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."
Privacy or surveillance... (Score:3)
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...You can't have both.
In other shocking revelations, squares are not round.
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.
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Sure you can. Just not of the same data points.
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...You can't have both.
But who here WANTS surveillance? :P
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Everyone want surveillance. The questions are how much and when.
Re:Privacy or surveillance... (Score:5, Insightful)
With respect, bullshit
What you meant was, "Privacy or Mass Surveillance.... You can't have both".
Privacy in the long run will always benefit the People more than governments use of mass surveillance to allegedly provide the People with more security. The common mistake is treating the government like a regular person and evaluating their possession of information as having the same possible consequences which completely ignores the massive differences in power between both actors.
Simple surveillance, under Due Process, is not affected by creating laws to protect Privacy, or laws that ban the use of mass surveillance on people.
Law enforcement and governments will always have enough resources and technology to intercept communications and watch a single person. It is the traditional stake out, using listening devices, gathering information the old fashioned way, etc. They might not be able to do this to millions of people at one time, but that is the point. It is dangerous to allow them to do that.
Convince me that more than 10% of the population is currently engaged in conspiracies to commit heinous and violent acts against other citizens (forget that bullshit about the War on Drugs) and it *might* be a point for discussion.
The greatest danger we face is the government . That's not paranoia either, but simple observation of the facts and history.
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The name of the Act is Geolocational Privacy and Surveillance Act. It does nothing to protect privacy.
Your illogical, meandering rant aside, as long as you are under surveillance, you're are not experiencing privacy. The act of surveillance necessitates the removal of privacy.
Hopefully that's less confusing.
The greatest danger we face is the government
Thanks for your agreement.
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Sorry, I accidentally made reference to TFS, forgetting that many on /. lack the skill to READ before commenting. I'll clarify for the shortbus crowd:
The name of the Act is Geolocational Privacy and Surveillance Act. It does nothing to protect privacy.
It seems you are riding the shortbus. All you did was parrot two words in the summary and say that only one can exist at one time, which is untrue. Aside from your baseless and unwarranted character attacks....
Your illogical, meandering rant aside, as long as you are under surveillance, you're are not experiencing privacy. The act of surveillance necessitates the removal of privacy.
No. My rant is quite logical and far from random or aimless, which is implied by meandering. Your disregard for the context of TFS (which I did read) is misleading. It most certainly is talking about privacy of citizens as a whole and surveillance as it relates to single individuals.
You do a disse
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You mean there are no ways to at least try find middle grounds in particular situations? Gee.
Good work! (Score:1)
From now on, I'll only make calls from stolen cell phones. Way to go gov!
This just isn't right... in any way (Score:5, Insightful)
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If you're not a criminal, or an "unwanted race" under some future tyranny state, what does it matter that the government tracks your phone? Besides you can disappear quite easily by just pulling the battery.
The facebook issue is more seriously, but when you publish things publicly, whether it's the new facebook or the old newspaper, the government can and will collect that data. Solution: Keep quiet.
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Is there any phrase more overused and insulting, when brought up in a discussion about rights? Maybe "think of the children"?
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This just the same old line, "If you are not guilty, then you have nothing to hide."
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If you're not a criminal, or an "unwanted race" under some future tyranny state, what does it matter that the government tracks your phone?
That's rather shortsighted. Simply because you aren't oppressed right now doesn't mean you won't be later on. Better to stop such Orwellian policies before you need them removed than after...not to mention the ethics of allowing others to be oppressed and not giving a rip because it isn't you.
/. has seen stories where "${Ridiculous_Action} is illegal in the state of..." For example
And let's face it, "criminal" is a term that is defined by the government. I'm sure everyone here on
Re:This just isn't right... in any way (Score:5, Insightful)
Well instead of bitching here on Slashdot, try writing (pen and paper, not email) your representative in congress and insisting they pass the Geolocational Privacy and Surveillance Act, with no watered down provisions.
Is it really so hard to get a warrant? If you can't convince a judge, why should a email to your cell provider suffice?
Seriously? (Score:2)
Do you seriously think facebook stuck around because of your work and not because corporations already did the same thing and paid facebook to keep the servers on? Or do you just think that (nearly unrestricted) corporate privacy invasion is less bad than government privacy in
Re:This just isn't right... in any way (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no privacy. That's the price of modern convenience. Some of us warned folks 10+ years ago this day was coming. Most largely ignored it because of "Ooh, shiny" or "convenience".
Genie's out of the bottle. Good luck getting it back in.
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eww. wow, you must be some kind of super genius, having 'warned' us of the no existent ant problem.
Twit.
Nice out of context quote, btw.
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If Fred and Bob meet at a restaurant, who "owns" the factoid that "Fred and Bob ate at X restaurant at Y time". That data has monetizable value, but who has the rights to sell it? Does Fred? Does Bob? Do they both have joint and several rights? Does the restaurant get to sell it?
The same goes with Facebook. What you post on the site is no longer exclusively "your private data". Any middle-schooler can (or should) realize that Facebook makes money by selling that data, and that you should expect them t
Re:This just isn't right... in any way (Score:5, Insightful)
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We The People Have not made up this country since FDR.
I don't know what Fellow Man your talking about...but they sure aint my fellows.
If they are so much your fellow man, go run for president and fix things.....Good luck with that.
Re:This just isn't right... in any way (Score:4, Insightful)
Riddle me this then: How is it that restrictions on fine print of financial agreements between lenders and average borrowers, which garner the support of 90% of Americans in polls, aren't actually in place? How is it that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, opposed by roughly 65% of Americans for years, are still going on? How is it that even though people across the political spectrum from Tea Partiers to Occupiers are demanding that big banks be investigated for what appears to be fraud fraud worth trillions of dollars, no such investigation is taking place?
I can guess at who's demands the government is actually satisfying, but it's definitely not the general public's.
Re:This just isn't right... in any way (Score:4, Informative)
A beauracracy the size of the US government will always have corruption in it, but it still always comes back to us when we don't remove those responsible.
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The government IS a disconnected entity of sociopaths. We the people have a small amount of leverage to decide which of the two biggest douchbags in the country we hate the least, and then provide all power to them. Sure people say just vote for someone else, and in many parliaments they have in recent years.
As a result now countries like the UK and Australia have to battle with a hung parliament, a major party making back room deals with batshit crazy independents and the greens in order to get enough numb
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How much worse can this all get?
Much, much worse. [imdb.com] Of course, it's very simple to put and end to. Just stop patronizing the worst offenders... but nobody wants to do that.
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Re:This just isn't right... in any way (Score:4, Insightful)
I can stop using Facebook or Google without uprooting my life. I can't stop using the United States of America without uprooting my life.
I choose what I give over to Facebook or Google. The government is choosing what it takes from me.
Facebook and Google are only beholden to me insomuch as I fund their operations. The government is beholden to me by the mere fact that I am a citizen and they should be implementing things for my best interest.
Facebook and Google are interested in connecting someone with a product with someone who could make use of that product. The government is interested in many things including harassing people that don't agree with it.
If Facebook or Google wrongs me I can sue them in open court and, if the wrong is great enough, I can have others join my suit. The government can, without input, shut down my suit before anyone sees it through a variety of means.
Anyone else want to add a few more distinctions?
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I choose what I give over to Facebook or Google.
A large chunk of the information Facebook and Google know about you was collected from people other than you.
You can choose what you give Facebook/Google, but you cannot choose or limit what knowledge they have about you.
Same rules for everyone (Score:2)
What I want is to have the same rules for everyone, with the exception that the police can get a court order for special actions (searches, tracking, wiretapping, etc.). If it's legal for a private person to secretly track someone, then the police don't need a warrant. If it's not, then the police can't do it either unless they get a warrant. Any exceptions should be explicitly created by law, such as access to DMV records and criminal databases.
If we had such a simple and straight-forward interpretation
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Re:Same rules for everyone (Score:5, Insightful)
Correct. The police should be more constrained in their actions than the average citizen. Unfortunately we've allowed things to get turned on their heads.
4th amendment. no new law required (Score:5, Insightful)
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Every time we pass a new law we water down the constitution.
"papers" - is not strictly paper. it is where their data is stored.
"effects" - whatever they have
"houses" - where they store themselves and their stuff.
"persons" - they themselves
what more is needed?
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A carve-out for law enforcement.
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A strict Constitutionalist does not interpret the literal meaning in the sentences. (S)He tries to interpret the spirit of the sentences at the time they were written. Otherwise, they would think that people have the right to bear arms...as in the mammal's arms.
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Except that surveillance, simply having an approximate idea where you are, is not now, and never was a search. Just like having a detective follow you around is not a search.
The fundamental problem here is that the drafters of the Constitution did not foresee technology that allowed a government to invade your privacy from a distance, and it never occurred to them that invasion of privacy itself was a problem. Therefore there is no constitutional right to privacy. A huge oversight based on the era in wh
Incorrect (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Incorrect (Score:4, Insightful)
Some of the justices in the GPS case mostly objected to the fact that a physical device was attached to the suspects vehicle. If the tracking was entirely unintrusive as with tracking a cell phone it may have had a different outcome.
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I'd suggest you read the decision. There were comments by some of the judges objecting to the narrowness of the decision. I think if it were cell phone tracking there is a decent chance they would have found that unacceptable too.
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Those objectors did not prevail. Minority opinions never count.
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Arguably, if it's ex post facto it's not surveillance, it's searching data that I collected (or someone collected ostensibly on my behalf) which should require a warrant. And and I'd be willing to bet that if the founding fathers could have predicted our nation becoming a panopticon where every man, woman and child is being surveilled (by your definition) every minute of every day, I would be willing to bet my hypothetical time machine that they would have included wording against it.
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Therefore there is no constitutional right to privacy.
Many Supreme Court justices and rulings would disagree with you on that point. Here's a fairly well-sourced discussion on the right of privacy [umkc.edu].
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Therefore there is no constitutional right to privacy.
Many Supreme Court justices and rulings would disagree with you on that point. Here's a fairly well-sourced discussion on the right of privacy [umkc.edu].
Which begins with EXACTLY what I said above: The U. S. Constitution contains no express right to privacy.
It then goes on to list the depressingly small instances where specific privacy rights are protected.
Be careful what you cite.
Wikipedia says this [wikipedia.org]:
Concerning privacy laws of the United States, privacy is not guaranteed per se by the Constitution of the United States. The Supreme Court of the United States has found that other guarantees have "penumbras" that implicitly grant a right to privacy against government intrusion, for example in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965). In the United States, the right of freedom of speech granted in the First Amendment has limited the effects of lawsuits for breach of privacy. Privacy is regulated in the U.S. by the Privacy Act of 1974, and various state laws. Certain privacy rights have been established in the United States via legislation such as the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), the Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act (GLB), and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).
Re:4th amendment. no new law required (Score:5, Insightful)
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What's being searched? My understanding is they aren't accessing your phone and making it tell them where it is, the police are just homing in on a signal that your phone is emitting.
Seems to me the best why to deal with this is to just add more to privacy laws, just like other PII, a person's location is protected information.
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The Ninth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America:
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
Privacy was recognized as a right some time ago. It isn't just the 4th amendment that is under attack here.
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/rightofprivacy.html [umkc.edu]
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Again, this is incorrect. I have to assume you "nothing is being searched"ers simply haven't read the GPS decision, which clearly discusses why a warrant is required. From the GPS decision
They had a problem with monitoring a persons l
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"“We hold that the government’s installation of a GPS device on a target’s vehicle, and its use of that device to monitor the vehicle’s movements, constitutes a ‘search,’”
Just devil's advocate here. But you're on slashdot, you should know your operators.
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"You can have ice cream and cake."
"But I just want cake."
"Too bad, only ice cream in addition to cake is allowed."
Hmm. The English language doesn't seem to always use its conjunctions in a manner that unambiguously maps to their mathematical usage.
You CAN turn off your phone. (Score:4, Insightful)
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...
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There is an APP for th.... oh wait. You can't simply remove the battery on the iPhones.
Sounds like a damn good reason not to buy an iPhone then.
Re:You CAN turn off your phone. (Score:5, Insightful)
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After all I paid for the phone and I'm a citizen not a subject. If they can convince a judge they can get a warrant, otherwise hands off.
How quaintly puritan an attitude you posses, good sir. I shall apprise good president Thomas Jefferson of your enlightened opinion.
Good morrow to you!
News bulletin: The US became a Police State a long, long time ago. Only a fool or an insane person would believe otherwise.
Still, TERRISTS!!
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I don't think I should have to disable my phone to prevent the authorities from high jacking it. After all I paid for the phone and I'm a citizen not a subject. If they can convince a judge they can get a warrant, otherwise hands off.
The advantage to taking out the battery, especially when doing something private, is it protects you even when the police DO have a warrant!
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Unlike GPS devices covertly installed on your vehicle by police, cell phones are in the user's control. You don't have to leave it turned on all the time. In particular, if you are doing something private, like visiting your mistress, you can simply turn the phone off before driving to her apartment. And if you're afraid the phone will still leak location information while in standby or power-off mode, you can simply remove the battery.
Well by your line of reasoning, automobile users are still in control because they could just not drive their car. You don't have to be in the car all the time. In particular, if you are doing something private, like visiting your mistress, you can simply ride the bus to her apartment. And if you're afraid the car will still leak location information while in your driveway, you can simply remove the battery...err, wait.
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There are known cases where officials or inteligence services has tapped to cell phones what have been just turn off by button. That is one reason why in Russia in high level meetings you don't just turn phone off, but you need to remove the battery and leave them to another room.
If I remember correctly, there were even slashdot story about it few years ago.
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Not just in Russia. There's plenty of places in the US where phones stored outside of an area are required to have their batteries pulled too.
A cell with a battery installed can still be used to track and eavesdrop, regardless of it's perceived power state.
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wrongly formulated (Score:5, Insightful)
In this case, the bill should simply state that a warrant is required when someones location is actively monitored within a certain precision for a certain time period.
Same with laws around cookies, which is a topic among lawmakers in some countries. Instead targeting cookies, these laws should address the fact that a user is uniquely identified across sessions and/or websites. Cookies are just one way to achieve this, but there are others which do not even require cookies, such IP number in combination with all sorts of data such as browser agent, os, screen resolution etc. etc. that makes any user pretty much unique even without cookies.
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Yes. If they just follow one simple rule, all these special laws are completely unnecessary. If the police or govt want to track you, search your property, see your activity from phone, bank, credit card, etc. transactions, they need to get a warrant. Following someone doesn't require a warrant if they're following your movement in public access spaces.
Here's the simple rule:
If the info isn't available to the public and isn't info you explicitly gave to the government, then a warrant should be required. No
Holy shit! (Score:1)
Wait wait wait, you're trying to tell me that the congress is actually planning to pass a law that doesn't fly in the face of the constitution and actually reinforces the 4th amendment?
My calendar says 5/18 not 4/1...
One solution (Score:2)
One solution to being illegally tracked like this is to remove the battery if you are wanting to remain private.
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Sticking the phone in an RF shielded bag will also work, however it might be a little harder on battery life.
The problem with these solutions is they defeat the purpose of carrying a phone.
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And if you get an important phone call while your phone is off... I'm sorry, you shouldn't be doing something you want to remain private at the same time your loved ones might get into a car accident.
To the Max! (Score:1)
> University of Pennsylvania computer science professor Matt Blaze...
"Awww, come on, ma! Couldn't you have named me 'Max Blaze'? Then I could have been a secret agent. Now I have to be a university professor >:-( "
Not news and has long been true (Score:3)
When E911 was mandated and everyone had to be able to provide the position of a phone calling 911 to the emergency services, the original solution was that every phone was going to have to have a GPS in it. A lot of them do (and did) have a GPS chip, even ones that don't let you get access to the positioning information. But many providers didn't want to pay for that chip until the user was really going to be doing something with it that they would somehow get paid for so they went another way: with Differential Time Of Arrival, or DTOA. GPS frequently doesn't work when you are in a building but DTOA doesn't care about a few walls as long as it has signal because they don't slow the signal down much compared to the time it spends passing through air.
The nifty thing about DTOA from a technological standpoint is that cell sites tend to have sectored antennas, so you only need two of them to triangulate a target, and even one site is going to significantly restrict your search area, to a relatively small arc.
Re:Not always more accurate (Score:5, Insightful)
The cell tower nearest my home is about 2 miles by crow, but 15 miles by car, on the other side of the reservoir. GPS is much more accurate.
Don't they use your distance from multiple cell towers to triangulate your position?
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Another source of data as well as triangulating based on towers, and calculating vector based on checkins would be timing advance.
I have no idea if that is logged, but if it is, that narrows your position down to half a kilometre.
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For a second there I thought you misspelled "chickens" and it made your statement much more entertaining.
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.
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But they do get reflected by objects causing unpredictable time of arrival between cell towered and phones.
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Will obtaining a warrant delay this type of thing, is it worth it?
Fine line in deed.
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Well, if we all needed an authority figure's permission to do anything at all, we'd probably all be safe, but it would suck to live that way.
Freedom for all means that some people can unfortunately abuse it. And requiring permission to invade everybody's private life and violate their rights is more important than overreacting to scares of rare events like kidnapping and terrorism.
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Usually there's a pretty substantial delay before anyone is actually reported missing. How much of a difference would getting a warrant really make? I doubt very much.
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Re:Not always more accurate (Score:4, Insightful)
do you really think law enforcement would ever be expected to wait to get a warrant before rescuing a kidnap victim?
Only if they want to convict the kidnapper. Using warrants and following the law are sort of important when it comes to convicting someone of a crime.
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do you really think law enforcement would ever be expected to wait to get a warrant before rescuing a kidnap victim?
Only if they want to convict the kidnapper. Using warrants and following the law are sort of important when it comes to convicting someone of a crime.
You're not talking about looking for evidence of a commited crime, but a violent crime (murder, rape, kidnapping) in progress. There's a very big difference.
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You're not talking about looking for evidence of a commited crime, but a violent crime (murder, rape, kidnapping) in progress.
I agree that getting the victim back alive is the number 1 priority, but in order to convict the person responsible for the crime, the police must collect evidence. If the evidence they find was obtained illegally, i.e. found as a result of tracking a cell phone without a warrant, then all of that evidence cannot be used in court, and the kidnapper has a much better chance of getting acquitted. IANAL, but that is my understanding of how criminal law works.
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Whose cell phone are we tracking? The kidnapper or the kidnappee? If the latter, there's no legal problem as the kidnapper has no expectation of privacy from someone else's cell phone, only his own. Kidnapper? Yes, you need a warrant. I'm wondering if there would be an "exigent circumstances" workaround for crimes-in-progress (like hearing someone yell "help" from behind a locked door).
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If the phone belongs to a kidnap victim there's probable cause.
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If only there could be some sensible approach to solve that problem, like simply allowing an exception for easily provably exceptional circumstances like kidnappings. If only that was possible. Unfortunately it's not, so we must follow one extreme or the other, always a warrant or never a warrant. Too bad.
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Does one success make up for the raids on wrong addresses that have occurred?
http://www.cato.org/raidmap/ [cato.org]
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I'm only close to one tower. Triangulation plus GPS gives the best results on Google Maps.
Re:Not always more accurate (Score:5, Interesting)
Your cell phone pings at least three cell tower (if just at range) and selects strongest one of them.
And even that your cell phone does not connect to cell, it does not mean cell have not received its signal. Cell phone simply rejects the connection either knowing it can not boost signal so it is too weak or it is just so weak that even max boost it can not hold the stable enough connection to cell.
At country land GPS is more accurate (few meters at starts but even few centimers at longer time when holding at same position, depending how accurate the clock is in device) but even with cell towers (if you just get at least three or two longer time) you can get location few tens of meters or even the estimation of the area where you can be.
GPS is great for the user. As user is the one who gets positioning as well, not just carrier. So user can give that location information to services trough data connection to get more nice features from the phone.
But really, phone without GPS doesn't mean you can not be tracked.
That is one reason why no one at battlefield is allowed to carry a own cellphone because at electronic warfare, such device is bright like a smoke grenade at daylight. Every device emmiting signal can be detected and pinpointed its location.
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Your cell phone pings at least three cell tower (if just at range) and selects strongest one of them. And even that your cell phone does not connect to cell, it does not mean cell have not received its signal. Cell phone simply rejects the connection either knowing it can not boost signal so it is too weak or it is just so weak that even max boost it can not hold the stable enough connection to cell.
I live in a ravine a couple of miles from the nearest line-of-sight cell tower, and reception there is so poor that I had to install a signal booster to have even the proverbial snowball's chance of getting reception. Even with the signal booster, I've watched various geolocation apps* (with GPS turned off) try to locate the position of my cell phone. It's quite humorous to watch my position jump by several miles while I'm sitting in my living room. My point being, while I agree that it's possible to be
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If phones claiming to have built-in GPS had "GPS Mode" - all transmitting antennas off and receiving antennas seeking stationary GPS satellites to triangulate - we wouldn't be having the problem in TFA. "GPS" has become as meaningless as "HD" or "100W equivalent".
yours doesn't? (Score:2)
I'm fairly sure I've seen phones with GPS chips where you could choose whether or not to use "assisted GPS". If you turn off your cell radio and turn off assisted GPS, then all GPS should work as you describe.
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Re:Not always more accurate (Score:4, Informative)
Presumably they have more information than just which cell tower you are most strongly connected to. Cell towers generally have directional antennas, and have more of them in denser areas, so they will have a pretty good idea what direction from the tower you are in.
That is exactly right. Each cell tower has 2 - 6 cells, the borders of which are usually measured somewhat approximately by the operator. So they know which cell you are in, which tells them the rough area around the cell tower that you are in.
They also have the ability to measure round-trip time for signals sent to your phone, giving a rough estimate of the distance from the tower to you, inside your cell (this actually becomes less accurate when signal reflection is an issue).
Finally, the cell phone constantly measures _all_ cells it can find. Not just the ones belonging to your operator, but other operators as well, including (if the phone is capable) 2G, 3G and 4G cells. All this is reported back to the radio network controller to assist with handover decisions between cells, so your operator (and thus anyone else with enough authority) can access this information.
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Your nearest GPS satellite is over 10,000 miles away (and had to travel around the planet to get into orbit). I'm not sure the distance or the journey have much to do with accuracy, but I dunno, maybe you know more about this than Matt Blaze.
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"The cell tower nearest my home is about 2 miles by crow, but 15 miles by car, on the other side of the reservoir. GPS is much more accurate"
The above is NOT insightful, it is stupid and wrong.
Slashdot, how low you have sunk.