California gang members to be tracked by GPS

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California prison officials have begun using Global Positioning System anklets to track known gang members.

The gritty suburb of San Bernardino, about 60 miles east of Los Angeles, this week became the first California city to use the GPS satellite navigation system to track gang members when the devices were strapped onto three parolees, state Department of Corrections spokeswoman Jeanne Woodford said.

Six California counties began using GPS to monitor sex offenders in 2005 and some have already been arrested for violating parole after they were tracked to off-limits areas.

"GPS tracking is just another tool in the bag; we will still use ground personnel to track gang members," said Sarah Ludeman, another spokeswoman for the corrections department.

Under an arrangement between prison officials and San Bernardino, high-risk parolees known to belong to street gangs will be released from custody on the condition that they wear a GPS bracelet on their ankles at all times.

They appear as moving dots on a map and if they try to remove the anklet or enter unauthorized areas the device sends an alert to a base station monitored by law enforcement officials.

The University of California at Irvine will review the results of the pilot program for its effectiveness.

In "Domestic Enemies," she only has a tiny RFID device planted in her shoulder. This only works by being "read" at portals, or upon crossing fences etc that contain RFID readers. It contains no internal power supply.

This GPS anklet is big enough to transmit over a distance, it sounds like. It receives the GPS position input, and then transmits via wireless to cell phone towers. It's a much bigger and more powerful option than a rice-grain-sized RFID. They probably have to change them or recharge them when visiting their parole officers.

Chips under the skin -- Digital Angels -- are next.

Yeah - and then you'll have to have receivers all OVER the place to track the implants. And aren't 'the great unwashed' just gonna LOOOVE that once they find out about it!

These GPS systems aren't as great as the reports claim. Ever play with a handheld GPS unit? Ever see how sensitive it is to being held just-right to catch 3 or 4 satellites for a position? Ever see how the satellites must be above the trees (clear line of sight) to give a strong-enough signal? Or how the units fail miserably in-between and inside-of buildings?

Multiply all that several times to factor-in that the antenna on the navigating-GPS is properly aligned to have all those troubles (and unless you have a decently-sized external antenna) and you usually have to be standing still to receive a good lock, and that the prisoner-GPS will be clipped to an ankle or wrist, always moving, and most likely not optimally aligned to get a lock (not even considering any possible differences in size between the antennas).

Now let's add that the prisoner-GPS units are really combination GPS/cellphone instruments and that they periodically call-in their positions. No, the bracelets are NOT 'tracked by satellite' - GPS is a read-only system and the units have to call-in to report where they are at that moment.

How often they call-in depends on the system's settings but I would figure that, allowing calling-in non-locations (i.e. "I haven't been able to lock-on to a 'bird' lately"), even allowing the fact that the cell phone may not always be in a good location (can YOU always make a call from inside your house?) that there's going to be one HELL of a lot of leeway by the monitoring agencies in how often they're going to 'field verify' (i.e. track down) the wearers.

Want to kill a cell phone's battery quickly? Wrap the phone with the heavier-grade aluminum foil you can find in the stores. Phones modulate their power: the closer they are to a tower the lower the power they use, and the reverse applies. If it keeps 'screaming at the top of its lungs' to try to connect with a tower it won't last as long as it should. Someone with a dead battery on their device (again, time depending upon the monitoring agency and how fast the minimally-paid workers will attend to their job) may be able to move about quite freely - as they would by wrapping the device in situ and going-about their business: a unit presumed to be inside a structure (i.e. a dead cell zone) will look the same as one shielded and 'on-the-go' (even in a car's metal structure) and then its only resolution is field-verification.

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