Cops' Warrantless Cell Phone Tracking Now Better Than GPS 147
Sparrowvsrevolution writes "On Thursday, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing to discuss a proposed bill to limit location tracking of electronic devices without a warrant — what it's calling the Geolocational Privacy and Surveillance Act, or the GPS Act. Ahead of that hearing, University of Pennsylvania computer science professor Matt Blaze submitted written testimony (PDF) telling Congress that phone carriers, as well as the law enforcement agencies with which they share data, can now use phones' proximity to cell towers and other sources of cellular data to track their location as precisely or even more precisely than they can with global positioning satellites. Thanks to the growing density of cell towers and the proliferation of devices like picocells and femtocells that transmit cell signals indoors, even GPS-less phones can be tracked with a high degree of precision and can offer data that GPS can't, like the location of someone inside a building or what floor they're on. With the GPS Act, Congress is considering expanding the ban on warrantless tracking of cars with GPS devices that the Supreme Court decided on in January. Blaze's testimony suggests they need to include non-GPS tracking of cell phones in that ban, a measure law enforcement agencies are strongly resisting."
Re:Privacy or surveillance... (Score:5, Funny)
I dunno, have you met many slashdotters? I'd say that most of them are square and quite round.
Re:You CAN turn off your phone. (Score:5, Funny)
There is an APP for th.... oh wait. You can't simply remove the battery on the iPhones. Droid users must be cheating on their wives! /not posting this from my company phone...
Re:Not always more accurate (Score:5, Funny)
The cell tower nearest my home is about 2 miles by crow, but 15 miles by car, on the other side of the reservoir.
We're talking about radio waves, not vampires. They cross water and don't follow the road.