[Semper911]

Just for the record, I was talking about the pre-paid type of cell you buy at a 7-11. You really don't think I am so stupid as to suggest that cell phone activity is untraceable.

Regardless, I of course now believe we are dealing with with a landline, and the perp will have brilliantly made certain that the call will not reveal his whereabouts. He is no dope. He may be a sick f*cker, but we should respect him.

[eno_]

Calling cards and prepaid cell phones are routinely traced in criminal cases. The calling card company keeps track of who dialed who from where. Other than adding a step to the process of tracing a call, calling cards do not add anonymity. You are better off using a pocketful of coins, since most chain drugstores have good security cams and your calling card probably had to be activated at the register, tying your purchase to a particular location. You would have to be careful to buy a calling card where tracing the purchase is difficult, and to use it in a way that makes it hard to trace through use patterns - i.e. use it once only. Cell phones are tracable from the moment they are turned on, prepaid or not, and are harder to buy at locations that don't have security cams.

Also, even the most 3113t H@xorz can't fool the telephone network anymore. Switches talk to each other using a signaling system that is impervious to "blue boxes" and other exploits that relied on tone signaling. Like I said earlier, you might find a few islands of antique equipment in the U.S. network, but, in general, the telephone network is now pretty hard to crack. The best the shooter can do is make it tedious to find where he called from, to give himself a little time to get away. But even that carries risks: Let's day he routes a call through several hacked corporate PBXs, and let's say operations at those companies are slovenly enough that the PBX usage records are useless or non-existent. The telco billing info will still be enough to follow the call back to the source. And even then, the caller might get tagged by a fraud-detection system.

Most successful cracks these days involve social engineering (and I'm certainly not ruling out the possibility!). That is the only plausible way the shooter could truly disappear into the U.S. telephone network. Hoewever, all that said, the shooter is driving around shooting people. He clearly KNOWS there is no way to do what he is doing and not have just a limited time to get away. I expect he sees telephone communictaion the same way.

I DO respect the shooter's ability to evade capture. I'm suprised at how little information the LEAs evidently have. They COULD be playing it close to the vest, but the cost of additional victims is so high, and the track record so far is that they have been clutching at straws.

Lastly, if he manages to talk on the phone to the police without getting caught, would you call it the work of a brilliant psycho, or good tradecraft?