Live Tracking of Mobile Phones Prompts Court Fights on Privacy

[Tomcat1066]

They can track drug dealers, terrorists, and all kinds of bad men using their cell phones....but they can't pick up the snot-nosed punk that broke into my house and took MY cell phone!

Then again, that would require the local PD to actually do something. You have to live around here to understand, lemme tell ya!

Tom
who, for the record, isn't anti-LEO. My Dad was 23 years on the local PD and a small town police cheif now and HE feels the same way about the local PD.

 

[Art Eatman]

Tomcat, the phone company can track to whom phone calls were made. From those numbers you get names.

There used to be a guy on TFL, SouthLa1. His wife's phone was stolen. She waited a couple of days and then called her own number. She explained about finding the "callees" and having the sheriff get them to tell who called. "Return my phone, or else!"

It took about 30 minutes.

A true benefit of cell-phone tracking: Make one without the numbers; always on. Great for an Alzheimer's patient when he gets the "Sundown Syndrome" and goes wandering.

, Art

 

[Tomcat1066]

Yeah, but the problem is they haven't used them since the breakin :banghead:

I had to get a halfway intelligent crook. Just my luck

Tom

 

[Flyboy]

AZ Jeff:
I'll defer to your expertise (I'm not prepared to say you're a government shill just claiming to be a cellphone engineer ), but I did want to clarify something as far as "turn it off" for everybody.

"Turn it off" depends on the definition of "off." Nearly all consumer electronics are computer controlled, even to the degree of power control. As such, they're never completely off; rather, primary functions are disabled, but some logic (notably the power control logic) remains active. A real power switch--something that actually broke the circuit between the power source and the active components--would not allow the computer to keep running, so they're not used. Think about it this way: your TV remote turns the thing on and off. The remote is a wireless device, so the TV has to have some sort of receiver to get signals from the remote. If the remote turned the TV set completely off, how would the receiver process signals?

Answer: parts of the system stay on, and the power button is just a "soft" power button. Your computer does the same thing: if you press the power button, it doesn't interrupt power; it just sends a command to the system to say "hey, I'd like to power down now, if that's OK," and the system (usually) obliges. It doesn't go completely off, though; it keeps the power manamement system running (and that system includes the power button). If it were to power down completely, it wouldn't come on when you hit the power button, because there would be nothing to recognize "hey, he tried to turn me on! Maybe I should apply power to the rest of the machine."

Cell phones work the same way. They use a "soft" power-off to go to sleep, but the only way to shut off everything is to remove power; failing a real power switch (which none of them have), you have to remove the battery.

Again, I'd be inclined to take AZ Jeff's word for what is on which power bus, but as for the claim that you can't turn it completely off without removing the battery, yeah, I'd agree with that.

 

[Flyboy]

Then again, that would require the local PD to actually do something. You have to live around here to understand, lemme tell ya!

No, I don't. A friend of mine had $1300 charged to her debit card fraudently. The local cops (Oklahoma City PD) can't even be arsed to send an officer by to take a report and collect the information (WHOIS records, bank statements, etc.) that we collected and organized for them. Something about "well, we never catch any of those kinds of cases, so we don't even investigate them."

Cause, effect, etc.

 

[Tomcat1066]

Just a brief rundown on the winners on the local PD. Before I start listing them, keep in mind that there are some officers here who care about doing their jobs well. I salute them. The type I'm about to describe shouldn't even look at a badge unless it's worn by the person reading them their rights.

Here locally we had one police officer who was the head of a shoplifting ring. Another stole money out of a motorcycle accident victim's wallet. Yet another broke into an autoparts store to steal a part for his car. But the winner, at least in my opinion, is the officer who pulled his service weapon and fired at his ex-wife, wounding her, then shot and killed his young son in the back, then turned his weapon on himself and fired. At least he saved us a trial.

This is a far from exhaustive list. It's a "special" kind of place sometimes.

Tom

 

[JohnKSa]

They use a "soft" power-off to go to sleep, but the only way to shut off everything is to remove power; failing a real power switch (which none of them have), you have to remove the battery.

For the phone system to know where the phone is, the phone must transmit. I don't know of any phones that keep transmitting when they're in their "sleep" state that most people think of as being "off".

The point wasn't about whether or not the phone was completely dead when it's "off", but whether or not it could be tracked while it's "off". It can't.

 

[MICHAEL T]

Just another reason not to have one of those POS I will never own a cell phone . Big Brother needs to have his chain made real short. He's getting out of hand.

 

[DRZinn]

You need more tinfoil. No current cellfone works that way. (See my other post for details.)

Gee, thanks. That must be why I phrased the statement as a hypothetical.

 

[AZ Jeff]

AZ Jeff:
I'll defer to your expertise (I'm not prepared to say you're a government shill just claiming to be a cellphone engineer ), but I did want to clarify something as far as "turn it off" for everybody.

"Turn it off" depends on the definition of "off." Nearly all consumer electronics are computer controlled, even to the degree of power control. As such, they're never completely off; rather, primary functions are disabled, but some logic (notably the power control logic) remains active. A real power switch--something that actually broke the circuit between the power source and the active components--would not allow the computer to keep running, so they're not used. Think about it this way: your TV remote turns the thing on and off. The remote is a wireless device, so the TV has to have some sort of receiver to get signals from the remote. If the remote turned the TV set completely off, how would the receiver process signals?

Answer: parts of the system stay on, and the power button is just a "soft" power button. Your computer does the same thing: if you press the power button, it doesn't interrupt power; it just sends a command to the system to say "hey, I'd like to power down now, if that's OK," and the system (usually) obliges. It doesn't go completely off, though; it keeps the power manamement system running (and that system includes the power button). If it were to power down completely, it wouldn't come on when you hit the power button, because there would be nothing to recognize "hey, he tried to turn me on! Maybe I should apply power to the rest of the machine."

Cell phones work the same way. They use a "soft" power-off to go to sleep, but the only way to shut off everything is to remove power; failing a real power switch (which none of them have), you have to remove the battery.

Again, I'd be inclined to take AZ Jeff's word for what is on which power bus, but as for the claim that you can't turn it completely off without removing the battery, yeah, I'd agree with that.

While you are correct that cellfones have a "soft" off mode, the fact remains that NO CURRENT or FORMER CELLPHONES leave the radio portion of the phone "on" when the power button is turned "off". This is because the radio portion of the phone (the TX-transmit and RX-recieve circuits) draw the VAST MAJORITY of the power consumed by a phone. Leaving them "on" when the user turns the phone "off" would result in battery life virtually unchanged between the "off" and "on" modes.

If you don't beleive me, do the following experiment:
Leave your phone "off" for about a week, and note the battery level with the battery meter at the beginning and at the end of that week. Then repeat the test, but leave the phone "on" for the same amount of time, and note the battery level at the end of that week.

What you will find is that the battery level will be little changed at the end of the week when the phone is left "off", but if left "on", the battery won't even power the phone for a week before it's dead.

BTW, your suggested theory of the TX/RX circuits still being "on" when the user thinks the fone is "off" is pretty tin foil coated.

Such a theory would require ALL the cellfone manufacturers to employ control features in the fones to leave the TX/RX always on. NO cellfone manufacturer is bound by any current .gov regulation on this front.

Furthermore, if only SOME manufacuturers were to employ this feature, it would lessen battery life compared to their competitors so much as to make the product competitively inferior. NO manufacturer would unilaterally put themselves in that position.

In essence, your secret government mandate to keep track of phones by forcing cellphone suppliers to leave the TX/RX on all the time is pretty tin foil coated.

 

[AZ Jeff]

For the phone system to know where the phone is, the phone must transmit. I don't know of any phones that keep transmitting when they're in their "sleep" state that most people think of as being "off".

The point wasn't about whether or not the phone was completely dead when it's "off", but whether or not it could be tracked while it's "off". It can't.

CORRECT. See my other post on this topic for more detail.

 

[bruss01]

Hey there - not a cell phone engineer but I am an electronics geek from back in the day and an all around tinkerer.

AZ, I see your point about it being ridiculous to think that a cell phone in "soft off" mode could transmit continuously. That would use too much juice, would be noticed, etc.

However, as another poster mentioned, there are some devices which use little, almost no power, simply monitoring for incoming signal. In the case of a TV, the incoming signal is from the remote. Only once it has received the "turn on" signal from the remote does it begin to use any appreciable juice. It may be that they are indeed capable of monitoring (polling) a cellphone location in "soft off" mode by sending it a signal instructing it to send a brief "burst" transmission every 15 minutes, advertising it's whereabouts. 99.9 percent of all cell phones would never be in this mode, and the .1 percent who they are tracking (and have activated the feature) would likely never notice the miniscule amounts of power this type of "burst" transmission would use up.

Not that I think this is going on, mind you - just that I know engineers are very clever and resourceful people, and this type of thing is at least technically possible. John Gilmore is currently suing the government over a "secret law" regarding ID's and public transportation, we'd be foolish to think there aren't any other "secret laws", things which are mandated which are verboten even for the participants (airlines, cell phone companies) to talk about or admit.

 

[JohnKSa]

It is possible.

That's why conspiracy theorists are so hard to shut down. You can tell them why it's extremely unlikely, why no one would do it, why it's not really feasible, but all they care about is if it is possible.

The amount of power used is dependent on the length of the transmission and the distance from the phone to the cell tower. You can't just turn on and transmit for a microsecond or so and then shut off. (Yes, I know you COULD, but remember, we're talking about what could be done with the equipment already installed all over the country in every cell phone tower. NOT what the current limits of technology are. The idea that specialized eavesdropping equipment could be installed in every one of the literally thousands of towers around the country AND that it could have been kept a secret isn't likely in the same way that the sun setting in the east isn't likely.) The phone and the system must go through the formalities of establishing a communication link and then exchanging the data. That takes about a half a second or so.

The amount of power used would be less than normal during a conversation but more than during the times when the phone is on but not being used for a conversation. I don't think miniscule is exactly a good characterization, it would result in a noticeable reduction in battery life compared to other similar phones. Transmitting uses a LOT of power compared to not transmitting, even with short and infrequent transmission times.