
For sale: Systems that can track where cellphone users go around the globe - acdanger
http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/for-sale-systems-that-can-secretly-track-where-cellphone-users-go-around-the-globe/2014/08/24/f0700e8a-f003-11e3-bf76-447a5df6411f_story.html?hpid=z1
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manicdee
Why would it be "bad" for Iran to track people this way, but there is not so
much concern for the NSA tracking people this way?

The USA has already killed people based on trivial amounts of data such as, "A
had dinner with B who is C's relative. Thus even though A is US citizen in a
foreign country, we will blow up his car with a Hellfire missile fired from a
drone because C is a known terrorist."

~~~
eurleif
>The USA has already killed people based on trivial amounts of data such as,
"A had dinner with B who is C's relative. Thus even though A is US citizen in
a foreign country, we will blow up his car with a Hellfire missile fired from
a drone because C is a known terrorist."

Do you have a link for that?

~~~
junto
The US also has a rather repugnant taste for targeting funerals, weddings and
the rescuers of such attacks:

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-
security/yemeni...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-
security/yemeni-victims-of-us-military-drone-strike-get-more-than-1million-in-
compensation/2014/08/18/670926f0-26e4-11e4-8593-da634b334390_story.html)

[http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/02/04/obama-
terror...](http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/02/04/obama-terror-
drones-cia-tactics-in-pakistan-include-targeting-rescuers-and-funerals/)

[http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/world/asia/us-drone-
str...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/02/06/world/asia/us-drone-strikes-are-
said-to-target-rescuers.html?_r=0)

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x0x0
It's unbelievable that at&t / verizon / tmobile / uscellular / sprint would
freely make this available to overseas companies / just anyone, no? Or am I
wrong? I mean, those companies are scum, but damn.

    
    
       Verint, which also has substantial operations in Israel, declined to comment 
       for this story. It says in the marketing brochure that it does not use 
       SkyLock against U.S. or Israeli phones, which could violate national laws. 
       But several similar systems, marketed in recent years by companies based in 
       Switzerland, Ukraine and elsewhere, likely are free of such limitations.
       
       At The Post’s request, telecommunications security researcher Tobias Engel 
       used the techniques described by the marketing documents to determine the 
       location of a Post employee who used an AT&T phone and consented to the 
       tracking. Based only on her phone number, Engel found the Post employee’s 
       location, in downtown Washington, to within a city block — a typical level 
       of precision when such systems are used in urban areas.
    

But apparently SS7 -- the network-to-network connection -- freely lets you
query anyone's last cell tower. Un-fucking-believable.

~~~
shard972
If you have nothing to hide then you have nothing to worry about.

~~~
atmosx
I guess you leave the door open when you go to the toilet, because after all,
_you have nothing to hide_.

~~~
azunds
Haven't you heard of Russian toilets?
[http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/02/02/article-2550427-1B...](http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/02/02/article-2550427-1B25997500000578-502_634x445.jpg)

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morgante
> Which is not to say I’d be happy about the NSA using this method to collect
> location data. But better them than the Iranians.

I have the opposite concern. There's really not much that Iran can do to an
American citizen continents away. The NSA, on the other hand, can target,
track, and detain me without any recourse.

~~~
kiram_bozorgeh
>There's really not much that Iran can do to an American citizen continents
away.

This is a very naive illusion.

Their intelligence agencies have a long history of doing things to their own
citizens around the world too.

~~~
morgante
> This is a very naive illusion.

It's naive to think Iran is more dangerous than the US government.

------
est
[https://events.ccc.de/congress/2008/Fahrplan/events/2997.en....](https://events.ccc.de/congress/2008/Fahrplan/events/2997.en.html)

slides from CCC in case someone is interested.

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googamooga
Actually, everybody who posesses a credit card or paypal account could start
tracking a location of any mobile phone with country-level resolution. Any
bulk-SMS sending company has a service called HRL Lookup, which is normally
used for optimization of SMS-sending costs to users in roaming. Though VLR
address (which is the result of HLR Lookup) can be used for user tracking
purposes - the first few digits of this address is just a country code of the
country which the user is visiting now.

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srean
I find personalized 3rd party tracking objectionable, unless the person
volunteered or consented.

That said, it would be quite nice to have an open API where I could query an
area for the count of cell phone users active there. Of course this should
have upper and lower bounds on the area, perhaps on its shape too. I emphasize
that it is just count that I seek, not querying the location of a specific
cellphone.

Is anything like this available, free, for a fee, for specific providers ?

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algorithm_dk
The technical part of this article is partially wrong. I will post the real
way it works later along with a real demo you can try on your own number. Stay
tuned!

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colinbartlett
When I travel outside my country, I always put my phone in airplane mode, then
purchase a local SIM card when I arrive.

Would that thwart this particular tracking?

~~~
inh3
Not necessarily due to each phone having its own unique identification number,
the IMEI.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Mobile_Station_Eq...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Mobile_Station_Equipment_Identity)

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joosters
I wonder how this scales? Would it be possible to get bulk data on phone
locations? You could imagine an unscrupulous company repeatedly grabbing the
location data for _every_ phone on a list to improve their own customer
profiling or advertising.

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skidoo
Would have been nice if this tech applied to Malaysian flights.

