Posted on 02/11/2010 11:08:16 AM PST by Free ThinkerNY
The Justice Department is poised this week to publicly defend a little-known law-enforcement practice that critics say may be the "sleeper" privacy issue of the 21st century: the collection of cell-phone "tracking" records that identify the physical locations where the phones have been.
It may come as a surprise to most of the owners of the country's 277 million cell phones, but their cell-phone company retains records of where their device has been at all times—either because the phones have tiny GPS devices embedded inside or because each phone call is routed through towers that can be used to pinpoint the phones' location to within areas as small as a few hundred feet.
Such location "logs" never show up on your monthly cell-phone bill. But federal court records filed over the past year indicate that federal prosecutors and the FBI have increasingly been obtaining such records in the course of criminal investigations—without any notice to the cell-phone customer or any showing of "probable cause" that tracking the physical location of the phone will turn up evidence of an actual crime.
"Most people don't understand they are carrying a tracking device in their pockets," says Kevin Bankston, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy group that has been trying to monitor the Justice Department's practice.
Much about the practice—including how many "tracking" records have been collected by the government—remains shrouded in secrecy. But in one court case in which the use of such records arose, a Philadelphia FBI agent named William Shute testified that he had obtained such records 150 times in recent years in order to track the location of federal fugitives.
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.newsweek.com ...
Your phone sends a query to cell towers periodically. That’s how they know to route calls to that particular tower.
You would think it would take some time to do that, and in electronic terms it does, but it's only seconds to us. These new switches are very fast.
“Just because you’ve got a digital signal doesn’t mean anyone can write up programs to accurately analyze it ~ look at the Global Warming Models for example.”
You’re kidding right, people accurately analyze terabytes of data every single day. It isn’t really that hard. They just put your cell # in the query and it returns all your data. Its called a database.
Comparing it to global warming is beyond ridiculous.
Yes, the police investigators use this info all the time to trace peoples movements. They don't know exactly where you are but can pinpoint it within a square mile or less, depending on how many cell towers there are and which ones you switch to. The phone does this automatically to maintain a good connection. This has nothing to do with GPS.
In some cases like emergency recoveries, they can ping the phone, the phone will answer and they can triangulate the signal to a precise location.
If one were really wanting to stay under the radar, so to speak, one would not have a cell phone in their possession.
“Call volume only works when you’re on a call. “
From a telco point of view they can see and track calls. They know how much capacity they have and how much is used. Busy cell towers would show more calls. They have no need to know your GPS coordinates for capacity planning.
If there was a real business use then business would have pushed for the GPS locator in phones. Instead the federal govt pushed it.
The only real business use is the GPS systems which are phone based. Those will show you the accuracy with which they can track you.
I guess, if they like boredom. :’) Thanks justiceseeker93.
Not mine. I keep the battery disconnected and travel everywhere I go in a Faraday cage.
Track my phone now, bitches!
or frame someone else. ;)
do you use "zone alarm?"
LOL, just b/c a phone has been in a certain place(s) doesnt mean youve been there too.
Or, maybe they don't know that they should want me and not you.
Yeah, it's all too easy to compare to what went on with GW.
You still don’t get it. If they have this power they will abuse it. Sometimes we can trust those with the power and others we have a communist in power who will use it to oppress those who disagree with him.
Ideologies that highly prize thugs are always like that.
Sholzenytsen put his finger on the fundamental problem with Communism. As your degree of guilt declines the punishments increased. You saw that signature in the idea that someone who missed one monthly payment for his medical insurance ought to be tagged with a $250,000 penalty and jail time.
“Yes I’m paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?”
Says it all.
Communists have killed 70 million in China and about 40 million in Russia (depending on source). Then there’s the 6 million in Germany from those socialists. And a few million more by Pol Phot using the same tactics.
But I guess those don’t count.
There were other clues he'd worked up regarding who might be the class enemy.
I seriously doubt he went after the cellphone users!
Wow thats a good one.
>Does this work if the phone is off?<
still trackable
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