Your Cellphone is a Homing Device
Monty Solomon
cell, stop taking the subway, and pay the toll in cash.
By Brendan I. Koerner
IF YOU PURCHASED A NEW CELLPHONE over the past 18 months or so, odds
are that one of the features listed in small print on the side of the
box was "E911 capable." Or, as in the case of my latest Motorola,
"Location technology for piece [sic] of mind." Perhaps you asked the
salesman to explain the feature, and he replied that it means that
cops can home in on your phone in case of an emergency, a potentially
important perk should you ever find your hand pinned beneath an
immovable boulder in rural Utah, as Aron Ralston did recently.
Assuming he could have gotten a signal, an E911-capable phone might
have saved the young backpacker the pain of having to amputate his own
arm.
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. The phone is embedded with
a Global Positioning System chip, which can calculate your coordinates
to within a few yards by receiving signals from satellites. GPS
technology gave U.S. military commanders a vital edge during Gulf War
II, and sailors and pilots depend on it as well. In the E911-capable
phone, the GPS chip does not wait until it senses danger, springing to
life when catastrophe strikes; it's switched on whenever your handset
is powered up and is always ready to transmit your location data back
to a wireless carrier's computers. Verizon or T-Mobile can figure out
which manicurist you visit just as easily as they can pinpoint a
stranded motorist on Highway 59.
http://www.legalaffairs.org/issues/July-August-2003/feature_koerner_julaug03.html
Robert A. Book
Do these really use GPS, or do they triangular from cell sites?
If they use GPS, can they display coordinates to the user?
Stan
news:telecom...@telecom-digest.org:
> Don't want the government to know where you are? Throw away your
> cell, stop taking the subway, and pay the toll in cash.
> By Brendan I. Koerner
> 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. The phone is embedded with
> a Global Positioning System chip, which can calculate your coordinates
> to within a few yards by receiving signals from satellites. GPS
> technology gave U.S. military commanders a vital edge during Gulf War
> II, and sailors and pilots depend on it as well. In the E911-capable
> phone, the GPS chip does not wait until it senses danger, springing to
> life when catastrophe strikes; it's switched on whenever your handset
> is powered up and is always ready to transmit your location data back
> to a wireless carrier's computers. Verizon or T-Mobile can figure out
> which manicurist you visit just as easily as they can pinpoint a
> stranded motorist on Highway 59.
I guess they're not counting on those of us who read the manuals or
surf the phone's menus. Earlier this year, I got a Motorola T-720 from
Verizon. The manual explains that the GPS feature has three settings:
1. You can turn it completely off. (paranoia mode)
2. You can turn it on so that it's only active for E911 calls.
3. You can leave it completely on. They say that in the future, they'll pass
the information along to internet mapping services, so that you could
potentially receive maps or directions on your handset that would start at
your approximate location.
Since Verizon doesn't yet offer any mapping service, I opted for
#2. This is completely configurable by the end user. I don't really
see any nefarious plan to pinpoint every cellular user using this
technology. I assume that I could be found if I had an analog phone as
well, just with different technology.
-Stan
Alan Phillips
cellphone ... Good luck.
Stan <stannc...@noispam.yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<telecom2...@telecom-digest.org>:
> Monty Solomon <mo...@roscom.com> wrote in message
> news:telecom...@telecom-digest.org:
>> Don't want the government to know where you are? Throw away your
>> cell, stop taking the subway, and pay the toll in cash.
>> By Brendan I. Koerner
>> 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. The phone is embedded with
>> a Global Positioning System chip, which can calculate your coordinates
>> to within a few yards by receiving signals from satellites. GPS
>> technology gave U.S. military commanders a vital edge during Gulf War
>> II, and sailors and pilots depend on it as well. In the E911-capable
>> phone, the GPS chip does not wait until it senses danger, springing to
>> life when catastrophe strikes; it's switched on whenever your handset
>> is powered up and is always ready to transmit your location data back
>> to a wireless carrier's computers. Verizon or T-Mobile can figure out
>> which manicurist you visit just as easily as they can pinpoint a
>> stranded motorist on Highway 59.
> I guess they're not counting on those of us who read the manuals or
> surf the phone's menus. Earlier this year, I got a Motorola T-720 from
> Verizon. The manual explains that the GPS feature has three settings:
> 1. You can turn it completely off. (paranoia mode)
> 2. You can turn it on so that it's only active for E911 calls.
> 3. You can leave it completely on. They say that the future, the'll pass