Your cell phone might be tracking you

All cell phones made after 2003 have to include a GPS chip. While initial plans were to have a phone trackable within 100 meters, assistive technologies could be bringing that accuracy to within a few feet.

It is important for the paranoid to note that they can ONLY track you if they have your permission. Even if you commited a crime they wouldn't be able to track you down unless you allow them to. GPS's are only there to benefit you, by letting them find you when you call 911. My cell phone even gives me turn by turn directions. It's a good thing.

Thanks for clarifying, BatteryCharger. Yes, many phones can be set to "911 only" and in general the trackability of a phone is limited to prearranged agreements between an employer and employee, parent and child, etc.

What concerns me a bit are the "social networks" mentioned in the article, whereby kids could form ad-hoc groups of "trackable" friends. This is what could be bad, methinks.

BatteryCharger said:

It is important for the paranoid to note that they can ONLY track you if they have your permission. Even if you commited a crime they wouldn't be able to track you down unless you allow them to. GPS's are only there to benefit you, by letting them find you when you call 911. My cell phone even gives me turn by turn directions. It's a good thing.

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Ever heard of echelon? You give them permision to record you? I don't think so.

Or how bout the patriots act?

Rights? you think you have rights? HAHAHAHAHA

I haven't heard of any way to turn off the locator. Is there any technical info available?

hogx1 said:

Ever heard of echelon? You give them permision to record you? I don't think so.

Or how bout the patriots act?

Rights? you think you have rights? HAHAHAHAHA

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GPS abilities can easily be turned off by you on your own phone. There is nothing anybody could ever do in any circumstances to turn it back on without your consent. Nothing. The president himself could demand that your phone be tracked and it wouldn't happen.

Then again, I couldn't care less if they were tracking me. I'm not doing anything illegal...

It is important for the paranoid to note that they can ONLY track you if they have your permission.

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Uhmm, who was it that gave President Bush the right to listen to our phone conversations without a court order? I know I didn't. Oh and those that would lament the phrase "well if you have nothing to hide", be sure to write the White House, and give them your ok.

I might not have anything to hide, but I sure have plenty to lose.
Say, for instance, my rights.

Some keep their phone switched off and only respond to beepers. That's just the beginning as far a countermeasures go.

Bravo25 said:

Uhmm, who was it that gave President Bush the right to listen to our phone conversations without a court order? I know I didn't. Oh and those that would lament the phrase "well if you have nothing to hide", be sure to write the White House, and give them your ok.

I might not have anything to hide, but I sure have plenty to lose.
Say, for instance, my rights.

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Like I said, YOU are the one that decides whether this feature is turned on or not. Not the phone company or the government. They can't track you with it turned off anymore than they can call you when your battery is dead. Even if this country was taken over by a crazy dictator who decided he wants to track you with your cell phone he could not without your cooperation.

I suppose you'd rather just die when you get shot and call 911 from a cell phone? In fact I very nearly got killed last week. Had things been slightly different, my GPS cell phone is the only thing that could have saved me.

Bravo25 said:

Uhmm, who was it that gave President Bush the right to listen to our phone conversations without a court order? I know I didn't. Oh and those that would lament the phrase "well if you have nothing to hide", be sure to write the White House, and give them your ok.

I might not have anything to hide, but I sure have plenty to lose.
Say, for instance, my rights.

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Only if you're talking to terrorists...........they're the only ones being tapped.

BC you have way too much faith and trust in your gov. They have been caught lying more times than an entire student body at any given high school.

Trust me if you can turn it off (or have it say its "off") they can turn it on...

Bravo25 said:
"Uhmm, who was it that gave President Bush the right to listen to our phone conversations without a court order? I know I didn't. Oh and those that would lament the phrase "well if you have nothing to hide", be sure to write the White House, and give them your ok."

Phone privacy has been gone for over thirty years and it had nothing to do with any Bush. Any landline call may be legally monitored and even recorded by ANYONE as it is relayed by microwave. Microwave transmissions are RF and as such they belong to the people, like all other transmissions except cellular freqs. It is legal for anyone to listen but it illegal to divulge what you here.

Are you sure that you've ever made a landline call that wasn't relayed by microwave at one or more points along the way?

In the 70s Bamford wrote in The Puzzle Pallace that the NSA owned 48% of all of the microwave antennas in use in the States. His later book, Deep Black, is a good read, too.

hogx1 said:

Trust me if you can turn it off (or have it say its "off") they can turn it on...

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No, they can't. It is simply impossible. End of story. They have to actually have possession of the phone to turn it on. (not to mention it's still illegal to track you even if it is turned on)

Each cell tower has three 120 degree antennas. Your phone when on is in contact with at least one tower. If you are hitting two towers your signal can easily be triangulated GPS or No GPS, you can run, but you can not hide.:devil:

*sings* "I always feel like, somebody's watching me!"

I'd like to know how to turn this GPS feature on and off and I doubt very much that anyone who calls 911 does anything special to turn it on. I've heard of a feature to control sending it to other phone users but nothing about controlling sending it to the central switch, which is where any location tracking would take place.

Only if you're talking to terrorists...........they're the only ones being tapped.

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Right

Juat one question here. How would they know to whom I was speaking unless the call was already monitored?

Paulr - What kind of phone do you have?? On my LG, it's as easy as entering the service menu and changing the settings..

Bravo25 - That smelled of sarcasm to me. And If I were you, I'd really take what Sub_Umbra said and look into it..

nemul - Are you a secret Rockwell fan?? Once I read that I had to sing along...

I don't carry a cell phone, so I suppose the government will need some other means of tracking my movements....:devil:

Just don't stick GPS chips in flashlights!

guess it's one more reason to keep my ancient motorola time port crapola phone The antenna fell out again and got lost, so I suppose I'll have to blow the cash for another one as the range has suffered without an antenna...

course, the cost of the antenna is half the cost of a brand new phone, so I'll probably do that instead. But at this particular moment I can't think of anything I'd rather not do than try to sort out phone capabilities and sync capabilities and blue tooth capabilities and service plans and data plans and roaming plans and peak hours and off peak hours and what killer phone features that the carrier has hacked to disable so that you have to pay them to do something you should be able to do... Nah.. I think I'll keep the timeport for a while longer. God I hate the phone company!

Bravo, dude, it's definitely important to keep an eye on our government, without oversight government grows both in the parts you can see and the parts you can't. But remember that in order to have been listened to you needed to be making an international phone call to somebody on their terrorist watch list. Cavorting with known criminals will get you looked at more closely in most aspects of life, this is no different.

I have no problem with dialing 911 to release my GPS info. I think that is a tacit acceptance of a contract to give them that info. At any other time they better give me a switch in the phone that cannot be turned on remotely. And a contract that says they cannot, so if I discover that there is a backdoor into this I can start a class action lawsuit against them. Dont think they can continue to get away with turning that on when their contracts say they wont and not get caught. And when they do it will be a HUGE deal and there will be lawsuits and that company will suffer as the public tells them what they can do with their contract and moves to a different company.