Final, Total Proof That Cell Phones are Government Tracking Devices
Posted Nov 24, 2007 7 comments
From the "Don't Ever Call Me Paranoid Again" files:
The Washington Post reported something remarkable: "Cellphone Tracking Powers on Request," an article that plainly states that law enforcement and intelligence agencies routinely track US citizens through their cell phone's GPS capability. Please remember that I'm not being alarmist. I personally accepted the fact I live in a total surveillance police state awhile back. Rather than view that as a prison, I've decided to treat it like a stage. This is not a crisis, this is not a nightmare, this is just the world that you and I happen to live in.
With that said: the United States government military-intelligence complex has data on the daily routines of all US cell phone users. As you're no doubt aware, any and all cellular phones are also GPS tracking devices. They happen to be somewhere between convenient and nescessary, so many of us are carrying around these tracking devices voluntarily.
The issue is taking on greater relevance as wireless carriers are racing to offer sleek services that allow cellphone users to know with the touch of a button where their friends or families are. The companies are hoping to recoup investments they have made to meet a federal mandate to provide enhanced 911 (E911) location tracking. Sprint Nextel, for instance, boasts that its "loopt" service even sends an alert when a friend is near, "putting an end to missed connections in the mall, at the movies or around town."
With Verizon's Chaperone service, parents can set up a "geofence" around, say, a few city blocks and receive an automatic text message if their child, holding the cellphone, travels outside that area.
"Most people don't realize it, but they're carrying a tracking device in their pocket," said Kevin Bankston of the privacy advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation. "Cellphones can reveal very precise information about your location, and yet legal protections are very much up in the air."
Further:
"Law enforcement routinely now requests carriers to continuously 'ping' wireless devices of suspects to locate them when a call is not being made . . . so law enforcement can triangulate the precise location of a device and [seek] the location of all associates communicating with a target," wrote Christopher Guttman-McCabe, vice president of regulatory affairs for CTIA -- the Wireless Association, in a July comment to the Federal Communications Commission. He said the "lack of a consistent legal standard for tracking a user's location has made it difficult for carriers to comply" with law enforcement agencies' demands.
Don't Fall For The Shell Game
I'm going to state something with no evidence, because it's transparently true and the evidence will be emerging this year: all of the debates about phone companies sharing this information is a charade. The NSA has total access to any and all servers anywhere in the world, around the clock. The NSA has total access to all of this information and seldom, if ever, ask for "permission" to go in and invisibly take it. They do that all day every day, and that's why the NSA headquarters in Maryland consumes more electricity than most US cities do.
Further Reading for Curious Primates
I frequently recommend Cryptogon and sure enough, that's the single best resource on this issue.
AT&T Invents Programming Language for Mass Surveillance. You know, just like IBM did for Germany. Thanks, guys.
SEAS: Synthetic Environments for Analysis and Simulation. In case you missed it, DARPA is running real-time, full-planet Earth wargame simulations using the flood of data they're harvesting from...well, from you and me.
Interview with NSA Whistleblower Russell Tice. An essential excerpt:
[Tice] said he plans to tell the committee staffers the NSA conducted illegal and unconstitutional surveillance of U.S. citizens while he was there with the knowledge of Hayden. “I think the people I talk to next week are going to be shocked when I tell them what I have to tell them. It’s pretty hard to believe,” Tice said. “I hope that they’ll clean up the abuses and have some oversight into these programs, which doesn’t exist right now.”
Tice said his information is different from the Terrorist Surveillance Program that Bush acknowledged in December and from news accounts this week that the NSA has been secretly collecting phone call records of millions of Americans. “It’s an angle that you haven’t heard about yet,” he said. He would not discuss with a reporter the details of his allegations, saying doing so would compromise classified information and put him at risk of going to jail. He said he “will not confirm or deny” if his allegations involve the illegal use of space systems and satellites.
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Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.1. CJF on Nov 25, 2007 at 6:05 AM permalink
As assembly line workers were replaced by machines. As office staff
were automated. As untold numbers of snitches and spies will be.
Replaced by technology. I,also,accepted that there is no risk of
surveillence. A certainty. Conspiracy is a basic human trait. So is
voyerism. Two tactics to deplete effect: hide info (out in the open
obfuscation);and/or, creative enhancement. “Dreaming a thousand lives to live, living a thousand-and-one”. Love Big Brother to death
If someone wants to know everything, give them everything to know.
Pseudo-neo-para-quasi-everything
2. ^9 on Nov 25, 2007 at 8:20 AM permalink
some pre-2001 cellphones did not have GPS tracking, all do now of course though, it operates on an independent battery too, cellphones in general are bad, I personally take offense from the large portion of the population radiating the hell out of everyone for the convenience of perpetual idle chatter, not trying to be an asshole but it’s one of those absent minded things the whole of the population tend to adopt
Dangers of Cellphone radiation too
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5226972289326309066&q;
3. MIKE on Nov 25, 2007 at 3:16 PM permalink
You can thank the Clinton’s and the Bush’s for this one!
You Will Soon Be Microchipped - All Your Thoughts And Every Movement Will Be Logged And Monitored
Link: http://newsbuster.com/Pages/exclusives/the_cia_family_jewels.html
4. CJF on Nov 25, 2007 at 8:20 PM permalink
We are betrayed by those whom we trust. Some we choose, some we must
The talking heads of every major city’s ‘news’ seem to use ‘key phrases’, like ‘our home town’. A backround pic of a gun, even for a stories about knife fights and bludgeonings. Blonde female, dark male, comical weatherperson, A ‘Biff’,or a ‘Walt’ with sports. Human
props. Staged. Which is worse, the goverment does not represent the
majority; or, that it does? There’s the ‘Buttle/Tuttle’ factor in
the movie ‘Brazil’ and the election factor in ‘Being There’. Holly- wood is to make the rest of the country seem more real by comparison
If Shakespear met Freud, Shakespear would know Freud the better.
The ‘Fourth Wall’ trumps the Freudian schlep
5. straw dog on Nov 27, 2007 at 7:37 AM permalink
Couldn’t the GPS function be relatively easy to disable? Question from a non-technical person.
6. Steven on Nov 30, 2007 at 3:15 AM permalink
Actually, not only can you not disable it (the tower knows where you are by virtue of the fact that there’s a signal going back and forth between you and it), but they can turn your phone on remotely if they need a ping. I remember reading they actually busted some mafia guy recently by remotely turning on his cell phone and recording the conversation in the car.
I agree with CJF about the future of automated spying. In the future, much of what we call surveillance will be done by computers aggregating whatever data you have online, phone calls, emails, behavioral patterns, usual routes, etc, etc. Even the trend to centrally-stored web applications supports this model. All the pieces exist but they can only become more and more integrated while people rely on the technology more and more. One day the CIA could be a room full of men running their “suspicious activity” crystal report.
7. Steven on Nov 30, 2007 at 11:18 PM permalink
Also, at the risk of sounding like a windbag, the need for bodily spies doing physical spying reduces as the social conditioning techniques improve and peer pressure can be leveraged more and more. People can be encouraged and relied on more and more to spy and report on each other. As Stephen Colbert once said, the biggest benefit of a police state is that 100% spying = 100% employment.