/. : Feds Have Access To Cellphone Tracking On Request

Wolfgang S. Rupprecht wolfgang.rupprecht+gnus200711 at gmail.com
Mon Nov 26 21:52:02 CET 2007


"Jeff Andros" <jeff at bigredtj.com> writes:
> 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).   

I wonder how well this works on average.  If this would work well
enough I don't believe we'd be seeing all the integrated GPS units for
the claimed purpose of servicing E911.  Those things do add a real
cost to the phone that cell phone providers are eating.

If I were to try to mask the location of a cell phone, I'd simply
stand within a few blocks of a cell tower and put the phone in the
focus of a deep parabolic dish pointed at the cell tower of interest.
I'd like to see the neighboring towers pick up a phone that is
commanded to run at low xmit power with what is effectively a tight
beam talking to the closest tower.

But I do agree, hiding one's general location to within a few
cell-tower radii is not possible.

-wolfgang
-- 
Wolfgang S. Rupprecht                http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/
IPv6 on Fedora 7 http://www.wsrcc.com/wolfgang/fedora/ipv6-tunnel.html





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