[krw]

You're a goddamned idiot. Following me around my posts like a little
fucking child.

Paranoid too. You really out to be evaluated, Dimbulb. Seriously.

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

They wouldn't need to call you or ask where you are. Most cell phones
have GPS in them, and the ones that do not can be triangulated to from
the cell node towers. All they would have to do is poll your number. No
call required, no query required.

The only way out is to walk around with your cell phone completely
turned off. Another way would be to have a cell phone that is registered
to someone else.

Now we know your overload threshold. About 200 lines of careful
analysis, detailed refutations, and personal suggestions is required.
Predictably, you retreat to a safe topic which you allegedly know
something about. Amazingly, you offer no accusations of incompetence
or ineptitude, so I'll presume my status has been elevated from
"idiot" to something more acceptable. I'll be expecting your apology
shortly.

You're absolutely correct about cellular tracking as far as it goes.
Given sufficient technology, motivation, and funding, such things are
possible. In most cases, the location needs to be sufficient to
perform an apprehension. That's often difficult with some of the
existing technology.

For example, handset based GPS and AGPS (augmented GPS) rely on the
ability of the GPS engine to supply sufficient satellite delays for
the location services provider to calculate a location. The GPS data
is augmented by latency data from the cell towers. Under ideal and
FCC test conditions, it works as advertised. Under an ever growing
number of conditions, it sucks. GPS barely works indoors and in some
"shielded" vehicles. Acquisition time is decreasing with newer and
smarter chipsets, but still requires more operating time than the
typical cell phone battery can comfortably provide. Even the PSAP
(public safety answering points) is hesitant to MANUALLY request a
position report due to the power consumption problem. Tracking
someone around town with regular will certainly show up as a major
battery drain and unusual transmission rate, which is easily detected
by a personal RF detector, or one of those antennas with the LED
inside.

The indoor GPS problem is bad enough to support a startup.
<http://www.rosum.com>
Rosum uses TV transmitters to triangulate a location in areas where
GPS sucks.

The network based location technologies are even worse. Most use some
variation on TDOA (time difference of arrival) technology, where the
latency between the handset and more than one cell tower yields the
location. Two towers will give an ambiguous location. Three towers
will provide a non-ambiguous fix. The problem is finding a location
where you have a simultaneous non-reflective path to 3 cell towers.
That's possible in open flat areas but a rather dubious proposition in
crowded cities.
<http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1035-6143866.html>
Reverse engineering how James Kim was found should offer some clue as
to capabilities and limitations.
<http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1035-6140794.html>

There's also a problem with cell site capacity. Presumably, one of
the three sites is being used for communications, while the other two
are listening on the same channel (or time slot) for just location
data. That's fine for following perhaps one or two cell phones around
the city, but could overload the channel capacity of the cell site if
used extensively. Certainly, the cellular companies are not
particularly interested in installing extra hardware at their cell
sites that do not generate revenue. So, they sell LBS (location based
services) to pay for the extra hardware:
<http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1035-6135209.html>

The accuracy of such systems are not particularly good. AGPS handset
based systems must locate handsets within 150 meters 95 percent of the
time, and within 50 meters about 67 percent of the time. Network
based location systems are only expected to locate handsets within 300
meters 95 percent of the time, and within 150 meters 67 percent of
time. Even that is problematic as the FCC had instigated a review of
location accuracy and testing methods. It seems that the network
providers decided that everyone with a handset must obviously be
inside a vehicle and driving down a road. By using a database of
known road locations, they simply rounded off the calculated position
to the nearest roadway. The probably is adequate for most E911
applications, but can cause some rather interesting looking plots if
one were trying to follow someone around town. Incidentally, the FCC
also wants to extend the location requirements to VoIP providers.
<http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1035_22-6188332.html>

I won't go into detail on countermeasures for fear of hitting your 200
line posting limit. Suffice to say that shielding the GPS antenna in
the cell phone for handset based systems, and using a directional
cellular antenna for network based systems, is sufficient to break
either.

For the truly paranoid, there's also a problem with temporarily
turning off the cell phone. For handset based systems, I've noticed
that the initial handshake is now taking much longer than with earlier
non-GPS handsets. My guess(tm) is that the handset is sending the
last set of satellite delays to the cellular provider in order to
reduce computation times. However, this is admittedly speculation.

Drivel:
Cell Sites of Santa Cruz County:
<http://802.11junk.com/cellular/>
I haven't done anything with this site since about 2001. Since then,
the number of cell sites in the county has roughly doubled. Since I
now have a new camera (Canon S5-IS), I'll probably expand the web
site. Anyway, the plan was to provide coverage estimates and maps.
For example (at bottom of page):
<http://802.11junk.com/cellular/jeffl/SVLY-PGE/>

 

[Michael A. Terrell]

What is with this toilet/ass/excrement thing? That's all you ever talk
about.

You are obsessed with butts and poop, and you accuse me of being gay!

If you disagree with my observation, try real hard to reply *without*
mentioning digestive by-products.

Even better, try saying something nice, or on-topic, once in a while.

His head would explode, and it would take the Hazmat crew weeks to
clean up the place.


--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I've got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

 

[ChairmanOfTheBored]

S-word: 1

Hey, much improved! You're on the road to recovery!

**** off, shithead. Your bullshit E-1 grade assessments are invalid.

Nice job of ignoring the fact that you did the same thing too, you
retarded ****.

 

[ChairmanOfTheBored]

In alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt ChairmanOfTheBored

All new cell-phones are *required* to have locating ability in them; if
not GPS then triangulation from cell-towers.

That's essentially what I said.

They *claim* this is so that 911 calls can be properly routed.
(And I suppose they actually do it for that as a secondary reason.)
The *real* reason is so that police can trace a call to where it was
made from. The police-state we're heading towards hated the possibility
of people making untraceable calls ... so the legislature ruled that if
phone-companies were going to make mobile (cell) phones, they should be
as traceable and locateable as present land-lines are.

It also provides forensic evidence in case a crime is committed by
someone. They can be placed at the scene. The girl killed after leaving
that NYC bar rings a bell. It was the fucking "bouncer".

Turning the phone off works ... For now.
At present, there are too many places that *require* phones to be off;
(like hospitals and other sensitive areas) not just to prevent ringing,
but to prevent *transmitting*; which is needed for the locating to work.

I *suspect* that a few (less than ten, by my estimate) years down the
road cell phones won't even *have* an "off" function that does anything
besides disabling the ringer.

That's what battery removal is for.

There *will* be a disabling function to
prevent transmission from certain places (like your police-station or a
hospital)

I never knew of any rule at a police station. You are not allowed to
have one even in hand at my work. We have secure labs where removable
media, thumb drives audio recorders, cameras, etc, et al are absolutely
forbidden. Won't be long before we'll have an RFID on every device that
carries a security risk. No more "hard drives behind the water
fountain".

but such places will install a device that registers when you
come into the area and are turned off, and when you leave.

I doubt they'll get that sophisticated. The cost of implementing it is
too high. Folks get asked to turn them off in planes, and hospitals. As
far as I know those are the only places.

Thus you
won't be able to make unauthorized calls from the SS office or any
government building, and won't escape being tracked by the gestapo
either, if you have one on you. All they need to know is your number.

That's what battery removal is for.

You'll probably (eventually) have to enter your valid government ID to
buy one.

That already happens, as you cannot buy one without a credit check run,
which can easily be mutated into such a system, if it hasn't already.

Note how the clerk keeps your card in hand until the transaction goes
through.

This, of course, will be seen as a big step forward by those like BAH

From what I could tell, BAH needs to get laid, but also from what I
could tell, that will never happen. I don't even think the twit knows
what a GUI is, much less what gooey is.

who view our progression to a police-state where government watches
everybody and decides what we do and where we can go is something to be
desired "for security" to keep outsiders from doing nasty things. That
(like so many things such people advocate) it removes freedoms we've
traditionally enjoyed previously, seems like a small price to pay ...
Until it's WAY too late, of course.

What's that quote?
"Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little
Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Attributed to Benjamin Franklin; but likely from Richard Jackson
instead; though I doubt Benji would have disagreed.

BAH, of course, seems to think it's a very good trade indeed, from what
she supports if the present administration pushes it.

She knows about as much about security as she knows about modern
computer environments, which hovers very close to nil.

 

[ChairmanOfTheBored]

Paranoid too.

You're an idiot.

You really out to be evaluated, Dimbulb. Seriously.

You really OUGHT to stay off the booze. Then again, maybe Alzheimer's
is sinking into your skull as well.

I say GOOD riddance! How's that for an evaluation, you retarded ****!

 

[ChairmanOfTheBored]

Now we know your overload threshold. About 200 lines of careful
analysis, detailed refutations, and personal suggestions is required.
Predictably, you retreat to a safe topic which you allegedly know
something about. Amazingly, you offer no accusations of incompetence
or ineptitude, so I'll presume my status has been elevated from
"idiot" to something more acceptable. I'll be expecting your apology
shortly.

YOU are incompetent, inept, and inaccurate! Hell, you cannot even
count lines when most newsreader clients give the fucking line count!

You're a goddamned idiot, and your first two lines here prove it.
**** off and die, little boy.

 

[ChairmanOfTheBored]

You're absolutely correct about cellular tracking as far as it goes.
Given sufficient technology, motivation, and funding, such things are
possible. In most cases, the location needs to be sufficient to
perform an apprehension. That's often difficult with some of the
existing technology.

You're a goddamned idiot.

For example, handset based GPS and AGPS (augmented GPS) rely on the
ability of the GPS engine to supply sufficient satellite delays for
the location services provider to calculate a location.

Dumbfuck. Cellphones keep their last good reading and that gets
reported if a polled reading is not being reported by the phone.

The GPS data
is augmented by latency data from the cell towers.

Bullshit. The CELL PHONE takes a reading, and that is what gets
reported. ACTUAL COORDINATES, not some delay degraded data stream, you
retarded twit.

Under ideal and
FCC test conditions,

As if a retarded **** like you even knows.

it works as advertised. Under an ever growing
number of conditions, it sucks. GPS barely works indoors and in some
"shielded" vehicles.

All vehicles are "shielded" to a certain degree, idiot. It all depends
on where one places one's GPS antenna.

Acquisition time is decreasing with newer and
smarter chipsets, but still requires more operating time than the
typical cell phone battery can comfortably provide.

You're an idiot. It is a constant operation of the phone, and has a
specific update period.

Even the PSAP
(public safety answering points) is hesitant to MANUALLY request a
position report due to the power consumption problem.

When are you going to stop making shit up? Cell phones have had GPS
capacity for over three years now, and they have most certainly tackled
any power consumption issues.

Tracking
someone around town with regular will certainly show up as a major
battery drain and unusual transmission rate, which is easily detected
by a personal RF detector, or one of those antennas with the LED
inside.

You're an idiot. ANY cellphone that is turned on is CONSTANTLY in
contact with the cell node tower that it is currently in communication
with. Cell phones get date and time updates, and they transmit specific
data from the phone to the tower on CONSTANT basis.

The indoor GPS problem is bad enough to support a startup.

You're an idiot.

<http://www.rosum.com>
Rosum uses TV transmitters to triangulate a location in areas where
GPS sucks.

Not where... WHEN, and the WHEN is not as often as you would like to
claim, dingledorf. If one can get a call indoors, one can be tracked to
their location indoors. The GPS poll will merely report the last valid
reading taken, and the cell tower triangulation will verify it, or
correct for any difference from it.

 

[ChairmanOfTheBored]

His head would explode, and it would take the Hazmat crew weeks to
clean up the place.

That's what they said about your jaw line. What resides a mere few
inches above your jaw line would require a superfund bill to deal with,
you scummy fucktard.

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

Dumbfuck. Cellphones keep their last good reading and that gets
reported if a polled reading is not being reported by the phone.

Amazing. I guess it would then be trivial to display the Lat-Long on
the cell phone without the assistance of a for-pay location service.
Too bad there are only a few phones capeable of doing this. It seems
that to get location information, you have to subscribe to a server
based service. For example, Qualcomm has gpsOne, which has OPTIONAL
locally calculated position reports.
<http://www.cdmatech.com/products/gpsone.jsp>
There are 4 different modes that it can operate. See:
<http://www.cdmatech.com/download_library/pdf/gpsone.pdf>
<http://www.snaptrack.com/technology/index.jsp>
To the best of my knowledge, only the "Mobile-Assisted" mode has been
implimented in deliverable handsets. Incidentally, Snaptrack is now
owned by Qualcomm.

Bullshit. The CELL PHONE takes a reading, and that is what gets
reported. ACTUAL COORDINATES, not some delay degraded data stream, you
retarded twit.

Nope. See:
<http://www.gpsworld.com/gpsworld/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=12287>
"There are three basic types of data that the assistance server
provides to the GPS receiver: precise GPS satellite orbit and
clock information; initial position and time estimate; and for
AGPS-only receivers, satellite selection, range, and range-rate
information. The assistance server is also able to compute
position solutions, leaving the GPS receiver with the sole job
of collecting range measurements."
"Collecting range measurements" means satellite delays.

A bit on a location server:

All vehicles are "shielded" to a certain degree, idiot. It all depends
on where one places one's GPS antenna.

I've seen some measurements with various cellular handsets for GPS
signal strength and quality under various conditions. Sitting on your
belt or purse, while inside a vehicle, is actually fairly usable if
you want to take long samples. Indoors, in a forest, or in an urban
canyon full of reflections, GPS signal quality is really awful.
Fortunately, the typical operating position and user location for
talking to the cell tower, is also usually an adequate location for
obtaining a location fix. With the aquisition time reduction provided
by A-GPS, it can be done without draining the battery.

It is a constant operation of the phone, and has a
specific update period.

Nope. For normal E911 only operation, the receiver is powered off
until the PSAP requests a fix. The location server provides the
necessary to initialization data, the handset provides the satellite
delays, the location server chews on everything and provides the PSAP
with location data. It then turns off the GPS section until the next
request.

SiRF GPS chips currently are down to about 250mw of power consumption.
It takes about 1-2 seconds for an A-GPS initialization and an average
of about 15 seconds to obtain a fix sufficient to meet FCC's accuracy
specs. That won't kill a handset battery if used sparingly, but will
rapidly deplete the typical handset battery if used for continuous
tracking. Older implementations are not so efficient. Some sucked as
much as 1 watt.

When are you going to stop making shit up? Cell phones have had GPS
capacity for over three years now, and they have most certainly tackled
any power consumption issues.

Sure, mostly because it's not being used much and then only if polled.
However, you're correct that current GPS chips are far less power
hungry and have a faster TTFF (time to first fix) than older handsets.
As long as these modes of operation are being used, there's no power
problem. However, if you're planning on tracking someone
continuously, or polling excessively, as in advertiser supported LBS
(location based services), you'll probably have a signifigant effect
on battery life.

Not where... WHEN, and the WHEN is not as often as you would like to
claim, dingledorf. If one can get a call indoors, one can be tracked to
their location indoors. The GPS poll will merely report the last valid
reading taken, and the cell tower triangulation will verify it, or
correct for any difference from it.

Amazing. How does a single cell tower triangulate a handset position?
I thought it takes 3 to tango err... triangulate.

Incidentally, I live in a mountain forest, where GPS satellite
visibility is rather poor. I just put my Samsung SCH-i700 into
service mode to display the GPS data. Zilch. No birds in view. My
Verizon XV6700 showed blank fields for GPS data, which means either no
satellites or I screwed up somewhere (i.e. forgot to enable GPS
receiver). I'll try it again when I go to my palatial office in a few
days. Anyway, if you have a cell phone handy (does not need to be
activated), with a GPS, I can probably find the magic test mode code
so you can see for yourself what is being sent and whether it will
work indoors at your location.

 

[Jeff Liebermann]

Incidentally, I live in a mountain forest, where GPS satellite
visibility is rather poor. I just put my Samsung SCH-i700 into
service mode to display the GPS data. Zilch. No birds in view. My
Verizon XV6700 showed blank fields for GPS data, which means either no
satellites or I screwed up somewhere (i.e. forgot to enable GPS
receiver).

This might give you a clue as to what GPS data is available to send in
the xv6700. This is the output of FIELDTEST.EXE. The GPS data fields
are 4 pages long:
<http://802.11junk.com/jeffl/xv6700/gps/>
I haven't figured out how to enable the GPS receiver yet, so all the
fields are currently blank. I'll see if I can find which fields are
received by the Location Server, and which ones are returned for a
calculated location solution.

 

[krw]

You're an idiot.

Coming from AlwaysWrong, that's not much of an indictmentt.

You really OUGHT to stay off the booze.

Don't touch the stuff. You?

Then again, maybe Alzheimer's is sinking into your skull as well.

Nah, Dimmie. Unfortunately, you're too easy to remember.

I say GOOD riddance! How's that for an evaluation, you retarded ****!

I'm didn't go anywhere, or did you forget again, Dimbulb.