[Reader-list] Somebody's Watching Me

Menso Heus menso at r4k.net
Wed Jun 20 04:27:09 IST 2001


On Mon, Jun 18, 2001 at 10:46:56AM +0100, Kanti Bit wrote:
> Dear All,
> 
> The June 4 issue of TIME magazine focusses on
> interactive technologies and how they are affecting
> our lives. Following is one of the interesting
> articles. Read it online at:
> <http://www.time.com/time/interactive/living/stalking_np.html>
> 
> Somebody's Watching Me 
> My inner stalker loves GPS. My inner Shaggy's a little
> paranoid. Maybe those satellites should stick to
> tracking missiles 
> By MAUREEN TKACIK 

<snip>
 
> But back to reality. 
> 
> The reality, in 2001, is that my high-school freshman
> sister has a cell phone and that I occasionally plug
> Kevin's name into a Google search field. And that cell
> phone carriers in the U.S. are scrambling to meet the
> fall deadline to start rolling out
> location-pinpointing services that, by law, will have
> to be reliable enough to track all their cell-phone
> subscribers at least 66% of the time. The only people
> who will have die-hard access to this information are
> the folks who answer emergency calls to 911. 

As I already mentioned in a previous post, there is no GPS needed
for tracking somebody who carries a GSM phone. By triangulating 
using 3 GSM-masts it's easily done. I have no idea why the author 
of this article keeps raising the idea that GPS is needed to locate
someone carrying a GSM: IT IS NOT.
I think in most countries in Europe it is already common practice that
emergency response teams can access the location details of your phone
when necessary. This is a good thing, sometimes you might be unable to 
talk, whether it's because you broke your jaw during a car crash or 
because taking the phone from your pocket might alarm the guy who's 
holding the .44 against your head. 

Back to reality: location details and the pressure put on telco's to
be able to provide them did not come from these emergency response 
teams. When did medical institutions ever have the power to do this?
They have come from police, millitary and your favorite three-letter 
agencies who believe they should be able to access these details at 
all times. The 66% of the time is quite a funny thing, when a GSM is
switched on and thus talking to the network you *KNOW* where it is, 
not 'sometimes' but *always*. Then again, I believe the cellular 
network used in the States differs from the GSM network which is used 
across Europe and most parts of Asia (including India).

Again, not only location info is your enemy, traffic analysis sucks 
perhaps even harder since it makes assumptions and, if you take it 
far enough, everyone becomes a criminal. (E.g. you phone with a colleague
of yours who turns out to be a drug runner during the weekends, you 
are phoning with him... only because you are colleagues or also because
you're in with his drug biz? Perhaps we should track this guy too now...)


Here comes the sun....

Menso

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