How mobile phones let spies see our every move

How mobile phones let spies see our every move

www.guardian.co.uk

Government's secret Celldar project will allow surveillance of anyone, at any time and anywhere there is a phone signal

(visit the link for the full news article)

As of today, the UK government will have the power to monitor all phone usage by all private citizens in the UK. All mobile phones and landlines will be traceable and the information will be made public to 795 different government bodies. These bodies will be able to tell when the phone was used, how ong it was being used for and where it was when it was being used. There are also plans to allow these government agencies to have full and unrestricted accss to our internet history within the next 2-3 years.

The reason given for this is to monitor terrorism, reduce crime and cut benefit fraud. I fail to see how the vast majority of these government bodies gaining access to my mobile phone usage will reduce the number of terrorist attacks.

www.guardian.co.uk
(visit the link for the full news article)

As I stated on the other thread about this, it wont bother me at all.
I use VOIP for my phone calls and when out use my mobile phone, bought on Ebay and untraveable with a PAYG sim, also untraceable to anyone.

Tracking your phone calls, that is nothing compared to what they can do if they chose. There is a case where they uploaded new software, without physical access to phone(which means code was already written), into a mob persons phone, it turned his phone into a mic, even if it was turned off. December 1, 2006

www.news.com...

Although the mass tracking of everyone is also alarming. Thanks for post.


[edit on 1-10-2007 by Redge777]

Tracking the phone calls has been hapening for some time now in my opinion, it's just that the scale of this and the fact that it has been made public is alarming.

Also, if you try looking for articles relating to it in todays papers, you will be hard pressed to see any reference whatsoever. I just happened to hear a bloke on TV make a comment about it and did a bit of digging.

Foolish enough to use a cretin device like this you got what's coming to you. I 'had' to carry one in the 80's for my job. Remember? when only Dr's and such had them? I hate them with every fiber in my body. Seven years was plenty for me.

Originally posted by jpm1602
Foolish enough to use a cretin device like this you got what's coming to you. I 'had' to carry one in the 80's for my job. Remember? when only Dr's and such had them? I hate them with every fiber in my body. Seven years was plenty for me.

I assume you're talking about mobile phones? Well, this new legislation also covers all phones including land lines. I also covers any mobile or static voice communication device that has to pass through a mediated source, including certain radio broadcasting devices.

Soon it will incorporate internet usage, which puts you squarely in the 'got what's coming to you' category. Indeed, there is not one person on this site who does not fit in it by pure virtue of using the internet.

This might sound naive, but why not...

...get two phones?

That way they couldn't tell which one you were using (you could loan one to a family member now and then), even if the tracking showed the phone to be moving.

Obviously it's no good if it's your workplace tracking you, but for people that are feeling watched in general it might be one solution.

Originally posted by Badge01
That way they couldn't tell which one you were using (you could loan one to a family member now and then), even if the tracking showed the phone to be moving.

In which case, if you're up to no good, you've just put a family member in the frame for your naughty behaviour. Let's see how long you're father-in-law holds up under a 'robust' police interview because you've been doing dodgy deals and saying that he had your phone!

Either way, plod has a body to stick in front of a judge. Result.

[edit on 1-10-2007 by PaddyInf]

After reading this article news.bbc.co.uk...
you'll see the tug of war in the personal security issues.

After reading the article that the OP linked to I have a feeling most of you are missing the point and would urge you to reread.

This particular 'advance' is much more serious that mealy logging call durations and destinations - (which to be honest is old news, how do you think you get an itemised bill) or even the way access to this information has been seriously relaxed (but I worked for a mobile company in a call centre for 2 yrs +, it aint that secure any way)

No... This little baby is quite interesting.

The technology 'sees' the shapes made when radio waves emitted by mobile phone masts meet an obstruction. Signals bounced back by immobile objects, such as walls or trees, are filtered out by the receiver. This allows anything moving, such as cars or people, to be tracked.

I'm gonna have to do a big of digging but years back I can recall reading about a method where by rescuers could 'see' under rubble and find survivors, so long as an active mobile phone was present. This is that technology.

The way I understand it working is that the mobile is just a radio device, it transmits and receives in the microwave bands. You will all know about the static you get when you tune in a radio - some say the sound of the universe. Well there will be this 'static' with the mobile phone system - until now the network would simply filter it out.

Turns out that this static contains a lot of information about the immediate area of the transceiver - remember it is in the microwave range (from 1mm up to 1m). And here's the doozy - it's all in a nice digital stream that can be manipulated by you fancy new privacy invasion gubbins.

When I read this I could not shake the image from the matrix where all the green text is constantly scrolling and experienced users can 'see' what it is. Scary.

I still don't get it, is it reading moving objects by seing shadows moving in and out, blocking transmission?

Like a hand moving in front of your face blocks the light of the monitor screen?

Here we go found something similar.

The Bell Labs engineers, led by husband-and-wife team Victor Lubecke and Olga Boric-Lubecke, noticed that some of the microwaves transmitted by a mobile phone's antenna bounce back to the phone from the chest, heart and lungs of the person using it. Because those organs are moving, the frequency of the reflected radiation is Doppler shifted by a tiny amount. If the lung is expanding, the radiation bouncing off it is pushed closer together, slightly raising its frequency. A contracting lung lowers the frequency. The variation is tiny: just one hertz in a billion.

Bell Labs now plans to modify the mobile phone with a circuit that detects the Doppler shift in the reflected signal picked up by its antenna. The phone then sends this information on to the base station, where further signal processing extracts the user's vital signs. "We're talking about very low-frequency signals. They're easy to separate from a voice," said Dr Lubecke.

link
Thats from Feb 2001 and they are only talking about hart beats and lung inflations!! The way I understand it is with an almost 100% GSM coverage (here in UK) that means that any one could theoretically 'see' any thing moving so long as it is in GSM coverage - WHOAH!!!

Originally posted by Redge777
I still don't get it, is it reading moving objects by seing shadows moving in and out, blocking transmission?

Like a hand moving in front of your face blocks the light of the monitor screen?

]

No, by calculating the very slight doppler shifts in the microwave 'static' a computer can image a 3D picture of any thing that moves, if you dont move - ie dead or furnature it wont see you.

The microwaves are between 1mm and 1m , so for instance it wont see any thing below 1mm - I don't know the wave length mobile use off the top of my head.

I read the article thanks I get it now, although I am skeptical. You would think the noise would swamp out most moving objects. Now the heart and lungs have a pattern, so they could be found, but to find any moving object requires a pattern and then something to match it with.

I am thinking sonar, the cavitation of a screw would have rhythm and identifiable signature. so it is Identifiable in the same way. but a car would be like identifying something with no known pattern since range and speed would be different in every situation and not consistent.

I am amazed a doppler shift can be detected at such an small level, you would think noise would swamp it out. Good article

New future marketing tool to fine tune a telephone pitch, ugh.

[edit on 3-10-2007 by Redge777]

Originally posted by Badge01
Obviously it's no good if it's your workplace tracking you, but for people that are feeling watched in general it might be one solution.

I have two phones exactly for that purpose! One is for personal use, the other is for whatever person/company I'm employed with at the moment to contact me.

When I'm off from work, I switch off the "work phone", and I don't give out the "personal phone" number to people I'll be working with. It's not because I'm paranoid or anything, but if it's not work hours, I don't want to hear work matters.

Things were simpler when phones were not mobile, but it doesn't mean now that mobile phones are the norm, I want to be contacted at 3AM in the morning to check the design mock-ups or some other crap the employers can think of at that hour.