Did you know the government can track your Cell phone?Even when theyre off

[Busshianic]

Apparently our loving government tracks peoples cell phones... and they abuse the power.

Heres some articles on it:

New Case Reveals Routine Abuse of Government Surveillance Powers
http://tinyurl.com/e2fz5
Last month, the court denied a Justice Department request to monitor a cell phone's location. The ruling revealed that the DOJ has routinely been securing court orders for real-time cell phone tracking without probable cause and without any law authorizing the surveillance.

Many cell phone users aren't aware that their phones can be used to track their location in real-time, even when they aren't using them.

They know where you are
Cellphones, chips, and radio tags are tracking people and things
http://tinyurl.com/9jow2

Feds OK Cell Phone Tracking
http://tinyurl.com/ac9g7

[Skidmore]

1. I don't have one and that's one of the reasons.

[hlthe2b]

5. that's why I've held onto one of my older motorola models...

It predates the GPS chip.... I could get it back in service... Unfortunately, I have to carry one for work 24/7, so I guess it doesn't matter...

I hate Big Brother so much...

[CountAllVotes]

10. I don't have one either

and furthermore, I never wanted one. On a recent trip abroad, the country I was in - EVERY person had one of these damn things. I think they are not only rude, but now as we are seeing, an easy way to track you and all conversations.

Plus, they cost money. I already have one phone. I use a dial-up connection for internet access and I have an Emerson Switchboard in case someone calls me while I am online. I can answer the phone. If it is a junk call I can hang-up. If I do this within 30 seconds, I don't lose my internet connection either.

Emerson Switchboard - cost about $25. Works well for me!

And, do they cause cancer? No firm answers on this either. :grr:

And people use them while driving - how incredibly stupid. Lots of accidents - people using cell phones while driving and no, I am not "impressed".

:kick:

[mike_c]

11. I don't either-- I refuse to be wired 24/7....

eom

[CountAllVotes]

16. yeah same here

Who wants to be "wired" 24/7? Not me that is for sure. I don't even like having one phone - mostly junk calls anyway.

:kick:

[mike_c]

19. when I cancelled my SBC landline and went to VOIP only...

...ALL of my junk phone calls disappeared. ALL of them. I haven't gotten a junk call in over a year now. It's great.

[hlthe2b]

2. Time for someone to develop a blocking device...

Could it be that hard?

[Silverhair]

22. Then you won't get your calls.

The tower won't know where to send your signal.

[hlthe2b]

25. the old cell phones didn't have the GPS chip....

how did they get their calls?

[Silverhair]

32. The call was broadcast 360 degrees, to the ENTIRE cell.

By knowing you location, you call is tightbeamed to you. Saves electricy for the phone company.

[Greyhound]

3. Yes, and not just the government. n/t

[hlthe2b]

6. who else can track?

[Greyhound]

29. everyone with access to the GPS system including, but not limited to,

local government, cell company & any 'partner' companies they feel like giving it to.

[lpbk2713]

4. Stick with an older cell phone.

They aren't equipped with GPS technology.

[TomInTib]

7. Sometime when I check my voicemail I get

big chunks of messages (maybe a month's worth) that I deleted months ago.

[kansasblue]

8. I think your stretching things a little....

tracking them when 'they aren't being used' and 'when they are off' are two very different things.

If my phone is powered down no one can track it. If it's on and not in use (my taking to someone) it is still communicating with a local tower.

[AndyTiedye]

9. They Can Track Them When They Are On. NOT WHEN THEY ARE OFF

When the phone is idle, but on (able to receive a call) it can be tracked.
The newer ones have (minimal) GPS capabilities so they can be tracked better.

This tracking is more accurate if you are within range of multiple towers, and not very accurate at all if you are in a fringe area,
especially if it is heavily forested so GPS won't work.

When the phone is OFF (and not able to receive calls) it cannot be tracked.

[welshTerrier2]

12. the GPS feature ...

i used to have a cell phone that gave me the option to allow "emergency personnel" to track my phone's location ... the option, at my discretion, could be turned either on or off using one of the phone's menus ...

not anymore though ... the new phone is "permanent on" ... if you don't like it, don't get a phone ... seems fairly democratic to me ... if you want a phone, you have to let the government spy on you ...

the only point you made that i'm not sure is correct is the statement that they can be tracked even when "they're off" ... the article says they can be tracked even when you're not "using them" ...

those are two different statements ... which one is true? if the phone is turned off, it seems unlikely it would send a signal that could be tracked ... i think the article is suggesting the phone has to be on to be tracked but that you do not have to be on a call ...

either way, this is a civil liberties issues that should leave the choice of "emergency tracking" up to the individual ...

[DistressedAmerican]

13. Just Wrap It In Tin Foil! That Should Clear Up The Problem!

I hear it works for heads!:tinfoilhat:

[CrispyQ]

24. lol! Great answer!

:rofl: as I think of taking my foil wrapped cell phone out to make a call!

[The Backlash Cometh]

14. So, in other words, they can find the last three thieves that took off

with our last three cell phones?

You know, I always thought the cell phone companies were a bit remiss about searching for lost cell phones. I knew they had the technology to track them down, if they wanted to, but I guess it's mroe profitable to force you to buy a new one.

[Not Me]

18. It's not in their interests...

1.) You buy a new phone from them at full (non-discounted) price, and,
2.) The stolen phone will only work on their network...the possibility that the perp will activate it, thus creating a new account.

[Graf Orlok]

15. Damn.

I'm going to keep my cell off from now on, unless I use it.

Maybe I should look into an older analog model. I'm not feeling too comfortable with Big Brother around.

Edit: I think I'm going to look into a Tracfone. They don't need your name or personal info to activate it, so you remain anonymous.

[genieroze]

17. I just read this, real creepy stuff. I can't shut off my GPS tracker on my

new phone. They only need to say that they are tracking a 911 and BINGO they know exactly where I am. Even if I didn't dial 911.

edited to add link
http://www.infozine.com/news/stories/op/storiesView/sid/10501/

[DS1]

20. The Government can't track shit

They just want you to think they can, out of fear, and the media wants you to think you can for the sake of comfort.

[Silverhair]

21. Doesn't work if the phone is off.

Many people confuse "off" with "not in use" as in not talking at the moment - what used to be called "hung up". If the phone is "on", even if you aren't talking it will tell your position to withing 100 meters - if you are within a service area.

The original purpose of it was to save power for the phone company. The old system broadcast your signal to the entire cell. The new system can tightbeam your conversation directly to you, thereby using much less power. As a side benefit, you can call 911 and they know where to come to help you. Of course, it can be used, and is used, to track some people. Someday, it could be used to track everybody all the time and store the data. But we aren't there - yet.

RFIDs are not yet in common use, and their range is pretty low. They are too expensive yet to place in any but very high value stuff. Once the system is fully implemented and everything has a unique RFID, you will be able to fill up a cart, push it into a shielded scanner box, and instantly you are checked out. No need for a store checker to scann all the stuff. Of course, the technology will improve.

Human implanted RFID's are already a reality. Google Verachip. They do not yet have GPS ability, but that is being worked on.

[tjwash]

23. Cool, so if I decide want to rob a bank or something...

...I'll just toss my cellphone in a moving vehicle like a bus, and while they are chasing that, I'll be strolling down the street with my ill gotten gains.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

26. Those links were hardly long enough to require tinyurl.

Of course, knowing that it was another bullshit piece by the informationliberation crackpot conspiracy people before you click the link might have caused people to... not click the link.

[crispini]

27. Doesn't work when the phone is OFF.

Are you deliberately trying to make people paranoid or what? :tinfoilhat:

[Busshianic]

33. They can be tracked when its off, break out the tin foil, heres the quote

http://tinyurl.com/9jow2
:tinfoilhat::tinfoilhat::tinfoilhat::tinfoilhat::tinfoilhat:
Privacy advocates complain, however, that while the locator function is easy to control in phones equipped with GPS chips, consumers can't disable systems that rely on the towers.
:tinfoilhat::tinfoilhat::tinfoilhat::tinfoilhat::tinfoilhat:

[patcox2]

34. Still wrong.

They can track the phone even if its not in use, because the phones constantly emit a low power locating signal so that the cel will know its there in case someone calls you.

But if you turn your phone off, off, as in turn off the power, it cannot be tracked.

[Busshianic]

35. I agree, the thing is when its "off" its still emiting that signal

The phone idles when its off, emiting the signal, you need to remove the battery to disable the tracking ability.

[crispini]

37. Please show me where in the article it says that.

A GPS system requires power. It must be ON.

[Busshianic]

40. Its not in those articles, Ive been reading about it all day, heres a link

http://tinyurl.com/8mmv3

Why The System Knows Where You Are Even When You're Not Talking

This one is more subtle. How and/or why should the cellular system know the location of a phone that's just quietly monitoring a paging channel, waiting either for the user to place a call or for a call to come in?

It has to do with efficiency. If cell phone users only placed calls and never received them, there wouldn't be a need to track their locations even when idle. But a substantial fraction of calls are made to cellular phones. When someone calls a cell phone, a message is sent over the paging channel to the phone (this is why the phone monitors this channel whenever it is on but idle). But which cell's paging channel should the system use to page the mobile? The system may have literally hundreds of cells or sectors, and the user might be in any one of them -- or indeed, nowhere at all if he's out of town or has his phone switched off. The system could simply send the page over every cell in the system repeatedly until the mobile answers or the system gives up -- a practice called flood paging -- but this is obviously rather inefficient. It was done in the early days, before the number of cells and customers made it impractical. After all, each paging channel is only 10 kb/s, and each unanswered page has to be resent some reasonable number of times before the system can give up.

The alternative to flood paging is registration-based paging. That's where the phone announces itself to the system with a short message on the access channel so that the system knows exactly where to direct a page should an incoming call come in. If the mobile moves to another cell, it re-registers in that new cell and the system updates its database accordingly. The mobile also re-registers occasionally even if it stays in the same cell, just to refresh the database entry (the phone might be switched off without warning, or its battery could run down).

Different carriers have different registration policies. Their design is a careful balance between avoiding unsuccessful and/or flood paging on the one hand and wasting too much control channel overhead on registration, which after all produces no revenue because it's not associated with a call. I know from personal experimentation with GTE in San Diego that one's phone must successfully register before it can receive a call. This is easy to verify if your account has a "forward on no answer" feature. If you set up this feature and then call your cell phone when it has been switched off for a while, the call immediately forwards. But switch the phone on, let it register, turn it off and then try calling it. There will be a much longer pause while the system unsuccessfully attempts to page it in the cell where it last registered, and only when this fails will the call forward.

Most phones give no audible or visible sign that they're registering. The IN USE indicator remains unlit even though the phone may be actively sending registration messages. (By the way, this is the reason you should turn off your cell phone on an airliner -- simply not placing a call with it is not enough to keep it from transmitting). Some phones, such as my Motorola MicroTAC Lite, produce a slight but characteristic audible "click" when their transmitters switch on, either when a call is placed or a registration message is being sent. But this is clearly an unintentional artifact of this particular design.

The bottom line is simple: the only way to prevent a cell phone from registering (and revealing your location) is to turn it off. To make sure, remove the battery pack.

[crispini]

43. Ok, but I think the sentence BEFORE the last one is the most telling.

"The bottom line is simple: the only way to prevent a cell phone from registering (and revealing your location) is to turn it off."

I just don't see how anything can actively send a signal without power. Passively, yes, like RFID chips, but RFID chips require a scanner, and the scanner requires -- yes -- POWER.

[Busshianic]

44. Yeah, its just sometimes "off" isnt technically powerless :)

[crispini]

39. Quote from the article:

Besides, says Travis Larson of the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association, customers are going to turn off their phones if they feel their privacy is at risk. "And that's bad for our business."

[Sydnie]

28. EVERYTHING can be tracked if they want to

Gillette a few years ago, wanted some info on the demographics for the sales of their various razor products. They placed a small chip in the packaging that could be traced in a wide net to a specific area from the point of sale of these products. That way, they could see which neighborhoods were buying which product to skew their advertising in those areas for the product of choice.

They can track anything they want!

[crispini]

36. THAT is a different technology.

It's not what the article is referring to. It's called RFID, and it's a pretty short range thing. Google it and find out.

[Balbus]

30. A cell phone can't be tracked when it's off.

If it's powered on and not being used, which the article indicates, then yes. But not when it's off like the subject of the OP indicates.

[Berserker]

31. Eureka !!!!!!!

I believe we have stumbled on the answer to all our problems. All I have to do is give the whitehouse my cell number and then they begin tracking me and after about a week they will all be so fucking bored they will hang themselves .

[FreedomAngel82]

38. What is the purpose of it??

[meisje]

41. Two cans and a string baby!!

That's all I need

[OmmmSweetOmmm]

42. I shut off my GPS when I got this phone. It can only be used for 911.