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Is That Cell Phone Tower Watching Me? 314

Posted by timothy from the correct-word-is-perceptive dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Cell phone networks, FM radio towers and television antennaes could all turn into pieces of cheap and dirty tracking networks that use passive radar, according to this fairly comprehensive article. These new systems are only a couple years away from roll out for uses such as small airport radar coverage but wild possibilities abound including using cell phone networks to track speeders, terrorists or even individuals walking on city streets."
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Is That Cell Phone Tower Watching Me? More

Is That Cell Phone Tower Watching Me?

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  • Cellphones to track speeders? (Score:5, Funny)

    by TheMidget ( 512188 ) on Tuesday October 14, 2003 @02:43AM (#7206509)
    So now you can get two tickets for the same offense:
    • The first for speeding
    • The second for leaving your cellphone on while driving (and no, hands-free sets don't count: even if they keep your hands free, they don't keep your brain free)
    • Perhaps you are a passenger.

      1) You weren't driving; no problem with that law. 2) Speeding? If you are in the car with someone who is speeding, will you get a ticket?
    • And soon in the not too distant future a third fine because you were thinking about goatsex while doing the above.

    • These are only the "same offense" if having your cellphone turned on forced you to exceed the speed limit, or vice versa.

      That would be like saying not wearing a seatbelt and not having proof of insurance are the same offense. No. You aren't wearing your seatbelt, AND you don't have proof of insurance.

  • Terrorists my ass (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 14, 2003 @02:43AM (#7206512)
    When are people going to stop tossing the obligatory terrorist reference into these articles? Like that makes it ok?

    Percent of civilians tracked by stupid new technology: 100%
    Percent of "terrorists" tracked by stupid new technology: 0%

    What's the percentage of civilians likely to turn into terrorists because of stupid new technologies?

    • Re:Terrorists my ass (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kfg ( 145172 ) on Tuesday October 14, 2003 @02:54AM (#7206578)
      You are mistaking the point of most of the new "anti-terrorist" laws and technologies.

      They have nothing to do with anti-terrorism, and never have.

      They are for catching the guy who grows a few weed plants in his basement to suppy his friends and send him up for 20 years instead of the 3 months they could previously nail him for.

      Ashcroft is actually now teaching local law enforcement how to misapply anti-terror legislation to petty crime.

      And he's pulicly proud of the fact.

      None of these initiatives are ever likely to catch a terrorist and they know it. They've always known it. The terrorists will simply work around them and start passing encrypted coded messages on flash paper "post-its", or take out coded classified ads in the papers or call "home" and ask, "You want me to stop for some chicken on my way home from work?"

      No, anti-terrorism was, is and always shall be nothing more than an end run around the Bill of Rights for perfectly normal crime.

      KFG

      • Re:Terrorists my ass (Score:3, Interesting)

        by MoneyT ( 548795 )
        And this is exactly what you get when everyone and their mother blames the government, and the FBI and the CIA for allowing 9/11 to happen. Here's the tradeoff that people don't understand, if you want the government to be proactive instead of reactive, they need to powers to be proactive, and you're going to have to sacrifice a handful of freedoms for it. Else, stop bitching when the government can't do something like catch 8 people that are conspiring to hijack planes.
        • You have been listening to your government for too long.

          "Proactive terrorism prevention" is, as many posters have pointed out, not designed to prevent terrorism. The government now has unprecedented power to control their own citizens, and if they happen to accuse a few brown-skins of being terrorists along the way then that's just an added bonus. How long did it take the US government to draw up the Patriot Act? 4 days after the WTC attacks? Or did they just have it sitting around, waiting for the rig
        • This is total BS. The FBI and CIA... and even the White House had plenty of information to catch the 9/11 hijackers, but they all ignored or overlooked the info that they already had.

          The government doesn't need more tracking and more info to stop what happened on 9/11. No, they already have enough, but incompetence or maybe even malice kept our government from protecting us that day.

          Hell, Israel even warned our government multiple times months before 9/11, that Islamist terrorists were planning on hijac
        • if you want the government to be proactive instead of reactive, they need to powers to be proactive, and you're going to have to sacrifice a handful of freedoms for it.

          You don't have to sacrifice anything. The right way for the government to be proactive is to gather some modesty and stop being the world's asshole. Embracing freedom is embracing safety, it's just that the people are so used to sucking off of the governments tits that they don't care anymore.
    • technology is not all bad.

      this (tracking) comes just as a natural extension of the gsm network(it makes it possible, it's been possible for years already.). just like cameras and fast computers(or just buttload of people spying each other, ala east germany) make it possible to record everybody who visits a certain herbal store(or tells the foreign people that their best 'friend' is really a goverment agent).

      now, it's up to the goverment to make sure these things aren't exploited so that the normal citiz

  • Um, OF COURSE it's watching you (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Saint Stephen ( 19450 ) on Tuesday October 14, 2003 @02:44AM (#7206521) Homepage Journal
    Is this news to anyone? If the thing can send you a call it can draw a little blip on a computer screen showing (within 600 feet or so) where you are walking.

    I asked an Army Special Ops guy one time: Is Big Brother here? He said: When he wants to be. So I said: but most of the time he's just not interested in looking right? And he said, of course.
    • 600 feet?

      Here in the Netherlands they're starting up a service that uses the location of your cell phone to locate the nearest (bar|restaurant|car repair|cheese shop) when you ring them. They claim their accuracy is < 50m in inner cities and less than 1km in rural areas. Of course this depends on the frequency of cell phone towers which is a lot higher in Europe than in the US
      • it's possible to calculate the point much more accurately than by just by the gsm-cell you're in.

        there is a service that allows for it (IF YOU WANT IT, MOST IMPORTANTLY: IF YOU DON'T WANT IT SHIT WILL FLY TO THE FAN IF IT'S USED, currently it's not legal for parents to use the system to look up where _their_ _missing_ kids are, which is something that they're working on making an exception to. oh, and there's no 'bending' the law either) here too, it's possible by knowing the signal strengths to nearby tow
    • It really depends on the density of cell phone towers. I think it varies from around 2 km if you are out in the middle of nowhere, to a few meters in the city.

      In the UK people have been convicted based upon evidence provided by mobile phone companies, which pinpointed their location. In one case a man was convicted of murdering his niece when it was shown that he had been using both his and her mobile phone to send messages back and forth in order to create an alibi for himself. Both phones had been using

  • Careful Note (Score:3, Funny)

    by oGMo ( 379 ) on Tuesday October 14, 2003 @02:46AM (#7206531)
    Is That Cell Phone Tower Watching Me?

    Cell phone networks, FM radio towers and television antennaes could all turn into pieces of cheap and dirty tracking networks that use passive radar [...] for uses such as small airport radar coverage but wild possibilities abound including using cell phone networks to track speeders, terrorists or even individuals walking on city streets.

    Note: these will not have any effect if you are wearing your tinfoil hat. In fact, I can sell you one right now for just $19.95 plus S&H. If you order now, I'll throw in a free pair of tinfoil shoe covers so they can't see where you've been, either.

    Prices shown do not include sales tax. Void where prohibited.

    :-P

    • Ha Ha you fool. Its a passive radar system that uses reflections of cell radio waves to track you. I suspect a tin foil hat will be mandated headware under the Patriot Act in a few years.
  • Why is it that issues brought up articles such as these that could have far-reaching implications for privacy and even the day-to-day functioning of people in general, are always an afterthought? I mean, c'mon, does this, "Once the passive-radar cat is out of the bag, there's even a chance it could evolve into a means of tracking people on the street," really cover all the ground for an advanced technology such as this?

    Maybe I'm just expecting too much from Business Week and the like.

    At any rate, at
  • Interesting. Ross Anderson describes in his Security Engineering book how the military these days don't always use "active" radar to track enemy movement. Because if the enemy detects radar, they know that you are somewhere in the area, which you might not want. So they developed passive radar technology that measures the influence of, say enemy airplanes on publicly available signals, like TV or satellite. That way they can track the enemy without the enemy knowing that they're being watched. Wickedly cool
    • Remember that F-117 shot down over Bosnia? Remember how they mentioned something about "cell phone towers" but really didn't explain?

      Look carefully at a description of how the shape of stealth aircraft works, they always show the radar beams bouncing off and going up or to the side. Aside from the absobtion qualities of the materials they use, the energy STILL GOES SOMEWHERE.

      Stealth only works because the SOMEWHERE part is usually back at the sender.

      Now, stick a receiver on an aircraft or in space or o

  • These new systems are only a couple years away from roll out for uses such as small airport radar coverage but wild possibilities abound including using cell phone networks to track speeders, terrorists or even individuals walking on city streets.

    ...not to mention stealth aircraft.

    I'm surprised the article doesn't mention the applicability in detecting stealth aircraft. The idea of using cell tower transmissions to do this has been floating around for some time now: http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/n [globalsecurity.org]

  • This is a great idea! (Score:3, Funny)

    by darkov ( 261309 ) on Tuesday October 14, 2003 @02:52AM (#7206572)
    It's easy to track terrorists by the telltale radar signature of their turbans.

  • They dont' use the Fastlane tags to track speeders (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Tokerat ( 150341 ) on Tuesday October 14, 2003 @02:59AM (#7206597) Journal

    In Mass we have the FastLane tags to automatically pay tolls on the highway. NY and surrounding states have E-Z Pass. Never once have I gotten a speeding ticket on the Mass Pike, and indeed never from FastLane. There is technology already in place to do this, and they don't. It's far too big a pain in the ass.
    • In Mass we have the FastLane tags to automatically pay tolls on the highway. NY and surrounding states have E-Z Pass. Never once have I gotten a speeding ticket on the Mass Pike, and indeed never from FastLane. There is technology already in place to do this, and they don't. It's far too big a pain in the ass.

      One wonders how long it will be before the toll paying transponders, the road tax transponder, or the insurance company transponder will be used to automaticly issue speeding tickets. Think of it as

      • I'll leave my transponder inthe trash then, thanks, as I'm sure thousands of others will do. (Everyone speeds on the Mass Pike, even the cops known this and honestly don't really care, as long as you're not reckless and as long as you dont' ride the left lane) If it becomes required then the bastard who legalized it gets voted out and the only person i vote for agrees to repeal it.
        • I'll leave my transponder inthe trash then, thanks, as I'm sure thousands of others will do. (Everyone speeds on the Mass Pike, even the cops known this and honestly don't really care, as long as you're not reckless and as long as you dont' ride the left lane) If it becomes required then the bastard who legalized it gets voted out and the only person i vote for agrees to repeal it.

          Mass pike may not be the proverbial "camel's nose" used to get tracking capablity into most cars. It could be the state DMV fo
      • As far as I know speeding tickets based on transponders has mostly been passed up. I think either New Jersey or Pennsylvania does it on one of their Turnpikes but otherwise no one around here seems to really want to implement this.

        Tim
    • That's because this was made an issue when the system was first proposed. I know for EZ-Pass, they cannot write speeding tickets based on it. They know it can be done, but know it would be a PR and logistics disaster. NJ EZ-Pass has enough problems sending out just the routine no-tag/dead-tag violations. There was actually a whole month where they shut the system down because it was too error-prone. They also said that for many months, the system was only able to send out 10% of the violations that actually

      • I remmeber when FastLane has just come out in Mass, I let a friend (heh) borrow my car to move some stuff from Pittsfield to Boston. Well they used FastLane, which is fine and dandy and all, except for the fact that at the time I didn't have a transponder. I promptly was mailed a picture of my car running the toll booth at Lee, MA (Pike Exit 2), and a $50 fine. Dunno what's wrong with NJ's system, MA is on our asses about the violations. I promptly picked up a tag, though, and I must say, it's been great si
  • we'll really need is the personal Faraday Cage.

    Think about it. I'm serious.

    This is the next entreprenurial niche market for tech. Personal privacy devices.

    KFG

  • Why bother (Score:3, Informative)

    by cyril3 ( 522783 ) on Tuesday October 14, 2003 @03:01AM (#7206604)
    In Ireland, AXA Insurance is testing a GPS gadget called Traksure. It continuously checks a car's speed and location, then compares that data with the local speed limit, obtained from digital maps. But Celldar might do the job more cheaply

    The Traksure device is I presume able to identify for the insurance co which vehicle it is tracking. Unless there is a similar device in each vehicle the passive system would not really be able to tell which 98 Dodge utility is tearing down the highway at 120mph. Or more likely moving along the freeway in heavy traffic with other 98 Dodges. Is it me or Mr Terrorist.

    You'd need a transponder of some kind to identify it for the system. You might as well get the Traksure. I'm sure the appropriate authorities have a way of interogating them from a distance without your knowledge or permission.

  • With a mixture of CCTV and mobile phone emissions it quite easy to track someone within modern cities. Of course you could just cover yourself in tinfoil but that might attract even more attention

    Rus
  • In yesterdays newspapers, here in finland, was a little news that parents would be permitted to obtain tracking for their kids cellphones without any reasons.

    Also, im aware that there has been many cases when missing people have been located with cellphone tracking (I remember atleast one case where elderly woman was lost in the forest when she was collecting blueberries).

  • Passive vs. Active Systems (Score:4, Informative)

    by billstewart ( 78916 ) on Tuesday October 14, 2003 @03:24AM (#7206695) Journal
    The article's pretty good, though the author does spend a couple of paragraphs confusing what you can do with active vs. passive tracking systems.


    It's really really hard for a passive system to track a specific car mixed in with a bunch of other cars, especially if you don't have a solid identification of when it enters and leaves the system, or when there are bridges, tunnels, etc. That's a good job for active systems, like GPS-transmitting bugs or simply the regular signals from cell phones. Passive systems are much better at telling you that _some_ airplane just showed up. Passive systems could tell you that the average speed of cars on the freeway is 25 mph, but it's probably easier to dig that kind of information out of a cell-phone system that tracks the motions of cars into and out of cells, or to use a video processor on a camera, or for that matter those old rubber-hose-across-the-road detectors.

    • Next week on Slashdot: Is That Rubber Hose Watching Me?

      Forget the rubber hoses and cel phone towers, I've also found it to be easier just to watch someone if you want to watch them.
    • It's really really hard for a passive system to track a specific car mixed in with a bunch of other cars, especially if you don't have a solid identification of when it enters and leaves the system, or when there are bridges, tunnels, etc.

      Since GSM at 1.9GHz has a wavelength of around a tenth of a millimeter, it ought to have quite good resolution ability. I know that when I was in the Navy ten years ago or so the ISAR radar that the P3 aircraft used could give a fairly clear picture of what it was loo

  • five.org.uk [five.org.uk] I'm not going to say any more

    Rus
  • Try sending an SMS to another phone with just the text 'P' in it.

    It sends your current address (accuracy depends on city/county you're in)

  • I don't feel particularly comfortable about being watched and tracked by an invisible network. But I can't help looking at it in the same light as file-sharing. Just as that technology can't be stopped and will radically change life for copyright holders, neither can tracking technology be stopped, and likewise will it change life for "privacy rights holders." Whether we like it or not, other people eventually are going to be able to know where we are and what we are doing pretty much all the time. Maybe fi

  • Data from cellphone towers are used (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AchmedHabib ( 696882 ) on Tuesday October 14, 2003 @03:48AM (#7206781)
    Data from cellphone towers/antennas has already been used for tracking people. In different criminal cases, the location of a cell phones and the calls made in that area from that phone, has been used to establish proof of guilt. It has also been used to contact people who were possible witness to the crime or other events that could help solve it.
  • Under the spreading chestnut tree
    I sold you and you sold me
    There lie they and here lie we
    Under the spreading chestnut tree
  • Such tracking really needs oversight by the courts, and what I really see this as being useful for is replacing the "home arrest" anklets currently in use with one that can track via the cell grid. I personally don't want to get into exactly which crimes would be most suited for this, but I'm sure it'd work out quite well for verifying the movements of paroles/probationers.

    Jonah Hex

  • When I was at Berkeley, a few friends of mine worked off-campus at the Center for Extreme Ultraviolet Astrophysics [berkeley.edu]. This was connected to the campus network via a microwave relay mounted on the roofs of two buildings.

    The story I was told by one of the sysadmins was that one day, the thing just stopped working, with no technical explanation. After doing all manner of tracing and debugging, they finally went to go check the campus-side transceiver, and found it turned 180 degrees in the other direction, wi
  • Is this anything to do with the demo I am running [umtstrial.co.uk]?
  • There is a much bigger transmitter of higher frequency (hence more accurate) radiation already in place. It beams signals which can be used, by means of very similar secondary sensors, not only to track vehicles and people, but to detect identifying markers and distinctive patterns, allowing both vehicles and individuals to be uniquely identified.

    This transmitter is called "the sun" and the secondary sensors which use its radiation are called "eyes" and "cameras". When "the sun" fails, local governments ha
  • Now there's a challenge for the Free Software Community.

    It seems like an ideal Free Software project: low cost hardware, high cost of writing the software, very smart brains required to write the software...

    What about modifying Linux's WiFi drivers to perform passive radar (or just running it as a background application on top of the WiFi diver)? Someway would have to be found to distribute accurate time over the Internet so samples coming out of the WiFi card could be timestamped. Perhaps GPS could

  • Since February anyone has been able to track my cell phone [gadgeteer.org]
    What is the big deal? Get it while it is still optional
  • There needs to be some sort of public service announcement to make everyone aware of this. Perhaps it can be punctuated by an audio clip of the 1984 Motown hit "Somebody's Watching Me" by Rockwell featuring Michael and Jermaine Jackson.

    Ohh yeah.
  • The technology is called Celldar, from "cellular" plus "radar."
    Gaydar...
  • I once read a book about the fact that radio masts mounted onto buildings were a plan to brainwash the nation and only a psychotic patient was able to communicate this fact to his shrink. The shrink eventually realised that this was in fact true.. but only just as it was too late....

    Question is who wrote the book as I would love to look it up again...

    • "I once read a book about the fact that radio masts mounted onto buildings were a plan to brainwash the nation and only a psychotic patient was able to communicate this fact to his shrink."

      In the real world, we call those 'television antennas'

      A.
  • This is further information on something already reported in this artcle [slashdot.org].

    The point is that there are now others looking at the use of passive radar. It appears to be viable (Roke Manor has been doing defence related electronics back through the second world war with emphasis on radar and comms) and it is very interesting. Particularly as not only reflection can be used but the RF opacity of the target - generally if something is stealth, it absorbs radar.

    HARM type missles [navy.mil] chase down radiating radar tran

  • This was brought forward years ago. There were rumors that the Yugoslavians were able to track the stealth planes by the interrupted cell phone tower signals.. basically looking for the moving black holes in their phone systems where the planes blocked the signals.

    Rescuers also use cellphone and beeper signals to try and find victims at Ground Zero.
    • You are right about the old news; FM radio based radar tracking of planes has been tested by the US military in the Washington DC area many times over the last few years; I believe (not positive) the first sucessful test was about 5 years ago.

      Defense analysts correctly point out that such systems are very much able to track and target "stealth" type aircraft, such as the stealth fighter and bomber.

      However, the stealth fighters shot down by the military of the former Yugoslavia didn't use such technology.

  • It would be much easier to base the road taxes on a function of milage and vehicle weight. Not only is this technologically easy but it protects privacy, too. As far as average wear and tear are concerned, the government should care only about total milage and aggregate statistics for certain roads and bridges. There is no need to tie everything down to where your kids were at 10pm on Friday.

    These celldar technologies are really only for government empowerment when used outside of the context of air def
  • There is a major problem with the millitary use of passive radar. The radar still has a transmitter - but the transmitter isn't the regulary military radar site, but instead every cell tower, CB radio, TV station, etc., in the vicinity.

    Using a civilian transmitter for a military use makes that transmitter a legitimate military target.

    Many countries are exploring the use of passive radar technology since the US has become quite good at taking down radar sites. Instead this simply invites the strategy of

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