by KaiserJeep » Sun 20 Dec 2015, 08:15:47
Speaking again as an engineer, I wonder how many of you understand what a cell phone has onboard nowadays.
First of all, it has an associated SIM (Subscriber Identification Module). This module is in a small card that many of you own and have probably swapped between phones. It is a unique SIN (subscriber identification number) and it associates you with your online user profile, something all internet users have, used to market stuff to you in personalized advertising. Burner phones also contain SIMs, and you would probably be shocked at how quickly and surely a new burner is associated with YOU the individual. This is a mobile technology extension of the combination of online user names and MAC addresses that have been tracking your online activities for 20+ years. Understand that our web habits and the devices that we use to connect to the web create a unique digital fingerprint (or footprint) that can be tracked. Logon to your usual haunts like PO.com and whatever, and the odds are about 50/50 that you have been identified by your 3rd online session (or go to 3 or more web pages, and you get ID'd in one session), and that new device added to the long list of computers, tablets, and phones that you have used since you first used the internet - and every userid and every word you ever typed in every web page and every E-mail system since your first message/text.
Secondly, modern phones all have onboard GPS modules, and these are all on and working all the time. Modern GPS "chips" are sophisticated hybrid circuits containing radio receivers and both analog and digital circuits, and they are both dirt cheap and incredibly effective - offering at least 20 db more receiver sensitivity than the old handheld GPS devices that used to lose lock when you entered a building. Nowadays I have seen modern GPS phones retain positions even in the L3 sub-basement of a steel-framed high-rise building. Most phones nowadays also contain SINS (inertial navigation platform) navigation functions (perhaps on the GPS module itself) which can continue to track your position and report your itinerary the next time you connect to a cell tower. "Turning off" the GPS feature on your phone does not disable the tracking function, it simply disables the public use of the location data with any app that you can buy. It does not mean that the phone company or any government agency with the proper subpoena cannot track your phone. Note that (this is a matter of public record in thousands of court cases) most private investigators "know somebody" who can track a phone with the GPS function turned off - or can do so themselves. Even if you spend a small fortune on a phone with the GPS module disabled (a violation of law in most places) they can still track you pretty darned well using the relative strength of your phone signal on 3 or more cell towers. (One of my former engineer colleagues and a personal friend developed these tracking algorithms, nominally for the use of "911" emergency services on older non-GPS phones, but in retrospect "not really".) Nor does removing the battery on your phone help - most have small onboard batteries on the printed circuit boards, allowing you to swap phone batteries and not drop the call. (AFAIK, removing BOTH the battery and SIM for 30+ minutes will disable the tracking, forcing your phone to take up to 7 minutes to recalculate your position next time powered on.)
The smartphones - and any "dumb" phone without full data capabilities but with texting functions - also have a range of unique MAC addresses that identify that particular phone. ("Oh, on this date/time, so-and-so swapped his SIM into her phone and made a call....")
It doesn't matter whether you are in your house or a cave in Afghanistan, make a call, logon to the web, or just move around inside the range of a cell tower, and they can track you and listen to your "encrypted" calls.
If it makes you feel any better, my tech company employer used to track all the employees using our transponder ID cards - and when Human Resources was looking for an excuse to fire somebody, his/her manager had access to the tracking data - included how many trips to the bathroom, the length of your stay, how many trips to the coffee machine and how long you gossipped, which meeting rooms you used and when, how many online minutes were private vs. company use, whether you were actually working while at home, etc.
Nor does it help much to run your browser in "incognito" mode - which adds a randomization of MAC addresses and other tracking functions, forcing the tracking algorithms to re-acquire you via your "footprint", often within minutes. Even the tablet I use, which has no GPS module or SIM, and is in fact "wifi only" can be tracked when I leave the wifi turned on, as I enter and leave various wifi zones (mostly, I leave wifi off so that the battery lasts longer for my main e-reader app). Privacy is an illusion today.
KaiserJeep 2.0, Neural Subnode 0010 0000 0001 0110 - 1001 0011 0011, Tertiary Adjunct to Unimatrix 0000 0000 0001
Resistance is Futile, YOU will be Assimilated.
Warning: Messages timestamped before April 1, 2016, 06:00 PST were posted by the unmodified human KaiserJeep 1.0