/. : Feds Have Access To Cellphone Tracking On Request

Jeff Andros jeff at bigredtj.com
Mon Nov 26 07:03:05 CET 2007


On 11/25/07, Wolfgang S. Rupprecht <wolfgang.rupprecht+gnus200711 at gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
Can people ever be compelled to supply
> truthful GPS information to LEO as long as open source cellphones are
> legal?
>

OK, legal matters aside, your network operators ALWAYS know where your phone
is: cell towers can triangulate the position of your phone(it's like reverse
GPS... multiple receivers on a single source).   Most of the phone
navigation, at least here in the US uses this technology... not GPS.  Which
firmware the phone runs is a non-issue.. they don't ask you they ask for
that data.  Technically the only way to prevent this is to not transmit.  It
is technically possible to re-write the GSMD to power down the GSM module
unless you are placing a call (You'd still be traceable whilst actually
placing a call, but not traceable otherwise) the downside is, you wouldn't
be able to receive calls.

Stopping the cell towers from tracing you wouldn't help either:  It would be
possible to set up an alternate antenna farm that decodes enough of the GSM
signal to identify the transmitter.

Pretty much at this point you should be realizing that there are only two
possible ways to fix this: one is the legal things we're not talking about,
because that's not my area of expertise (besides, I'm not sure how effective
it would be), the other is to stop using any kind of transmitting device...
technically anything that uses electricity.

-- 
Jeff
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