[LINK] Re: Calculating A Mobile Phone User's Phyical Location

[Craig Sanders]

On Wed, Mar 13, 2002 at 05:29:13PM +1100, Patrick Corliss wrote:
> I doubt if the police would need to "buy" such information as they
> could probably get it for nothing with a search warrant or similar.  

warrants can be difficult to obtain, harder (and subject to greater
scrutiny) than simply purchasing commercially available information.

> In fact, ASIC, the Tax Office and heaps of other agencies have the
> power to request documents (which can be in electronic form) right
> now.

very few agencies have the power to spy on you without a warrant and
without your knowledge.

> Private investigators, debt collectors and the like have no more
> powers of search, etc. than ordinary people although they would be
> prepared to pay for information which was available for a price.
> Stuff like reverse telephone books is a good example.

yes, that was my point.  it would be yet another tool for spying on
people.

> For those who are technically savvy about such things, how accurately
> can a mobile phone work out a person's physical location (assuming
> they are the one to use the phone)?  Is it possible to calculate a
> latitude and longtitude with any degree of accuracy using base
> stations?

the ericson employee who started this sub-thread on aussie-isp claimed
that their next generation system would be able to locate people to
within a 15 metre radius, with an ordinary mobile phone.

that's good enough to track where people go, what route they take, what
houses & shops they enter, what other people are near and for how long,
and so on.  you can infer a lot about a person's activities from that
kind of data.

> I can think of at several applications where the mobile phone user
> would want to transmit his or her exact location.  One that comes to
> mind is calling for a taxi.

you can have the same features without the invasion of privacy - e.g. it
would be better to have a GPS receiver built into the phone and leave
the decision about whether to transmit location entirely up to the
individual....call a taxi and push a button to transmit GPS
co-ordinates, cross-referenced with a melways or whatever map reference.


craig

-- 
craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au>

Fabricati Diem, PVNC.
 -- motto of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch