According to a Wall Street Journal article that recently appeared, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies are now, and have been, tracking defendants and their lawyers through their cell phones, by "pinging" the phones and receiving a return reply by the phone. Its not clear is if powering down the phone frustrates that. If true, I have another thing to worry about? Nah, other issues like frivolous prosecutions come to mind. [article @ http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904194604576583112723197574.html]-- author of article can be reached @: L Jennifer.Valentino-DeVries@wsj.com
BTW, "pinging" a phone is the process of sending sending an electronic signal to the phone. When your phone is turned on, you will see the relative strength of the signal, whether is is 3G or 1X or 1XEV, or whatever the GSM counterpart is. This relative signal strength has to do with how close you are from a cell tower...the closer you are, the stronger the signal. Your phone will periodically send a signal out, saying "I'm here" while searching for a cell tower, to establish or maintain a signal link to that tower so as to be ready to make or accept a cell call or other communication. This process of sending an "I'm here!" signal is called pinging.What the stingray device apparently does is capture a cell phone "ping" signal and, I'm guessing here, relate the electronic ID of the phone to an assigned telephone number. (It seems to me that the cell carriers are complicit in this by providing EINs to law enforcement.) This way, when the police capture a cell phone ping, they can identify the telephone number assigned to the EIN of the pinged response, and thus identify the person to whom the cell number is assigned. Then, once the police confirm that the signal they have identified through the ping response is from the phone of the target, then simply follow the signal around and, using triangulation from multiple cell towers and cell site locations supplied by the phone companies, they track the location of the phone. Nice huh!
The new reality? There is nowhere to hide, there is no way to keep anything private. Ultimately the Supreme Court may eliminate the Fourth Amendment entirely by finding that no one has any reasonable expectation of privacy any more?
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