Legal Battles Over Cellphone Tracking 141
stupefaction writes "The New York Times reports on recent successful court challenges to police use of cellphone tracking information in the course of an investigation. From the article: 'In the last four months, three federal judges have denied prosecutors the right to get cellphone tracking information from wireless companies without first showing "probable cause" to believe that a crime has been or is being committed. That is the same standard applied to requests for search warrants. [...] Cellular operators like Verizon Wireless and Cingular Wireless know, within about 300 yards, the location of their subscribers whenever a phone is turned on.'"
It's less than 300 yards (Score:3, Informative)
As a rule of thumb... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.spywareinfo.com/articles/cell_phones/ [spywareinfo.com]
As a general rule, I always turn off the location settings on my phone. Sprint has had this feature enabled by default for the past 3 years, and it wasn't until recently that I learned I was broadcasting my whereabouts 24x7.
Re:As a rule of thumb... (Score:4, Informative)
E911 (Score:3, Informative)
That will help but it won't solve the problem even if you manage to turn out any kind of E911 [wikipedia.org] related GPS system (I am assuming that is what you are talking about) that may be built into your mobile phone. The thing is that every time that you use the phone your service provider can still track your location since they know which GSM cell you are in and they can even roughly position you within the cell without ever retrieving any location data from your phone. This is done by using data retrieved from the GSM trancievers in each cell which allows your sevice provider or anybody they are cooperating with to approximately calculate your location. They can even trigger interactions with your phone to discover your location without you ever using it, of course this only works if you keep it switched on all the time. Then of course there are military systems used for tracking GSM phones (among other things) which are much more powerful.
Re:Criminals are tracked? (Score:1, Informative)
Yeah, and an asteroid might also fall on your head and kill you.
What you're talking about is extremely rare and unlikely event that is so improbable that it's lunacy to worry about it.
Get on with your lives, people!
Re:OMG I feel so much safer now... (Score:3, Informative)
With there being little to no evidence that this increase in legislation will actually do anything to make terrorism less likely. Maybe rights hindering legislation isn't the best way to address the issue in the first place, even if it is maybe it isn't the general public who should be having their rights hindered.
And now I'm supposed to feel better because of THREE recents cases where judges actually did their jobs?
Together with an unknown number of cases where judges didn't. Together with the problem that judges generally arn't those holding people in custody in the first place.
Re:Not too ambiguous (Score:3, Informative)
Basically (The following is for UK, ymmv), when you ring someone your phone negotiates with the network, establishes a voice channel to dial the number and *then* turns on your microphone so background noises don't interfere with dialing tones. When people ring you, your phone may turn the microphone on if you have voice answering (For example, you just say "answer" on a handsfree without needing to push anything) but it won't establish a voice channel until it actively picks up the call.
Get priorities right. (Score:4, Informative)
Starting with very dubious electronic voting machines and who you vote as leaders.
Once you get too many of the wrong people in power, they can change all that stuff very quickly. Look at the Patriot Act, and all the recent crappy laws with dangerous long term consequences.
If citizens keep sticking their heads in the sand (or erm troughs of junk food?), the leaders can basically do what they want with impunity.
Even if you don't allow tracking now, Mr Evil Dictator can always turn it back on, once he's in power.
So the main thing is to never allow Mr Evil Dictator a chance to get power in the first place.
It is quite scary and sad that history has proven that many people will actually be willing to listen to some evil person and give him the power. These people will willingly kill anybody - even their relatives or parents/children just because "it's their job" or the supreme leader told them to.
Re:Search warrants? (Score:4, Informative)
http://faculty.ncwc.edu/toconnor/315/315lect06.ht
Re:It's less than 300 yards (Score:4, Informative)
Re:It's less than 300 yards (Score:3, Informative)
Suburbia is a lot easier to deal with than a big city.
More Like 300 Inches (Score:2, Informative)
Re:It's less than 300 yards (Score:5, Informative)
The land-line mixups are poor implementation or upkeep of the database (think reverse DNS) that the phone switch operators are supposed to be keeping.
Some tech somewhere needs to understand the phone routing and add the entries into the database. When a phone number is moved, it doesn't always get updated. Likewise, the geographic data used to determine the center called based on the location isn't always accurate.
That's above and beyond the general PIA of databases in the first place.
My part-time ISP employer is going through this as it tries to become a CLEC to cut dial-up line costs, so I have learned some of this firsthand. You ALWAYS need to tell dispatch WHERE you are first, clearly and as accurately as you can. Don't depend on them knowing where you are.