Halos App Shows Location of Gun Carriers; no Advantage to the Government

Ammoland ^ | 10 July, 2016 | Dean Weingarten

[marktwain]

Would you like to know if other legal gun carriers frequent the same areas that you do?

An iphone app is available.  Android users can be put on a wait list. From halosforce.com:

Halos is a revolutionary app for the exclusive use of individuals in the United States who have their state-issued concealed carry handgun license or otherwise fulfill the concealed carry eligibility requirements in their state of residence and are 21 years or older.

Halos anonymously allows members to see the approximate location of other members on a map. A member’s specific location is obscured (without revealing either identity or exact location). Members are not able to communicate with other members.

The premise of the app has merit.  The idea is that people can make known that a non specified gun carrier is in the general area.  The specific location is deliberately obscured.  The app allows gun carriers to obtain some of the advantages of open carry while retaining some of the advantages of concealed carry.  People who look at the app will have an idea of gun carriers in the area, and their approximate locations.  The app will only apply to those who sign up.

If a fair number of people sign up, it will give some indication of where legal gun carriers tend to be.  It is not any sort of registration or tracking device that is useful to the government.  Why not?

If you have a concealed carry permit and a cell phone (remember you have to have a cell phone for this app to work), the government can already track you.

They can track you far more accurately than this app does.

[marktwain]

If your phone is powered up, you can be tracked. That is simply where we are.

[smokingfrog]

I think I’d prefer not to be tracked.

[LesbianThespianGymnasticMidget]

You certain an unpowered phone can not be tracked? I am not. The only way to be sure you are not being tracked is to have your phone in a rf proof box.

[CrazyIvan]

Later.

[upchuck]

Even if your cell phone is not turned on you can be tracked. The phone is never really "off." The tracking software works 24/7 whether the phone is on or off.

You can't turn the phone off, but you can prevent tracking by putting the phone in a "Faraday cage." Something as simple as a mylar potato chip bag will work. Or you can get fancy and spend bucks for a case that prevents transmitting.

[rockrr]

I use a candy tin that I received as a gift one Christmas. It’s about the size of a paperback book and will hold two phones.

Works like a champ.

[goodnesswins]

“The app will only apply to those who sign up.” (For the app)

[marktwain]

If there is no power, there is not tracking. It is not easy to ensure that there is not power.

Even if you take out the battery (very difficult with iphones) there are potential other power sources such as capacitors.

A Faraday cage is the best to insure that no tracking is ongoing. Another advantage of a Faraday cage is that it prevents reception of GPS. Some phones may be sophosticated enought to recieve GPS signals, store the GPS locations, and send them to catch up on the tracking.

I do not think that is common, but it is possible.

[MortMan]

“Concealed carry” meets “neon sign advertising carry”.

I do not see the purpose of this app.

[marktwain]

A candy tin. That should work well. Good idea.

[marktwain]

Mostly for fun, I suspect.

Not much in the way of advantages or disadvantages.

A little of the advantages of open carry with most of the advantages of concealed carry.

Remember, very few will have the app.

[NotQuiteCricket]

Um.
1. Bad guy checks for weapons in the area.
2. Person in banned area shows regardless of weapon status.
3. Person signs up regardless of weapon status.
4. Lots of noise unless effective screening process to sign ups.
5. Sure gov co can do for themselves...however putting it all in one tidy, no need for them to work for it location, well, make them work, even if they don't need a warrant...
6. Accessible list for terrorist to assess hardness of targets for attack methods, i.e. suicide bomb instead of shooting if many carriers appear to frequent an area.

[Lady Heron]

How stupid, it allows them to be tracked and that has only one real purpose....get a clue!

[Future Useless Eater]

Even if your cell phone is not turned on you can be tracked. The phone is never really "off." The tracking software works 24/7 whether the phone is on or off.

OK then, so WHY can't the Obama administration find Omar Mateen's WIFE?

Its not realistic to think she has NO cellphone.
So, then there HAS to be something they already know about her, (and him) that they don't want to get out into the public.

They're hiding her, and protecting his accomplices.

[jurroppi1]

You do realize that capacitors have a finite amount of power they can supply right? If you were running a phone off of the caps available in current production that would fit inside a phone, you might get a second of power on time at best - probably a lot less.

Go ahead, power down your phone, pull the battery and try to turn it on. It won’t work because the caps will have depleted by the time you got the battery out of your phone, probably much sooner than that.

Cap charge decay is dependent on the load, but the caps here are so small that the ability to apply enough current to run the circuits in question necessitates a battery or some other external power supply.

In order to get location you need GPS of some sort, that circuitry (a transceiver and a bunch of other things) isn’t going to be powered for any appreciable amount of time through caps alone.

[NotQuiteCricket]

Probably not the place, but if the NSA is all that with carnivore, their cell phone meta data collection, illegal wire tapping, bullying of cell phone carriers, coercion of OS manufacturers for backdoors.. don't forget DHS “coordination” of sig-int analysis and all the other extra constitutional power grabs by the Federal Government...

Why have so many people died within our country at the hands of islamic nutjobs?

[rockrr]

OK then, so WHY can't the Obama administration find Omar Mateen's WIFE?

Not to be flip but they have to WANT to find her....

[upchuck]

OK then, so WHY can't the Obama administration find Omar Mateen's WIFE?

Probably because they don't want to.

They're hiding her, and protecting his accomplices.

Think you're right.

[freeandfreezing]

Thanks for the accurate post from someone who appears to have been paying attention in the class on capacitance and power supply design.

In a cell phone the amount of energy stored in the power supply bypass capacitors is far to little to perform any useful transmissions. Like many other devices, internal state in CMOS circuits can persist for quite some time (like minutes) if the circuits are in a low power consuming state.

[Red in Blue PA]

Or to remove the battery. But the newer Android phones no longer have that capability.