't comfort me much when I or someone I love gets arrested because they trust their toys so completely that they can't use common sense.

  47. Re:"The GPS is there in case you need to dial 911! by Catbeller · · Score: 1

    Let's put it simply. The GPS tracking is part of an API of a new type of police state. Who the "police" are doesn't matter, the API does. The tech of the API varies. Location services are one, the ability to listen in on the phone is another. The elimination of anonymity is wanted and granted. The removal of laws or the mere refusal to follow them are another. Cameras are another. Car tracking is another. ID requirements to travel are another. Put it all together, and it is what we fastidiously condemned Soviet Russia for doing, what we threatened to destroy the world for, to save it from Soviet-style repression. Do recall msot Russians were okay with the police state; it was a safer place to live than Russia today. All you had to do was not piss off someone in power, that almighty "they". And they didn't have this API we are deploying over the world.

    GPS gives granularity. A tower can give a location, but GPS gives them locations down to a couple of meters. Analyzed, it gives associations, meeting times, patterns of behavior. A "they" can not just know what block you are on, but who you are standing next to or walking with. Hence India.

    Our country has customs against such surveillance, but those are breaking down faster than the laws that cover it. Other countries do not. India.

    This is a problem that is evolving. Do remember that the tech is not static, and the signs are that it continues to grow more powerful. Hence the article about India. India is simply going first (that we know of).

    It's hardly crazy to point out the bloody obvious.

  48. apply a little more imagination by Onymous+Coward · · Score: 1

    If they track you for a week are they still not getting useful information?

    Indeed, you could build not just a person's regular itinerary, but a network of who they are associated with. Arguably, you could build a pretty good profile of a person, including religious and political beliefs with probably high accuracy.

  49. New Zealand Also Looking Into This by Flere+Imsaho · · Score: 1

    The New Zealand government is also discussing mandatory GPS tracking on all mobile phones. We've had a few outages of the 111 emergency services number, and they figure getting to people requiring assistance will be easier if they know where everyone is all the time.

    I was shouting at the radio the other day, listening to a chat panel saying how great this would be.

    Thankfully the privacy commissioner is raising objections. I doubt this will ever get beyond the discussion stage, but it still makes me shudder, thinking about it. What's next, bar-coding at birth?

    --
    It gripped her hand gently. 'Regret is for humans,' it said.
  50. Re:"The GPS is there in case you need to dial 911! by ColdWetDog · · Score: 1

    Right. So some random crazy mucking about a packed circuit board wiping traces without a wiring diagram allows you to conclude that you need the GPS module intact in order for the phone to function.

    Do you see a problem with this?

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  51. track & nuke by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    they are building a nuclear power plant in tuticorin, ive been there 5 months ago on the construction site because it was near the port where i was working on the repairs of a vessel
    for sure this plant will blow up as soon it is operational because of the shitty materials and unskilled laberours (working barefeet)

    to make sure they will couse enough casulties they will track down all cell phone locations, and wait for it when the masses are close enough to start it up and blow half india to kingdom kong

  52. Because Government is based on Power not Reason by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Because government thinks that no matter how badly is screws things up, it can always pull out the trump card, Violence, and fix things.

    It wants to control because that is the purpose of power is to Control. No other end.

    High status and the ability to influence others. To be obeyed without question. To have every whim catered to and satisfied. To hear no word against. To be loved. To be looked up to. To be feared. To be King Chimp.

    Rulers need to be loved/feared/needed 'by the people'

    When the people do not love the leader, then the leaders gets angry and hurts the people. He gets paranoid and controlling.

    This is the world we live in. The general level of behavior is chimp. The group model is herd.

    Reason, Logic, Physics, Beauty, Math, Reality and Peace be dammed.

    Utopian Dreams and Fantasies of Fame, Fortune and Sex drive the world. Coke and Hookers.

    Few are enlightened. Few treasure reason. Few are disciples of scientists.

    Slashdot is a shining beacon, a rare exception, an anomolie in this world.

  53. Tracking Users by layabout_guy · · Score: 1

    All this coming from 'the world's biggest democracy' ha!!

  54. Re:"The GPS is there in case you need to dial 911! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's probably because he doesn't mean GPS at all. He means the cell phone triangulation data from the cell phone tower. It makes way more sense if you say "you can't turn off your cell phone's GSM radio in order to avoid being tracked, because then you can't make phonecalls". This would be 100 percent true.

    Maybe he's kind of an idiot, or maybe the reporter is. But I am pretty sure they're only saying GPS because it means "thing or service that can tell your location". Not because it actually has anything to do with your GPS chip.

  55. Re:"The GPS is there in case you need to dial 911! by Catbeller · · Score: 1

    It was the so-called E911 law, it was 2002, and I was paying attention. It required location tracking for emergency purposes, and it was well understood that that meant GPS wired-in to every phone. 2005 was the deadline for all phones to be so-equipped if they were to be sold. I held on to my pre-2005 phone until 2007, when my provider informed me my phone would no longer work at a certain date, would I like a free, GPS-enabled phone?

    You imply I'm lying, yet this is well known. Why is ignorance on your part evidence of lying on mine?

    Here:
    http://bit.ly/yymPGS ...In 2000, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued an order requiring wireless carriers to determine and transmit the location of callers who dial 9-1-1. The FCC set up a phased program: Phase I transmitted the location of the receiving antenna for 9-1-1 calls, while Phase II transmitted the location of the calling telephone. The order set up certain accuracy requirements and other technical details, and milestones for completing the implementation of wireless location services. Subsequent to the FCC's order, many wireless carriers requested waivers of the milestones, and the FCC granted many of them. By mid-2005, the process of Phase II implementation was generally underway, but limited by the complexity of the coordination required from wireless carriers, PSAPs, local telephone companies and other affected government agencies, and the limited funding available to local agencies which need to convert PSAP equipment to display location data (usually on computerized maps). Such rules do not apply in Canada.[27]
    FCC rules require that all new mobile phones will provide their latitude and longitude to emergency operators in the event of a 9-1-1 call. Carriers may choose whether to implement this via Global Positioning System (GPS) chips in each phone, or by means of triangulation between cell towers. Due to limitations in technology (of the mobile phone, cellular phone towers, and PSAP equipment), a mobile caller's geographical information may not always be available to the local PSAP. Technologies are currently under development to remedy this situation and improve performance.[28] Although there are now technological ways to obtain the geographical location of the caller, a 9-1-1 caller commonly still needs to be aware of the location of the incident about which he or she is calling."

    Went into effect 2002 or so, wrapped up in 2005. They had a choice, triangulation or GPS, and while it was mixed at first, it's GPS all the way now, as it had to be.

    It was intended for emergencies, and of course the use was immediately expanded by Homeland Security, the DEA, and other police-like entities who wanted this wonderful new trick. Cops can log onto a website and find any phone they choose. Some carry phone readers that can stripmine any phone of data while you wait, altho that of course is hogwash until I tediously have to look it up for someone who doesn't read news feeds every day.

    The primary use of the GPS on phones by cops has been drug busts. It has many solid, good uses, but it also inevitably is used by domestic spying agencies. And India is just being above board about it.

  56. Re:"The GPS is there in case you need to dial 911! by Catbeller · · Score: 1

    Yes, because it isn't circuit damage that freezes the phone - the phone works fine - it is the fact that the phone reports that it will not function without the available GPS feed, period. That's not just a random crash - they anticipate someone trying to disable the software or hardware, and told the phone to lock up if it didn't find an available GPS feed. So, wrapping up, yes I hate a problem with the fact that the phone will not work if you disable tracking with software OR hardware. That would be the entire point. The tracking is not entirely for your benefit.

    I would not have a problem, as I stated so long ago, if the hardware could be disabled with a simple circuit breaker - a button in hardware that you can push to kill the power feed to the GPS so you could opt-out. A software button is useless - it tells you what you want to hear. A command from a the phone company, and it goes on stealth mode. How else do you think the cops are tracking people with the GPS on phones? Bad guys of course "shut off the GPS". It's turned back on without their knowledge. As I assume they turn it back on in "wake up, tell me where you are, and go to sleep" mode on any damned phone they'd like.

  57. No "all" just particular ones. by Occams · · Score: 1

    I think "all" should be replaced by "any " in this report. I can imagine the Indian Government wanting to be able to trace the location of any nominated cell phone, but not "all" because there are too many of them. They would need to have a capability to do it on all of them. Tracking the phone is not the same as tracking the person. There is a need to be precise when discussing this emoptive stuff.

    --
    Heavy is the head that wears the tinfoil hat.
  58. Craving for unjustifiable control by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well, I have only one question here: What are the real motives behind this? If we assume, but I doubt we really can, that the people behind this are not clinically ill.

  59. Re:"The GPS is there in case you need to dial 911! by Geminii · · Score: 1

    Who needs GPS? The phone company has detected that the signal from your phone has the following strengths at the following three base stations in your area... might not be enough to pinpoint you to within a yard, but they certainly know where you are to a city block or two. And should anyone be trying to track you down afterwards, there are a lot of urban places with security cameras which may have been pointing to places inside that city block.

    Plus, of course, they can take a phone of the same model as yours and walk around the whole area of possibilities, recording the resulting sets of signal strengths and matching them to the ones received from your phone. It's a lot easier to ask the staff of three shops if they saw you than to ask the staff of a hundred.

  60. Responsibility for the Public's Safety by EwanBrow · · Score: 1

    I think this measure shows the India govenment's great responsibility for their people's safety. I'm in favor of it.

    --
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