Sprint Revealed Customer GPS Data 8 Million Times 315
An anonymous reader sends along Chris Soghoian's blog entry revealing that Sprint Nextel provided law enforcement agencies with its customers' GPS location information over 8 million times between September 2008 and October 2009. The data point comes from a closed industry conference that Soghoian attended, at which Paul Taylor, Electronic Surveillance Manager at Sprint Nextel, said: "[M]y major concern is the volume of requests. We have a lot of things that are automated but that's just scratching the surface. One of the things, like with our GPS tool. We turned it on the web interface for law enforcement about one year ago last month, and we just passed 8 million requests. So there is no way on earth my team could have handled 8 million requests from law enforcement, just for GPS alone. So the tool has just really caught on fire with law enforcement. They also love that it is extremely inexpensive to operate and easy, so, just the sheer volume of requests they anticipate us automating other features, and I just don't know how we'll handle the millions and millions of requests that are going to come in." Soghoian's post details the laws around disclosure of wiretap and other interception data — one of which the Department of Justice has been violating since 2004 — and calls for more disclosure of the levels of all forms of surveillance.
automated tool for locating cells? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, with 8 million requests in a year I'd say it's already very 1984ish. Wonder if this overrides the '911 only' setting on many handsets?
The funny thing is, those of us who saw this coming and knew that any sort of GPS capability for which it is technically possible for the phone company to read that GPS data would be abused in this fashion were usually called "paranoid" or "conspiracy nuts". How many examples like this do we need before people are less quick to dismiss what they should be examining as a real possibility?
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he funny thing is, those of us who saw this coming and knew that any sort of GPS capability for which it is technically possible for the phone company to read that GPS data would be abused in this fashion were usually called "paranoid" or "conspiracy nuts"
It really doesn't matter that they use GPS. Any transmitting radio device can be tracked. It's just a matter of having the right tools and the training to do so. The question you've got to ask yourself is whether or not the convenience of a cell phone is worth the trade off of the phone company having access to your whereabouts whenever you carry said cell phone with you.
While that's absolutely true, it's also a less convenient way to track someone. Less convenient than having their handset automatically and periodically broadcast its already-calculated whearabouts to anyone who wants to know. Is either carrying a transmitting radio, or carrying a transmitting radio with GPS perfect? No, that's why I never claimed that it was. Do I prefer that we raise the bar as much as possible for this sort of surveillance, and consider it in terms of "the more effort, training, and
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Yeah but triangulation is difficult and time-consuming, plus far from exact. It also requires knowing where somebody is at, else you'll be triangulating Baltimore when the suspect is over in Philly. In contrast GPS is like a big sign that says, "Here he is" as it moves across the cop's map. It's precise, instant, and easy
Well, to be clear, triangulation is easy if you are the cell company or software running on the device. Google maps has (and still does) used triangulation to get pretty accurate location for years - before GPS was as common or when GPS signals are unavaliable. That still requires hacking either sprint's network or the device itself, but it's just good to be clear that not having GPS on a device doesn't save us much.
-Taylor
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The minute your phone makes/receives a call or SMS they know which tower it's on.
Its worse than that, EVERY SECOND they know where you are, MS (mobile station = phone) logs into every tower it sees fit. Every tower that has this MS in range logs its position (signal strenght, time drift).
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Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:5, Insightful)
You are paranoid, a conspiracy nut and have a highly inflated self-image if you honestly think that anyone in the government gives a flying fuck about what you're doing.
If I exceed the speed limit by 10 mph and a traffic cop notices, at that moment someone in the government has chosen to give a fuck about what I am doing. Therefore, it doesn't take much to meet this definition you have given, and that's assuming an honest cop and honest state legislators. I don't even want to know what kind of extralegal problems dishonest cops and corrupt officials could cause with impunity.
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Which is completely different to thinking that someone is watching all your movements through the GPS data from your phone.
???
8 Million is a big number, I would like to see all 8 million warrants please... I mean they are public record right? shrug...
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Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:4, Interesting)
someone in the government gives a fuck about the location of some random slashdotter while they are on the phone.
True but people here on slashdot (some of us at least) leave the house and interact with people and go places.
COP 1: Someone broke into building X last night.
COP 2: Pull up the Cell GPS logs and see who was in the area.
COP 1: O.. good idea! Hey look these 2 people have records!
COP 2: GREAT!!! bring them both in, we got our criminals.
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Because of course, 8 Million is a made up number....
Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:4, Insightful)
On the contrary, this tool is an illustration of what happens when the threshold for looking stuff up becomes sliding a mouse across a desk between mouthfuls of doughnut.
The issue is precisely that the threshold is low, and that it is used because the threshold is low, and now what "anyone in the government gives a flying fuck" is not "murdered four cops" but rather "looked cute in the DMV line last week."
If being tracked was not important, even on a silly, superficial level, why did you post anonymously? Hmmm?
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Uh, with 8 million requests in a year I'd say it's already very 1984ish.
What you don't realize is that 7.9 million of those requests were generated by LEO officers trying to keep tabs on their teenage daughters. The other .1 were guys checking up on their wives.
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if(yourRant != topic)
{
return null;
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Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:4, Funny)
Yikes. I hope he wasn't posting from a Fios connection.
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There is a bug in your code. I think you are missing the goto 10
Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:5, Insightful)
The true 1984 will come, when all your health records will be known to the Federal Government so that it can monitor both the health care you are getting and whether you are complying with the mandate to carry health insurance.
It sure is "Orwellian" and it is true [csmonitor.com]... Republicans may have skirted some laws (although no more than Democrat Roosevelt did, when arresting thousands of Americans of Japanese, German, or Italian origin) in their "war on terror", but to establish a true Big Brother, a nation needs an Illiberal in office...
Or it needs to have one party, the Statist Party. This party has two factions; one is called the Democrats while the other is called the Republicans. Their value to the Statist Party is derived from maximizing small, petty differences and minimizing fundamental similarities. I'll explain one such similarity.
Traditionally, the Democrats/Leftists prefer personal freedoms at the expense of economic freedoms, while tradtionally the Republicans/Rightists prefer economic freedoms at the expense of personal freedoms. This is the case even though a freedom, once restricted, is never made unrestricted again. So the parties take turns being in power, and while there they implement their particular brand of restrictions. When the other party reacquires power, they further implement their brand of restrictions without lifting those enacted by the party that was previously in power. This guarantees that over time, you end up with less freedom and eventually end up with a total police state. This is only one technique in use. The notion that over generations of time, no one in those parties would have noticed this and decided to change it is absurd. Therefore there can be nothing accidental about it.
The important thing about this system is that it appears to provide choice to the electorate. The electorate must remain convinced that their votes matter and might really change the system, or else they lose all incentive to participate in the system and accept it as valid. This is necessary because the British have already tried to control this region by brute force and overt authority and were not successful; therefore something more deceptive is needed.
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...sure, unless you're broke.
Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:4, Interesting)
So when I can keep all of my money because the rightists abolish income tax but I can't marry my partner because we're the same gender and their magic book says that's not allowed... how exactly is that personal freedom?
Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:4, Interesting)
to establish a true Big Brother, a nation needs an Illiberal in office
Mussolini was a liberal? Buddy, you sound both ignorant and insane. Your health care records are already owned by the government. They have access any time they want them.
In return the government is owned by the insurance company as well as every other big corporation.
By the time Mussolini returned from Allied service in World War I, he had decided that socialism as a doctrine had largely been a failure [wikipedia.org]
Sounds like the Republicans... AND the Democrats.
Facism [wikipedia.org] "Fascism, pronounced /fæzm/, is a political ideology that seeks to combine radical and authoritarian nationalism[1][2][3][4] with a corporatist economic system,[5] and which is usually considered to be on the far right of the traditional left-right political spectrum.[6][7][8][9][10]
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You'll be arguing these fine legal points in courts, until the judges get bored with it and begin fining you for contempt as they already do to people, who argue, that the entire Income Tax is unconstitutional [wikipedia.org].
The monstrosity has to be stopped now (make that a "Now!!!" — with the Illiberal-beloved raised fist). Don't wait for it to b
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Fines for contempt (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd think, the 1st Amendment ought to protect their speech, at least... Maybe, wasting the judge's time is contempt, but I am very-very-very worried about people getting fined for expressing their legal opinions — they didn't curse the judge or refuse to rise up. Simply ruling against them is one thing, fining them for even bringing the matter up is a "chilling message".
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Here's the problem: when it went to the supreme court, they recognized that this was the case and said it did not *matter* because the man in charge of certifying the ratification had approved the process.
Yes, you read that right. The courts said that even though t
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But I'm kind of embarrassed to be agreeing with you, when you use terms like "Illiberal". It's similar to how I dislike a significant portion of the people who argue that drugs should be legalized, even though I AGREE with them. I think you would be much more effective if you toned down the rhetoric some, and I honestly mean that in a helpful
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1. What the hell does your health insurance rant have to do with the subject at hand?
2. You quote the Constitution like fundamentalists quote the Bible; you're damn sure there's something about 'insert rantable subject here' in there but you have no proof of reference.
3. The Federal Government doesn't HAVE to have the power to 'fine people for not buying a product'; your State/Commonwealth has been doing it for years with Auto Insurance. Don't want to p
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Ah, the old "if you don't like this, leave" argument. Funny how you leftists cried foul when the rightists made that argument but now use it yourselves. Fucking hypocrites.
It's worth pointing out that this is far from the first time "love it or leave it" has been turned around on someone who said it. I'm guessing the first time someone said something similar on american soil was the first people to walk across Beringia [wikipedia.org] 25,000 years ago, and whoever said it probably had it said to them 24,999 years ago.
It's also worth pointing out that one side of the political spectrum calling the other side of the political spectrum "hypocrites" is pretty ridiculous.
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Freedom of association is protected by the 1st amendment. The 4th amendment protects the privacy of my papers and effects. The 10th amendment reserves all powers not specifically granted to Congress to the states or the people. I'd say that's enough reference for anybody.
You have a very simplistic view of the law. You are aware that there have been well over 200 years of case law between the ratification of the Constitution and now, right? The framers didn't do us many favors by only spending a few sentences on the first, fourth, and tenth amendments. They are not as straightforward to interpret as you seem to think they are, and many smart people have spent books writing about what they mean. In other words, no, that's not enough references for anybody; or, at least, anybo
Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:5, Interesting)
The subject at hand outrages Illiberal slashdotters because the government's law enforcers find it "too easy" to get GPS-data about their suspects (the subset of suspects, who are also Sprint customers) from Sprint. The "health insurance rant" is related to that, because people with self-consistent beliefs ought to be even more outraged, by the government's attempts to learn about each citizen's (suspected of anything or not) health care, linked precisely to their financial information [csmonitor.com].
That's what links the two topics fairly closely. I hope, I was able to address your concern.
Didn't you promise to leave for Canada in 2004? What happened — the door slammed you too hard on your way out?..
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The subject at hand outrages Illiberal slashdotters because the government's law enforcers find it "too easy" to get GPS-data about their suspects (the subset of suspects, who are also Sprint customers) from Sprint. The "health insurance rant" is related to that, because people with self-consistent beliefs ought to be even more outraged, by the government's attempts to learn about each citizen's (suspected of anything or not) health care, linked precisely to their financial information [csmonitor.com].
It's funny that you say "self-consistent [beliefs]" when you really mean "consistent with my beliefs".
I think there are pretty clear differences between having a database of database of medical records subject to the same HIPAA regulations we have now and a warrentless GPS tracking program. Those differences mainly being usefulness to me, accountability for abuse, and intention of use to spell it out.
I did read your link btw, and it hinges on:
HIPAA's so-called privacy law permits individuals' personal health information to be exchanged – for many broad purposes – without patients' consent (See 45 CFR Subtitle A, Subpart E – Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information; section 164.502(a)(1)(ii) "Permitted uses and disclosures").
So I went to see who could look at your identifiable health
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I think it will just be a tax credit for the rest of us and not a fine.
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Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:5, Informative)
Automated tool for locating cells? wow that sounds like an invitation for disaster and abuse. So what happens first, someone hacks it, or it's used in a 1984 style manner? (my guess is the latter has already happened/happening.)
Your latter guess has been mandated by law since the passage of the 1996 telecommunications act. Your cell phone can be listened to and tracked anywhere within coverage area as long as your cellphone has its battery inserted.
Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:4, Informative)
Welcome to the Technetronic era!
FYI, Zbigniew Brzezinski [wikipedia.org] is one of America's most influential foreign policy strategists.
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So HE'S responsible for pumping up the jam.
Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:4, Insightful)
Your latter guess has been mandated by law since the passage of the 1996 telecommunications act. Your cell phone can be listened to and tracked anywhere within coverage area as long as your cellphone has its battery inserted.
[citation needed]
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... Your cell phone can be listened to and tracked anywhere within coverage area as long as your cellphone has its battery inserted.
Uh, really? Even when the phone is powered off? My phone doesn't seem to communicate with the cell towers when its powered off, or else the battery would still die. Are you citing some verifiable resource, or just conspiracy theory? I'm not trying to flame, it just sounds unlikely to me that a powered off cell phone would still be trackable. Of course, if you really don't wanna be tracked, removing the battery is safer, because crazier things have happened, but still, are you sure you're correct?
-Taylor
Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember who signed that into law the next time you hear someone try to tell you that Democrats are actually better than Republicans.
And remember who controlled both the House and the Senate when that law was passed by both houses the next time you hear someone try to tell you that Republicans are actually better than Democrats.
Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:4, Insightful)
I love it! You get an informative mod and I get a troll one for saying the exact same thing. Moderator hypocrisy seems to be on full display today, doesn't it?
No, actually I was refuting your attempt at painting the passage of the act as if it was the fault of the Democrats and the Republicans were totally clear and innocent. The Republicans supported it 100% in the House and by a 96.2% margin in the Senate. The only reason it made it to the desk of Clinton to begin with was through their support of the act.
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I love it! You get an informative mod and I get a troll one for saying the exact same thing. Moderator hypocrisy seems to be on full display today, doesn't it?
Naw, slashdot mods are just slow and sporadic. On the bright side, it's only a matter of time until you both get modded down for trolling.
Re:automated tool for locating cells? (Score:5, Informative)
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This just goes to show that the purpose of the two party system it to keep us bickering between each other. In reality, if only a handful on either side voted against it, then both sides are filled primarily with a bunch of freedom hating fuckwads.
How to fix things: break them further (Score:2)
I suspect that focusing the spotlight on the roaches at the top will send them scurrying for cover in rapid order.
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When we can watch the watchmen, they will restore proper checks and balances (require a warrant or similar).
That would be nice if it was true but I assure you that important people will get a special private flag on their accounts to prevent terrorists from hacking in and finding where they all are...
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RTFA .. or even the story excerpt (Score:2)
and then go learn what "web services" are.
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Guess whose contract with Sprint is up for renewal (Score:2)
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To make wireless communications possible, our network knows the general location of your phone or wireless device whenever it is turned on. Your wireless device sends out a periodic signal to the nearest radio tower/cell site so that our network will know where to route an incoming communication and how to properly bill for the service. This is necessary to make wireless communications possible. Location information derived from providing our voice service, in addition to being covered
Re:Guess whose contract with Sprint is up for rene (Score:5, Insightful)
You think the cops are watching YOU? What are you doing that makes you so paranoid?
That's cute, quaint, and outdated. It used to be that the state had limited resources and therefore, of economic necessity, it could only focus its manpower and its surveillance capability on what it considered to be the most dangerous/influential dissidents. That has been the case, historically.
Technologies like automated GPS and massive databases have changed the game. The more technology advances, the cheaper it becomes to surveil more and more people. A state that would have had to focus its efforts on the 50 most dangerous dissidents 100 years ago can now use those same resources to monitor hundreds or thousands. Over time, that becomes more and more the case. You now have modern governments with plenty of manpower, nearly unlimited funding (thanks to deficit spending), and high technology which can efficiently keep tabs on millions of people at once. The more this is the case, the less unusual you have to be to stand out from the crowd and attract unwanted attention and scrutiny. We are quickly heading towards a future where even expressing a slightly unpopular political opinion can get you noticed whether or not you are informed of this fact.
Think of all the people who have committed no crimes, have not even been accused of a crime, yet end up on the "no-fly" list for no apparent reason and are not allowed to find out why. Right here in America, the "land of the free." Then consider that this list is special because its existence is publically acknowledged and its use appears to be relatively limited.
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Here's an obvious example. You feel passionately about some cause so you go to some rally in a park somewhere. Mind you this rally is totally peaceful and people even cleanup after themselves!
However, unknown to you the "Feds" have setup a program that queries this database looking for anybody whose within the boundaries of the park and puts all the names into a big dossier.
It would be very easy to append that dossier to the d
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You think the cops are watching YOU? What are you doing that makes you so paranoid?
Welcome back Glenn Beck! Hey you should really make an account here so we can all subscribe to your slashdot RSS feed.
"Who watches the Watchers?" (Score:5, Insightful)
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8 million times? (Score:3, Informative)
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That could easily be 15 people, one "location" revealed per GPS heartbeat for the full year+month. Or a slightly larger number of people tracked for smaller periods of time. No, I didn't read the article, but 8,000,000 sounds ridiculously high for individual requests.
I suspect this is closer to the truth. Try getting even 100 requests for information out of a telecom, much less 8,000,000 individual requests, even if the tool is somewhat automated.
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Errr - since the phone company gets paid every time they provide the data, I doubt they put any roadblocks in the process.
The tinfoil hat jokes are on us. (Score:4, Insightful)
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And tomorrow's front page headline. The question is whether the headline article will say, "What an outrage; someone should stop this!" or the more likely, "This is why you need to calm down and be good citizens."
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Your staid, respectable, "serious" journalists will write a bunch of he-said/she-said articles, where bland denials from law enforcement will be taken at face value.
The only part of this that isn't completely predictable is trying to figure out how right wing s
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And if the trend is continuing, pause to imagine the unprecedented horrors that await us tomorrow.
Just Sprint, or others as well? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Just Sprint, or others as well? (Score:5, Informative)
Out-of-date laws are the culprit (Score:5, Informative)
While the Lenihan order [eff.org] and decision did say that the government cannot demand location information without a search warrant, that decision has been appealed by the current administration [irregulartimes.com]. And even if the DOJ loses that appeal, the decision would only apply to a limited section of the country - other courts could decide differently.
The bigger issue is that electronic communications laws are badly out-of-date. There are so many grey areas and loopholes that Sprint and the DOJ can easily argue with a straight face that GPS records are not protected by the Constitution, are not protected by federal or state law, can be demanded without a search warrant, can even be voluntarily handed over with no process whatsoever, do not have to be logged, and do not require anyone ever to tell the person whose location information was collected that they were tracked. And while the courts often do get it right eventually, that's a really slow battle - we need a better approach than that.
We (the ACLU) are launching a new campaign, Demand Your dotRights [dotrights.org], to push companies and lawmakers to provide real protections for our personal information. The "Electronic Communication Privacy Act," which is supposed to protect information like GPS records, was passed in 1986(!) - it just doesn't fit any more.
We hope you will all sign on and join our efforts to push Sprint, lawmakers, and others to respect individual privacy. It clearly won't be an easy battle (seeing how Sprint is actually proud of its "over 8 million GPS record requests served" title), but with enough support, we hope to make a difference - and we could use your help!
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I bet there's something in the Sprint contract that lets them 'provide information to law enforcement officials in the case of an investigation' or something like it.
What rights the government doesn't take you can still give away.
Others too (Score:2)
The article mentions Verizon turning over data as well. They are currently the leader in marketshare in the cell phone market too. I am sure they all do this...
Glad I don't have GPS in my cellphone (Score:2)
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I'm glad I don't have a cell phone.
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I'm glad I don't have a cell phone.
I really don't understand that. I mean, are you a criminal doing serious stuff where tracking would matter? Not that this sprint stuff is okay, but i mean, I just don't get people without cell phones. And i've had the why or why not discussion on slashdot enough I don't want to have it again, but still, i just don't get it. I mean, you don't not have it just to avoid tracking, do you?
-Taylor
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I am now really glad I don't have GPS in my cellphone. In fact, I am glad I almost never even have my cellphone with me anymore...
They can still find you to within a couple hundred meters. They use cell triangulation for 911 calls and smartphones with google maps use it with surprising accuracy for a rough fix when GPS is off or out of signal.
-Taylor
Triangulation not so good (Score:2)
I don't know if this is specific to Google maps on Android, but when I have the GPS turned off the wireless triangulation is off by at least a half of a mile every time. Makes me wonder if I get in a car wreck in a ditch if they'd really be able to find me.
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I don't know if this is specific to Google maps on Android, but when I have the GPS turned off the wireless triangulation is off by at least a half of a mile every time. Makes me wonder if I get in a car wreck in a ditch if they'd really be able to find me.
Yeah, I'm not sure. It seemed to be better on my windows mobile phone back in the day when i first got it, but that is probably just my perception and not reality. For people seriously trying to avoid being found though, half a mile is still something to worry about though. If the FBI was after someone, that would probably be enough.
And yeah, i just verified on google maps on android that i get a location accurate to 800 meters, which is pretty much exactly half a mile. It may seem more accurate because whe
Warrant required? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Surely warrants have some kind of identifier on them, even if it's just the title. Seems easy enough to require the police to fill in another field with the warrant ID. The defense lawyers can then sort through it all and blow things up at their convenience.
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That's great that they have a web interface to service the law enforcement needs to track people by the GPS in their cell phone. How does the web site verify a valid warrant? Does the web site ask them to hold it up to the screen for verification?
A warrant is only necessary if the government wants to take something by physical force or wants to search something that is considered private against the consent of the owner. If the cops knock on your door and ask to read your copy of TV Guide, they don't need a warrant if you voluntarily give it to them. Knowing and uncoerced consent (absent any other taint of illegality such as an illegal seizure) always negates the need for a warrant.
Moreover, as far as the law is concerned, absent a particular contra
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You have to agree to be monitored by the police to use a cel phone in the states? and you act like its no big deal!
You seem to think that they are talking only about GPS enabled phones, but what they are probably talking about is cel phone triangulation, more commonly called GPS-A. To me its pretty scary because the government should not be able to track you without a court ordered warrant! thats called freedom, and it prevents SEVERE abuses of power. Sounds like this info may be archived to a database too.
Not just Sprint (Score:3, Informative)
This was interesting:
The first agency within DOJ to respond was the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS), who informed me that they had price lists on file for Cox, Comcast, Yahoo! and Verizon. Since the price lists were provided to USMS voluntarily, the companies were given the opportunity to object to the disclosure of their documents. Neither Comcast nor Cox objected (perhaps because their price lists were already public), while both Verizon and Yahoo! objected to the disclosure.
I am sure all the major providers are guilty of this. Regardless, I am curious to see if 911 operators are lumped into those requests. Many of them may be dispatch trying to find someone's cell phone from an accident or someone in trouble.
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That was my initial thought, too.
Hopefully, more details will be released.
Legislate with Your Wallet (Score:2)
I think because of Paul Taylors attitude " and I just don't know how we'll handle the millions and millions of requests that are going to come in."
Most smart people will gravitate toward other service providers rather than become a statistic picked up by cops just 'cause they're cops and they wanted to."
When the industry picks up that we want more privacy then we'll get it. Or else.
Okay, so I suck at math, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
...I'm willing to take a crack at some amateur number crunching.
Per billshrink [billshrink.com], Sprint is responsible for 51M out of 268M or so that are in the cell phone market. 8M of those were monitored via data collected via Sprint, and it is unknown whether or how this number scales across the other providers.
Google [google.com] holds the US population at 304M.
CNN [cnn.com] has the US prison/probation/parole population at 7.3M.
Right off the bat, it seems like you have a greater chance of having the government track your GPS data than being actually convicted of a crime. And this assumes the numbers are equal, where they are not.
7.3M from a total of 304M is 2.4%. The odds of you being a criminal are approximately three in one hundred.
8M from a total of 51M is 15.6%.
6.5 times as many people, proportionately, were spied upon by Sprint on behalf of law enforcement.
Extrapolating that out, something close to 50M people's cell phone data was shared with law enforcement. Looking at the prison population numbers, this means for every criminal in the entire system, something like five were investigated. And that doesn't completely hold up either because those 7.3M aren't cell customers on the one hand, and not every citizen in the US is a member of the market share.
And this is just the data we know about.
Again, the math here is almost certainly wrong, but I'm sure some bright slashdot folks can come along and help us with that.
Law enforcement? (Score:2)
What makes Sprint/Nextel think all those requests come from law enforcement?
It was rumored that the FBI's "carnivore" monitoring system was predominantly utilized by unauthorized third-parties, and there's been considerable speculation that until recently remote wiretaps were being performed predominantly by individuals from overseas (from what I understood from a friend that was an engineer for AT&T, he felt that they were some combination of industrial spies and just plain miscellaneous hackers).
It's legal, and it's no big deal (Score:4, Informative)
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Do you have to have three towers within range to get a triangulation? When I'm home, I'm within range of one tower. When it goes out (it has twice), I have no cell reception.
There are plenty of places in the U.S. without more than one tower in range.
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I believe you only need 2 towers for triangulation (you are the 3rd point in the triangle). And even with 1 tower, they still know your approximate location (i.e. they know you are close enough to that tower to get reception, and not close enough to any other tower to register). They might even be able to tell distance from the tower by signal strength or delay. Enough to support or destroy an alibi.
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You're not taking into account that cell towers are omnidirectional.
You need 3 towers. If there are two, you could be in either of the two places of equal distance. You need the third tower to take the ambiguity away.
http://www.hacking--thealliance.50megs.com/images/cell_triangulation.gif [50megs.com]
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BMO
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trilaterlization (not triangulation) can be done with just 2 towers, but it's iffy. If the 120 degree arcs of the antennas overlap roughly symmetrically and the phone isn't near the edge or either arc, it can sometimes be impossible to map the phone to a single location. If the point opposite the phone in relation to the line of symmetry also falls within the overlapped area, there's no way to know which is the actual location and which is the reflection without having a third tower present. Having a third
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We have always been at war with Oceania...
Big Brother Loves You.
(Blank is beautiful!)