As the Washington Post reports, if you have a cell phone, you can be tracked by anyone willing to pay for the service.
Companies that make and sell surveillance technology seek to limit public information about their systems’ capabilities and client lists, typically marketing their technology directly to law enforcement and intelligence services through international conferences that are closed to journalists and other members of the public.
Yet marketing documents obtained by The Washington Post show that companies are offering powerful systems that are designed to evade detection while plotting movements of surveillance targets on computerized maps. The documents claim system success rates of more than 70 percent.
A 24-page marketing brochure for SkyLock, a cellular tracking system sold by Verint, a maker of analytics systems based in Melville, N.Y., carries the subtitle “Locate. Track. Manipulate.” The document, dated January 2013 and labeled “Commercially Confidential,” says the system offers government agencies “a cost-
effective, new approach to obtaining global location information concerning known targets.”The brochure includes screen shots of maps depicting location tracking in what appears to be Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa, Brazil, Congo, the United Arab Emirates, Zimbabwe and several other countries. Verint says on its Web site that it is “a global leader in Actionable Intelligence solutions for customer engagement optimization, security intelligence, and fraud, risk and compliance,” with clients in “more than 10,000 organizations in over 180 countries.”
Apparently, they can do this without the consent or awareness of the cell phone companies, and it’s all legal. The FCC was contacted by the Washington Post and said that they will investigate.
Why am I not surprised?
This is a surprise? A cell phone is necessarily broadcasting and receiving signals all the time. Of course you can track those signals if you have the right equipment.
Just because you are paranoid, doesn’t mean that “they” aren’t really out to get you.
And?
And this, just in:
The FCC. The Federal Communications Commission.
Key word? “Federal.”
I got some “communication” from the wonderful people who now run the PermaGov federal system in its entirety..
Right here!!!
Bet on it.
Geez!!!
Y’think these Verint people might know them some spooks?
Please.
The FCC will get a “Lay off!!!” call if one is even needed.
Bet on that as well.
Any day now.
Aaaaany day…
AG
As part of CALEA (Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act) wireless carriers are required to make this info available to the government. Supposedly in order to actually use the info against an individual they must first get a court order, however that is considered routine in the extreme.
But location tracking is really great science right now. You know those traffic apps like Google Maps? You know those road signs that show you how many minutes it will take to get you to such-and-such destination in current traffic? All sourced from cell phone location data.
Involved pre 911.
○ Fire Mueller by BooMan on Jan. 18, 2010
Robert Mueller was confirmed to a ten-year term as Director of the FBI and took over the position on September 4th, 2001. Obviously, he should not be confirmed for a second decade-long term, but he really should be shit-canned right now. Not tomorrow. Right now.
The FBI illegally collected more than 2,000 U.S. telephone call records between 2002 and 2006 by invoking terrorism emergencies that did not exist or simply persuading phone companies to provide records, according to internal bureau memos and interviews. FBI officials issued approvals after the fact to justify their actions.
Obama should throw Mueller out on his ass, and with extreme prejudice. Invoking terrorism threats that did not exist? Think about it. What are we? Living in the movie Brazil?
○ Dutch Police Don’t Know How to Delete Intercepted Calls
“The law in the Netherlands says that intercepted phone calls between attorneys and their clients must be destroyed. But the Dutch government has been keeping under wraps for years that no one has the foggiest clue how to delete them (Google translation). Now, an email (PDF) from the National Police Services Agency (KLPD) has surfaced, revealing that the working of the technology in question is a NetApp trade secret. The Dutch police are now trying to get their Israeli supplier Verint to tell them how to delete tapped calls and comply with the law. Meanwhile, attorneys in the Netherlands remain afraid to use their phones.”
The Netherlands has a Mossad HQ located on Israeli territory of El Al at Schiphol airport. The Untouchables.
○ Shady Companies With Ties to Israel Wiretap the U.S. for the NSA
Are we going to believe the Israel taps by Unit 8200 on the communication between Syrian commanders and the Ghouta gas attack one year ago? US Commander-In-Chief was going to bomb Assad’s military to open a path for Jabhat al-Nusra to march into Damascus, remember?
Your cell phone can be remotely activated to act as a listening device without your knowledge or consent. This technique has been used by law enforcement and who knows who else.
About a year ago, I reset the option on my cell phone (not a smart phone, I just make and take “telephone” calls on it) for “Location” from “on” to “off.”
Is that the setting that the good people at SkyLock use to track a cell phone’s location? Because if it is, it seems the easiest thing in the world to just turn off the locator. Considering the difficulties the authorities had in tracking the Malaysian jetliner that disappeared, and the scant information they were able to glean from cell phone pings, could companies like SkyLock be promising more than they can deliver, as a way to fleece lazy marketing people?
If only it were that simple. If your phone has GPS, that Location setting probably turns GPS tracking on and off. But even if GPS is off, the location of the phone can still be tracked by the towers it connects to.
And of course the smarter your phone is, the more ways there are to track it. The jetliner was an exceptional case, since they were presumably out of range for cell phone service. We’re not talking about finding people who have gone missing, we’re talking about tracking people who are actively using their cell phones in populated areas.
So let’s deal with your Malaysian airline reference first, since that’s the worst sort of zombie lie gossip there is.
The short answer is that cell phones on airplanes can’t connect to ground cell towers except perhaps during takeoff and landing. This is true no matter how many times you read about people on the 9/11 jets calling people on their cell phones (if they did call they used the seatback airfones) or what you saw in a TV movie.
The long answer is that in order for a cell phone to be located by an external source it must be in contact with an external network – WiFi, BlueTooth (if connected to a device that is in turn connected to the internet), or most commonly directly via a cell tower. None of these were available on the Malaysian airplane, and usually not on most airplanes. Cell towers generally have a range of only about 2 miles to cell phones using the common GSM standard – the CDMA standard used in North America (Sprint, Verizon, TELUS, Bell Mobility in Canada) and in a few other places (Australia, Iraq) can go up to 5 miles. However, radio signals can be directional and in the case of cell phone towers the signals are aimed horizontally – so the don’t even reach 1 mile up in the air. Flights at 10k feet above the ground (note this is not the same as 10k altitude) have no chance of getting a cell signal. Flights close to the ground can get a signal but if you try (as people do, despite the rules) you’ll almost always find you can’t get data or complete a call. The reason for this is that cell tower technology is designed to hand off the ownership of the an individual cell signal from tower-to-tower and automobile speeds, not airplane speeds, and even during takeoff and landing the planes exceed that. In places where high-speed rail exist special cell technology is deployed to support the faster moving cell phones – but only in those places as it is more expensive.
The exception to the above is on those few airplanes where cell phone connectivity is provided on board, then the cell phone connection relayed to ground via a satellite. Few planes have this, which is why the Malaysian flight didn’t have this – and even if it did that could have been turned off at the cockpit.
Now, on to your first question. The location services button on your phone acts differently depending on the phone you have and how your carrier treats it. For some it may be just whether you are allowing yourself to access for-a-fee location services. For some phones it may turn off the in-phone GPS (which supplements the cell phone location tracking – this is why a smartphone app like Garmin Connect can still track your running/biking route if the cell phone is out of range of a cell tower). Or it may opt your phone out of location tracking for any apps you run.
But what it does NOT do is turn off the ability of law enforcement to track your phone location. That is built into the cell phone towers. Most location tracking is done by triangulation – you are connected to one tower but at least 2 others can sense your location and that is used to locate you to within 20 feet. This is the “sunny day scenario”. There are other scenarios where best guesses have to be used and if available the in-phone GPS can be accessed for supplemental information. The fact that multiple location information sources can be uses is why that Garmin app mentioned above is more accurate at tracking you than a Garmin watch – it uses cell location as well as GPS.
But if you have any doubt whether this works, look at Google maps and track traffic. If you aren’t already doing this regularly and you drive regularly in traffic you really owe it to yourself to use this app – or at least check the website before you go. The traffic info it shows is incredibly accurate. And it all comes from the monitoring of the the location of hundreds of millions of cell phones every second.
Question: I keep my smartphone turned off except when I’m making a call or reading on my Kindle app. Don’t use it for anything else 99.99999 percent of the time. Am I invisible when it’s off?
Yeah, I know its a truism; but each person needs to decide how much convience you want. Do you really have to be connected 24/7? I mean really. Does that FB selfie your friend posts have to be seen immediately? Sports scores? Stock ticker? Instagram?
If you have a business need, then sure….but personal?
If you want the convience but some privacy, there are RF protective covers or pouches that block all signals until you pull the phone out, better than removing the battery. Then when you open it, check you messages.
The other part of this, usually not mentioned but in the article, is widening availabilty of IMSI catchers. In the US , that is known in the LEA community as "Stingrays" These are mobile devices to latch onto the specific signal of an individual phone then pinpoint location, intercept traffic and hack the phone. The costs of these are coming down as well. But you have to be withing a mile or two of your target, thus using the cell tower tracking to get close.
Like Internet applications were mis-sold as real world reflections (real mail vs email, IP phone vs land line hardwire, etc…) cell phones are really sophisticated Walkie-Talkies. They are broadcasting radios. When you add computer data usage, you are broadcasting all your interests and perversions.
Since the cell system needs your location to route that incoming call to your nearest cell tower, this privacy concern isn’t going away. Its up to you to midigate it and use the technology to your purpose, not accept its demands on your life.
Ridge
In the same vein that I’m desensitized to US Empire, I’m also desensitized to the now-obsolete concept of privacy.
If you are carrying an electronic device that is capable of connecting to another electronic device, you have ZERO privacy. None. To assume you do, based on a naive understanding of electronics or an anachronistic faith in the 4th Amendment of the Constitution, is your own fault.
If you want “privacy”, you have to shut down your electronic devices and stop using them. And even then, it is only your further interactions with reality that are private (potentially) because everything else you’ve done in the past is saved somewhere, whether the “cloud”, cache, history, cookies, etc, etc.
It doesn’t mean I support the CIA or the NSA jackbooted thugs reading our emails and documenting our calls. It’s that I’m not a naive 80 year old who doesn’t really understand technology.
So, of course there is no privacy with our phones. Whether metadata or personal data, it’s all a bunch of 0s and 1s floating through the air…literally. If you want privacy, turn off your phone and stop checking in with Facebook when you go to the convenience store for lottery tickets. Otherwise, you’re only deluding yourself.
If you are not on a deserted island or a cabin in the wilds, you have no real "privacy". Being a member of society means compromising your privacy in one way or another. Every interaction, physical or virtual, peels a little bit away.
The real question is how much effort do you want to put into preserving the amount of privacy YOU can control. Taking positive steps can cut back on what the watchers can easily discover, but they also put a red flag on those efforts. Disabiling your phone when not in use is one way, but re-enabling it delays the instant gratification of watching the cat gif or checking your email.
Trade offs, just like real life.
Ridge
It’s worse than that.
Do you have a bank account? Have you ever been to a doctor? Do you have a driver’s license? Do you own a house or a car? Do you have a job?
Your bank is not going dark, nor is your doctor or your employer.
Your goose has been cooked for a while.
It started with the invention of commercially useful computers and became irresistible with the invention of the internet.
The information society.
How’s that working out?
Honestly, I think 1984-levels of surveillance was inevitable.
The only difference is whether the people stand up and say they don’t want their privacy violated by the government and their partners, the corporations, or whether the people mostly just sit back complacent, because it’s so much easier to just let governments and their partners, the corporations, manage their lives for them, because then their iPhone games sync beautifully using Facebook and the cloud.
The walls are made of glass.