Mobile Phones = Tracking Devices

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Government's secret Celldar project will allow surveillance of anyone, at any time and anywhere there is a phone signal

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Secret radar technology research that will allow the biggest-ever extension of 'Big Brother'-style surveillance in the UK is being funded by the Government.

The radical new system, which has outraged civil liberties groups, uses mobile phone masts to allow security authorities to watch vehicles and individuals 'in real time' almost anywhere in Britain.

The technology 'sees' the shapes made when radio waves emitted by mobile phone masts meet an obstruction. Signals bounced back by immobile objects, such as walls or trees, are filtered out by the receiver. This allows anything moving, such as cars or people, to be tracked. Previously, radar needed massive fixed equipment to work and transmissions from mobile phone masts were thought too weak to be useful.

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'It's an appalling idea,' said Simon Davies, director of Privacy International. 'The Government is just capitalising on current public fears over security to intoduce new systems that are neither desirable nor necessary.'

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http://www.observer.co.uk/uk_news/st...811027,00.html

In other news, England has decided on an official name change to Airstrip One :)

But seriously, if someone unauthorised had access to such a system, imagine the power they would wield over the general public. Knowing where anyone is, at any time - it boggles the mind. The last quote for me really sums up the situation. In the current climate, anything that claims to increase security can be implemented without any fear of a major backlash: it's for 'the good of the people'.

What do you guys think of this new system?

I'm not anti-Government or anything like that but this is just crazy invasion of peoples privacy I hope they dont use or have this in the United States of America.

Thats pretty messed up, but like that quote said anything that "increases security" goes, only they leave off the part that your privacy is flushed down the crapper. I believe there is a similar program going on in the us

Wired News : Feds OK Phone Tracking

I'm pretty sure that with the state of things in the US that the cell phone tracking thing will come up again. I can see the benefits to tracking phones in case someone is in an accident or is abducted, but I wonder what will happen when someone breaks into the system?

This may seem to the public like a great idea, being able to see inside the cars of terrorists. But what happens when the terror is over? I sincerely doubt their going to put their very expensive toys away. They'll concentrate on other things, like paying for this technology by mailing tickets to those not wearing seatbelts or those who put one arm behind the seat to stretch. It the east coast cities here and probably elsewhere they're replacing the old streetlights with ones equipped with cameras and speed sensors. Tickets will be issued automatically. With the unposted speed limit at 25 they'll pay for this in no time. By the way the company supplying the equipment gets a piece of every fine.

Cell phone tracking is not a new idea. The US government has used this method to track down many criminals in the past. The latest example was the college bomber guy that was attempting to make a smiley face on the map with pipe bombs. They tracked his cell phone calls and were able to arrest him. The prospect of tracking occuring to everyone (not just criminals) is indeed appaling. At some point in time somebody in the government is going to have to institute a privacy "bill of rights". The news technology today is too powerful and needs to be controlled at the highest points of the law.

-just a thought

~Xe

Cell phone tracking is not a new idea. The US government has used this method to track down many criminals in the past. The latest example was the college bomber guy that was attempting to make a smiley face on the map with pipe bombs. They tracked his cell phone calls and were able to arrest him. The prospect of tracking occuring to everyone (not just criminals) is indeed appaling. At some point in time somebody in the government is going to have to institute a privacy "bill of rights". The news technology today is too powerful and needs to be controlled at the highest points of the law.

-just a thought

~Xe

The UK has always been enthusiastic about this type of technology.

To give a couple of examples:

Some road traffic cameras (very common in the UK) read and record the number plate of every vehicle that passes the camera, regardless of whether or not the vehicle was speeding. A simple piece of image reconnection software saves the information.
This means that if the police want to find out where a vehicle is, they can look it up in their database to see if there have been any recent sightings of it. Obviously this can be used to try and find stolen cars, but it doesn't take too much imagination to see how this could be abused.

Image recognition software is used with CCTV (closed ciruit TV), which covers a large part of urban areas. Rather alarmingly, these systems are run by private security firms, and the police provide them with a database of people that they are 'interested' in - i.e. pictures of the people concerned. The database includes people that are wanted by the police (arrest warrant issued), but also other people who the police wish to track. No reason needs to be given by the police for inclusion of people on the database.

In reply to Xenon, this is not cell phone tracking, which has been used for years to get a rough location of where a caller was calling from. It is using the mobile phone masts themselves to try and monitor people and objects themselves, which would compliment the other two types of 'big brother' surveillence already in use.

This doesn't surprise me at all. The UK is already the heaviest surveilled country in the world, yet nobody here seems to care. Our governments' ability to spy on its citizens is already far greater than anything the KGB or even the infamous east German Stasi could ever dream of. We're recorded on camera more than 300 times a day without even realising it. Positioning from mobile phones isn't new, as a phones signal is recieved by more than 1 mast at a time, and masts record signal strength. Routinely doing it though, that's something else.

Over the past 10 or so years, our rights have been eroded considerably, our Police forces are increasingly only interested in easy-to-detect crimes like driving offences (or anything else where they get a cut of the fine), and we are all treated like criminals, even if we are not. ISP's and phone companies are being asked to keep records of all communications for a period of 5 years, even though the Data Protection Act states tehy aren't allowed to store records for unreasonably long time periods. We don't even have the right to remain silent anymore, we'd have to prove we don't have encryption keys to decode personal data should the Police demand the keys, and we'll get 5 years if we can't prove it. Speed camera numbers are set to double in the next 18 months, even though we have the safest (although worst maintained) roads in Europe, the Government promised they won't be used for revenue-generation purposes, and that they'd only be located at accident blackspots.

I am NOT a criminal. I keep myself to myself, but I've been the victim of overzealous police on at least 20 occasions this year. In fact, it's so bad lately that I made an official complaint due to their constant harassment. I've been breath-tested more than 10 times, had my car searched more times than I can remember, and I've been arrested on my doorstep at night when I was going home to get ready for university. (I was later released without charge at 3.15am. I was supposed to be at university at 8.30.) The night before that incident, they followed me 3 miles to my house, making it pretty obvious what they were doing, and the night after, they pulled me over again, just to say hello.

I've had enough, and hopefully the rest of the population will have had enough before long, before it's too late.

http://www.fipr.org/rip/

hello,

Not to sound too shocking but electronic eavedropping has always been around .... it's just that it is coming out in light recently... ie echelon project and other...
check out: http://www.echelonwatch.org/
also check out carnivore system in the us ....
During the russian affair in tchetchnia, the russian used a missile aimed to some oppositon's leader to bomb him ... so yes tracking of cell phone is very possible.

before one could only define someione's postion with the precision of the cell's limit but not precisly where in the cell... now it is possible.

Another development in radar tech is since the use of radio wave is incresaing, it is useless to have an active radar, you can just detect moving object by the distorsion that they are creating in the eml wavelenght that you have been recording for years ....I think that Matra has a system like that but i'm not sure....

As the use of tech increases, our privacy is deacreasing.

I mean is it really worth triple encryping an email to my aunt Marie ? No, the hell i care if someone read it, but still it doesn't concern them....

Also the more they listen and the more they are blind...

This article at http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,55900,00.html is sort of relevant to the US scene.

It's a comment from Peter Swire, a law professor at Ohio State University, who was chief counsel for privacy in the Clinton administration. Quote from the article:

"Don't let the anti-terrorism measures of today turn into the anti-communist excesses of decades past," Swire said. "We've seen what abuses in the name of liberty look like -- lack of accountability and institutionalized lawlessness. We must assure that does not happen again."

Cellphone tracking (generally speaking, without specifying technical differences) is something that many people with newer vehicles are paying to have. I just renewed time for my daughter's "OnStar" vehicle communication as she has used it in travels to her advantage a couple of times. She does a lot of driving, and it seems prudent to have something better than a ("regular", for lack of a better term?) cellphone to try to hit 9-1-1 with in the event she needs help. It probably doesn't track unless the unit is activated in some way, such as press one of the buttons or if an airbag deploys, or if the unit gets on too radical of an angle like it might be tipped over or something.
On the other hand, the messages of alarm regarding personal privacy and improper use of constant citizen tracking systems... what a tool for burglars ...or for overzealous governments that might want to search your home while you're away... :(