Your Cellphone is a Homing Device

Legal Affairs ^ | May/June 2003 Issue | Brendan I. Koerner

[HairOfTheDog]

What your salesman probably failed to tell you—and may not even realize—is that an E911-capable phone can give your wireless carrier continual updates on your location.

Oh good grief. My phone company knows my exact location when I use my wireline phone too! egads! They are after me!

[Shmokey]

Verizon man: Can you find me now?

[RS]

"What pisses me off is that if this is a GPS enabled phone, why can't I see my GPS coordinates on the screen but it appears everyone else can from their computer."

The answer is because its not a GPS enabled phone -

E911 is an FCC specification for providing locations, the carrier is reponsible for the selection of the type of system, which does not have to be GPS. An example of a different system is here -

http://www.geometrix911.com/e911.html

The writer of the original article didn't do all his homework.

[GulliverSwift]

Can you find me now?

[Rodney King]

This is a good thing. Cops are generally not as bright as freepers are. So if you are even in trouble, just turn on your cell phone and tape it to the back of a truck going across the country. The cops will think they are so smart while they set up a road block to nail you. Meanwhile, you will be sipping Margaritas in Mexico.

[fourdeuce82d]

its not a GPS enabled phone -

Dammit man, stole my thunder... Did a quick google search however, and real GPS phones are on the market.

[ladyinred]

I once had car trouble in a remote area of Northern California. Took the cell phone and called 911. I didn't know where I was to tell the dispatcher, and she sure couldn't tell me. This tracking would have helped me quite a bit in that situation, but this was in the early '90's.

[SauronOfMordor]

You can turn the "tracking" feature OFF on my cell phone. It is the users option to have it on or off.

Doesn't matter. For E911 purposes, the feature must ALWAYS be on for emergency and law-enforcement purposes. All that option does, at most, is make the info unavailable to non-law-enforcement.

Also the phone company always knows where your phone is, to the nearest cell tower, even if it's an ancient phone. They have to, in order to know which cell tower to route an incoming call to. And, even on an ancient cell phone, law-enfocement can "ping" the phone, and have it respond. They can thus triangulate on the phone's position (which is how they located Pablo Escobar in Columbia)

[ovrtaxt]

Yeah, Rodney. As long as they don't beat the crap out of the truck driver when they pull him over! ;)

[FixitGuy]

Thought that any cell company could tell location by the frequency, which tells them the particular tower by location.

I can punch in a series of key presses on my pnohe and it will give all kinds of info, tower freq. in hexadecimal, signal strength, clarity of signal, etc.

Most is coded and I don't have a clue, but the company sure does.

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[ovrtaxt]

You can check out a gps system here: http://www.garmin.com

I have a street pilot. It rocks! Saves a lot of time if you regularly drive different routes, or if you have to find new addresses all the time.

Now, nobody has brought up Onstar yet. GM owns Hughes, which owns all the GPS satellites, so it's relatively cheap for them to offer. They will probably start offering map screens in their newer cars, much like the Garmin units.

[MatthewViti]

most annoying commercials ever!

[RS]

"I have a street pilot. It rocks! Saves a lot of time if you regularly drive different routes, or if you have to find new addresses all the time."

Used GPS on a sailboat for years - saves a whole bunch of time when you can't see land or if you're trying to find, like the Coronado Islands !

[RS]

"Now, nobody has brought up Onstar yet. GM owns Hughes, which owns all the GPS satellites, so it's relatively cheap for them to offer. They will probably start offering map screens in their newer cars, much like the Garmin units."

1. Hughes built the satellites, US Gov. owns them - No charge to receive signals for anyone

2. Onstar is owned by GM

3. Onstar uses the older analog cellular for it's connections - the only use of satellites is the GPS signals.

4. GPS mapping is available without Onstar in many high end vehicles already.

[socal_parrot]

I've encased my cell phone in tin foil. Not only does it cloak my location, it goes great with my hat!

[KDD]

LOL