Ashcroft knows where you've been. "Your Cellphone is a Homing Device"

"Your Cellphone is a Homing Device"

QUOTE
IF YOU PURCHASED A NEW CELLPHONE over the past 18 months or so, odds are that one of the features listed in small print on the side of the box was "E911 capable." Or, as in the case of my latest Motorola, "Location technology for piece of mind." Perhaps you asked the salesman to explain the feature, and he replied that it means that cops can home in on your phone in case of an emergency, a potentially important perk should you ever find your hand pinned beneath an immovable boulder in rural Utah, as Aron Ralston did recently. Assuming he could have gotten a signal, an E911-capable phone might have saved the young backpacker the pain of having to amputate his own arm.

What your salesman probably failed to tell you—and may not even realize—is that an E911-capable phone can give your wireless carrier continual updates on your location. The phone is embedded with a Global Positioning System chip, which can calculate your coordinates to within a few yards by receiving signals from satellites. GPS technology gave U.S. military commanders a vital edge during Gulf War II, and sailors and pilots depend on it as well. In the E911-capable phone, the GPS chip does not wait until it senses danger, springing to life when catastrophe strikes; it's switched on whenever your handset is powered up and is always ready to transmit your location data back to a wireless carrier's computers. Verizon or T-Mobile can figure out which manicurist you visit just as easily as they can pinpoint a stranded motorist on Highway 59.

So what's preventing them from doing so, at the behest of either direct marketers or, perhaps more chillingly, the police? Not the law, which is essentially mum on the subject of location-data privacy. As often happens with emergent technology, the law has struggled to keep pace with the gizmo. No federal statute is keeping your wireless provider from informing Dunkin' Donuts that your visits to Starbucks have been dropping off and you may be ripe for a special coupon offer. Nor are cops explicitly required to obtain a judicial warrant before compiling a record of where you sneaked off to last Thursday night. Despite such obvious potential for abuse, the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission, the American consumer's ostensible protectors, show little enthusiasm for stepping into the breach. As things stand now, the only real barrier to the dissemination of your daily movements is the benevolence of the telecommunications industry. A show of hands from those who find this a comforting thought? Anyone?
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I thought I was being paranoid -- guess I am not crazy. But I am sure the FCC will protect us -- NOT.

In their mad, stumbling rush to turn the bulk of the US population into mindless, uncaring, bitter, destitute and unemployed serfs, most with criminal records by means fair or foul, I am beginning to think that another goal is to get us to find out all this stuff that they can do to manipulate consumer technologies against us and get us to un-adopt them.

Thus enhancing the effect of their plans for us. They really don't want the rabble talking amongst themselves and getting all in a lather when they start figuring out what they are up to, do they?

Cell phones have been used, almost since inception to track people.

Remember a cell phones "registers" with a cell and that registrations happens over and over as you travel.

Now in the past, this provides general information as to your whereabouts, so where you are within a 10 square mile area, or your rough path roughly traveled.

There have been several cases where a murderer will have his alibi invalidated, based upon data from the cell phone company. The murdered says I was in "Nw Columbus", when clearly his car phone was in "sw columbus", etc.

Now with this new "feature", this capability is much more exact.

Nonethless, if you have a reason to be fearful of being tracked, just keep your phone turned off, or at least out of line-of-sight with the sky (and hence the sats)

the internal gps unit?

I know that the newest technology on automobiles allows a stolen auto to be tracked even though the on-board unit, usually radio, is turned off.

until we all get the butt chip

Hate those facking things. I wouldn't own one at all if I didn't have to take call.

It's so ironic that in this technology age I am closely examining my use of technology and reducing it wherever possible.

They want to chip your food. Next, they'll want to chip your toaster.

They put GPS into a phone I paid $49 for, but I can't buy a Garmin for less than a hunnert bucks?

Least they could do is put a lat/long line in the display...

this is a Congressional mandate. It came about during the Clinton administration, not as a BFEE plot. The system is deliberately designed to be invulnerable to disabling. Got signal? E911 knows where you are.

I know this because I have relatives who have personally worked on the tower-side architecture that enables "e911." As a system and project, it blows swine, but it's The Law - because The Law, you see, can summon technology into existence at a whim! Why, all that it'd take to get the matter transporter from Star Trek into actual reality would be an act of Congress!

As far as I understand, E911 doesn't have anything to do with GPS.

I am in the wireless industry.... My compnay builes wireless infrastructure.


That capability does not exist until the infrastructure..(I.e. cell sites) have a billion dollar imporvement in technology... It is currently a real battle between the wireless carriers and the FCC regarding the implementation curve.


Secondly even if the technology is in place it will only work as long as you are on the phone talking. the minute you end the call they would have not idea where you are.

There are not satelites associate with cell phone service.

It all done with triangualtion between three tower sites. ANd that is why the sytem does not work real well... you have to be "HEARD" by three sites simultaenously...... because of NIMBY issues cell sites are not nearly dense enough and where they are its doubtful you could fould find three spare channels simultaneousl to get a location fix.

This 3 tower thing. I used to work in the industry too. I can assure you that I have been in rural areas where there was only ONE tower for 20 miles or so and my phone worked just fine as long as I was close enough to the tower.

"This 3 tower thing. I used to work in the industry too. I can assure you that I have been in rural areas where there was only ONE tower for 20 miles or so and my phone worked just fine as long as I was close enough to the tower. "

The post you're referring to, the person was talking about triangulation. So, if you want reception, one tower is fine. However, if you want to pinpoint where a cell phone is, you need more than one tower (3) to find out where the signal is coming from.

Cell phone towers do not need GPS to track a phone location. However, having GPS could make it easier, and a lot more precise.

able to make such an authoritative statement. I knew someone on DU would be able to shed a little technical light on the topic.

ON EDIT ADD
I guess you should notify Sprint because IN jANUARY OF 2002, they released the first cell phone with a Global Positioning System chip that will fix its location.


QUOTE
Under the Phase 2 mandate, all wireless carriers were required, within six months of a request from a Public Safety Answering Point (the site where emergency calls are routed), to be able to locate 67 percent of the 911 callers within 164 feet using a handset-based solution or 328 feet using a network-based solution beginning on Oct. 1, 2001.
UNQUOTE

ON EDIT ADD
A google with "cell phone" E911 returns a list of articles on the topic. Apparently it is operational.

"Cell phone or tracking device? How new tech will target you", June 13, 2001

QUOTE
By the way, since your telephone is regularly announcing its presence to the cellular network, E911 can find your location--and track you--even when you aren't actually using the phone.
UNQUOTE

The facts say you are wrong :shrug:

I am not wrong. E911 is "operational" only to the extent that the equipment is in place at certain cell sites with certain carriers. But the triangulation to pinpoint someone's location is nearly impossible to achieve currently. It is predominately an issue of cell site capacity and sprectrum limitations.

Yes it is true that all cellphone in the on position always seek the closest cell tower...but....and this it the big but......you con't register identity on the system until you push the send button to place a call.

The system only "finds" you when you have an incoming call and your phone is on. Its ability to locate you has nothing to do with the GPS system.

Think of its this way: your phone has no internal memory to store phone messages...You call the voicemail system. If the sytem could locate you there would be digital chip to store you messages the way an answering machine does.

It was only a matter of time before this happened. With the way the law is set-up now ala the "War on Terror" it won't be long before everyone is a suspect.

http://www.mobileinfo.com/News_2001/Issue31/privacy_location.htm

too tired to look for link of actual bill, but that link mentioned it

Onstar uses GPS, Onstar advertises on hate radio