Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

GA Tech Students Use Cell Phone Pings To Find Missing Person (ajc.com)

Posted by samzenpus on from the follow-the-pings dept.

McGruber writes: Georgia Authorities are giving kudos to technology – and the perseverance of Georgia Tech students – for the safe return of a fellow student who disappeared after a Friday night party. The missing student was found Monday morning along railroad tracks, in northeast Atlanta. He had been beaten, was unconscious and was taken to Grady Memorial Hospital. Georgia Tech Police Chief Robert Connolly said "The students rallied together and then they started searching. The students stayed out until midnight last night, putting out pamphlets and combing the area, anywhere they could possibly find [cell phone] pings along the route." The students "were not going to stop. They checked every hospital, every hotel, they checked everywhere. They didn't give up on their friend."

5 of 127 comments (clear)

  1. SAR by Citizen+of+Earth · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Search And Rescue teams should carry "Stingray" mobile cell towers with them to locate missing persons in the wilderness. Any phone in range would try to connect with them.

    1. Re:SAR by barc0001 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I had that idea years ago. They could mount one in a chopper and once they get a ping, crank down the range to quickly narrow the search. But of course we wouldn't want to use Stingrays for saving lives when they're much more useful for spying on everyone.

  2. Re:what is a "cell phone ping"? by lakeland · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Pinging a cellphone means setting up a portable cellphone tower. All cellphones within range will report their existence to you, which you can then cross reference against your missing person's IMEI number...Through triangulation/multiple different towers you can work out the location quite accurately.

    Of course this is not generally available to the public. For a start you need to have a portable tower (or borrow a few from a local telco) and secondly you'll need to cross-reference his phone number to look up his IMEI.

    I'm curious how a bunch of students were able to get past the two restrictions - I can imagine a uni having some portable towers lying around for research purposes, but how would they have found out his IMEI number?

  3. Cell Phone Pings by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The actual article, once you freaking find it, has a one liner about "Cellphone records showed he was possibly in the area of DeKalb Avenue a couple of hours later." After that, it was just people walking around searching.

    How the hell is this 'cell phone pings'? I was expecting some uber geeky geolocation doodad written in an overnight Cheeto induced haze. (no, not THAT "uber")
    What, his phone did the auto check-in thing via some standard 'app'?

  4. Re:what is a "cell phone ping"? by Wycliffe · · Score: 5, Informative

    I'm curious how a bunch of students were able to get past the two restrictions - I can imagine a uni having some portable towers lying around for research purposes, but how would they have found out his IMEI number?

    From the article (hiding in the header), I don't think that they did. It sounds like the police gave the students the last known cell phone towers and they canvased the area on foot around those towers.