Cell Phones: Personal Tracking and Bugging Devices

[BenW]

They do not, to my knowledge, install GPS in phones, which would require your phone to have another antenna and to receive and process info from the satellites, and then send that info to the 911 PSAP.

Actually, my nifty new Nextel i355 has a GPS antenna on it. Nextel offers a service for businesses to track employees as well for things like services and deliveries. The GPS is not as accurate as say, a WAAS consumer GPS, but still accurate to around plus or minus 100 feet (I did a comparison a few days ago against my differential GPS at work). You can deactivate it, but then you can still be located via cell towers.

Even my old Verizon phone had the "pseudo-GPS" (I'm sure just using the cell towers) tech that you could turn off, but it wasn't really off as it remains active on any 911 call.

 

[cuchulainn]

"significant threat to privacy which makes me generally displeased."

I'd quibble over the word significant, but c'est la vie.

The question now is why we're both using French.

 

[Too Many Choices!?]

You guys ever hear of the "V" chip, supposedly for the children...

It is in most newer sets from what the commercials say(of course it is the cat's meow in the commercials, just like on star) ...Don't know if the "V-chip" can send anything or not, but with today's world, you really never can tell what the TRUE purpose of,"New Technology" is until it has been abused. By then it is too late ...

PS: How soccer moms got anywhere before the invention of on star is beyond me ...My thing is this,if you need a "CO-pilot" to help navigate the perils of suburbia, you probably shouldn't be driving Back to the topic...

 

[cuchulainn]

Of course, for the savvy runner, a trackable cell phone actually is a wonderful diversionary tool. Juice up the battery to 100% and get on a cross-country bus. Hide the phone on the bus and get off at the next stop (or even before the bus leaves). Go somewhere else. To the cell phone trackers, you're still on the bus.

Heck, tape it under some stranger's car. Push it under the backseat of a taxi. Hide it in a trash can at the busiest pedestrian area available -- to them, for awhile, you're among the crowd, and when the trash gets picked up, you're on the move.

Duct tape it to an alley cat.

 

[taliv]

BenW, i should have clarified GPS for use by 911. If you call 911, they will still locate you via triangulation, not by the GPS in your phone.

that is a cool feature though.

 

[DeseoUnTaco]

This type of surveillance is definitely possible with cell phones. A plain old landline telephone has a physical switch that interrupts power from the microphone when it is placed on the hook. There's no such switch in a cellphone. It's all software. It has long been assumed that it's possible to turn the microphone off and on from remote. Remember, the landline phone can't do this because when you hang it up the physical circuit is interrupted, but that switch doesn't exist on mobiles. It's all done in software.

The danger from all this is that few people will object as long as there is a serious threat of terrorism. But once (if?) the threat subsides, the infrastructure of surveillance will remain.

Ah, excuse me, but there is no serious threat of terrorism. Terrorism is not now and has never been a serious threat in the United States. What are the odds? Not very high, it turns out. There are real dangers to worry about, like car accidents, ordinary criminals, over-eating, and all the other things that do put us at risk. Terrorism doesn't even make the list. How could anyone claim that terrorism is a serious threat? The only thing it is is a seriously great way to get citizens support laws, policies, wars and politicians who should never have come to be.

 

[roo_ster]

For a speaker to be used as a mic, it must be UNpowered, I believe.

 

[Gary H]

You mean that the government not only knows that I watch Spongebob, but actually listens to me singing the intro?

One relevant issue.. It takes time and resources to follow your daily movement and conversations. I'm rather bored with my life, so I doubt that any government sort would find it amusing. Now back to Spongebob.

 

[BostonGeorge]

BenW, i should have clarified GPS for use by 911. If you call 911, they will still locate you via triangulation, not by the GPS in your phone.

that is a cool feature though.

I believe all phones are mandated to have GPS capability in the next few years for exactly that reason. It's called e911 (enhanced 911) and has been around for at least the past 2 years or so. AFAIK 911 operators never had the capability to use triangulation on thier own. In a situation such as a lost hiker, they would have to work with the cellular provider to obtain this information. Anyways Google e911 and GPS and you can read all about it.

 

[Chrontius]

But you're absolutely correct, it's a potential, nothing more. And I'll add that no one is forcing us to accept this potential. We do so freely, knowing the potential (and remote) risks. There's no violation.

Pardon me?

I use Verizon and would love to upgrade to a Bluetooth-enabled Motorola Timeport. But since it came about between the introduction of Bluetooth and E911, Verizon refuses to activate it, citing their mandate to have 95% penetration of E911 phones. My phone is now crapping out. If I am to have the 'luxury' of a cellphone (and that's a condition of going to college in my family) then I will have a GPS-based homing device on my person. And it probably won't even tell me my ICBM address if I want to know it myself.

 

[DRZinn]

Quote:

In my view, a video camera in my bedroom is, in itself, a violation of my privacy, whether or not anyone is watching or recording what it sees.
Not if you freely and willingly put the camera there yourself with full knowlege of the potential for breach of your privacy and with 100% control over whether it was on.

You freely and willingly opt to use a cell phone with full knowledge of the potential for breach of your privacy and you have 100% control over whether it is on (take the battery out).

If you were forced to put a camera in your bedroom or to carry a cell phone, you've have a point.

Your analogy works until they make it so there is no bedroom anywhere that does not have a camera. Then, when you decide to sleep in the kitchen, you find that there are also no camera-free kitchens....

 

[DeseoUnTaco]

For a speaker to be used as a mic, it must be UNpowered, I believe.

Doesn't matter, the phone (obviously) has a mic and they can turn that on from the base station, without any indication on the phone that that has been done.

For those saying, "They can't pinpoint where it is because the phones don't have GPS", sorry, wrong. a) A lot of phones are now shipping with GPS, but regardless of that b) the phone is constantly saying "hello" to towers nearby. They can easily track the phone to the nearest tower, which gives a fairly small radius. Furthermore, they can triangulate the phone using multiple towers, by seeing what the signal strength is to the different towers. As a first approximation, if a phone is "visible" to towers A, B and C, pick the midpoint of those three towers and that's a more accurate location of the phone. If they use signal strength to each tower as a weight in the triangulation, it's even more accurate, accurate enough that GPS is irrelevant. GPS is a satellite technology (obviously) and it only works when the receiver has a clear view of a good chunk of the sky. Cell phone technology is more powerful and it works indoors and out. My point is that GPS is not relevant to phone location tracking because it would only have a chance of working outdoors in places with an unobstructed view of the sky.

All this stuff is standard in all the modern base station equipment.

So yes, they can use your phone as a listening device as long as it's on. Nothing on the phone would indicate that that is happening, except that it would burn its battery faster than expected. And they can get quite an accurate position on the phone, too, as long as it's on. They can't do anything if the phone is turned off, because then there is no power to the radio unit of the phone.

Whether you believe it or not, that's how it is.

 

[DRZinn]

I'm wondering just how accurately they could track a phone using only triangulation. If each tower only shows that it's receiving the signal, then they'd be able to limit it fairly easily to the area covered by all three towers, but do the individual nodes on each tower make any difference? That could make it even more accurate.

In any case, some areas only have coverage from one tower, which wouldn't help much. Where I live, for example.

 

[R.H. Lee]

Not to be contrarian, but I don’t really care if somebody knows where I am. My life is more or less an open book. What I do object to is the resources and money required to track everybody with a cellphone, if this is done on a wholesale basis by government. Such an endeavor would be useless anyway, as the gps or tracking device could be individually disabled by terrorists and other perps using cellphones.

OTOH, if a record of positions are kept, and the information is not real time only, that record could serve as exculpatory evidence should someone be accused of a crime. “I wasn’t anywhere near the crime scene. Look at my cellphone record.”

 

[DeseoUnTaco]

In any case, some areas only have coverage from one tower, which wouldn't help much. Where I live, for example.

Right, in a situation like that they will only know that you're coming from one particular tower. In a low-density place which is served by only one tower, that could be quite a wide radius. They would know the signal strength at that one tower so they could have an idea of how far you are from that tower, but that's not as accurate as GPS or triangulation.

But in a more dense area, they can pinpoint the phone quite accurately.

 

[Marshall]

I'm still sceptical on the cable TV deal. Blow off the phone, I saw no mention of a phone, just cable TV. Lets say I don't have a phone, just a cell and I have cable and a TV without a V-chip. How is it done?