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jrtomhttp://yro.slashdot.org/yro/06/12/02/0415209.shtml
The short version: at least some cell phones can be used to relay sound in their vicinity, even when they're nominally 'off'. Same is apparently true of some cars' navigation systems.
And apparently at least some judges don't have a problem with this.
UPDATE: What I meant by the above comment is that "at least some judges are willing to admit evidence that is gathered by law enforcement officials via this type of surveillance". Which appears to lend at least some legality to the practice.
I guess there are two issues here.
First, I find it annoying when my electronic devices don't make it easy for me to disconnect them from power. It's often wasteful of energy, and also a real nuisance when you find out that they were accidentally turned on and are now dead because they've been sitting around draining the battery. (I've also just recalled an occasion in which I accidentally (and unwittingly) called a friend on my cellphone, apparently by bumping it in just the wrong way while trying to load a bicycle on a rack. Apparently this resulted in a somewhat surreal message being left on his voice mail. Had he actually answered, I suppose my pants might have started talking to me. ;) )
Second, I'm not really sure how I feel about this sort of surveillance; this is probably a larger discussion. The current political climate has made it much more acceptable to use surveillance for 'fishing expeditions', i.e., circumstances in which you're looking for evidence that a person might have committed some kind of crime. If I believed that this technique were only going to be used in cases in which law enforcement officials already had probable cause to suspect that the subject had been involved in a specific crime, I'd feel better. As it is...I don't.
The short version: at least some cell phones can be used to relay sound in their vicinity, even when they're nominally 'off'. Same is apparently true of some cars' navigation systems.
And apparently at least some judges don't have a problem with this.
UPDATE: What I meant by the above comment is that "at least some judges are willing to admit evidence that is gathered by law enforcement officials via this type of surveillance". Which appears to lend at least some legality to the practice.
I guess there are two issues here.
First, I find it annoying when my electronic devices don't make it easy for me to disconnect them from power. It's often wasteful of energy, and also a real nuisance when you find out that they were accidentally turned on and are now dead because they've been sitting around draining the battery. (I've also just recalled an occasion in which I accidentally (and unwittingly) called a friend on my cellphone, apparently by bumping it in just the wrong way while trying to load a bicycle on a rack. Apparently this resulted in a somewhat surreal message being left on his voice mail. Had he actually answered, I suppose my pants might have started talking to me. ;) )
Second, I'm not really sure how I feel about this sort of surveillance; this is probably a larger discussion. The current political climate has made it much more acceptable to use surveillance for 'fishing expeditions', i.e., circumstances in which you're looking for evidence that a person might have committed some kind of crime. If I believed that this technique were only going to be used in cases in which law enforcement officials already had probable cause to suspect that the subject had been involved in a specific crime, I'd feel better. As it is...I don't.
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Date: 6 December 2006 16:32 (UTC)Regarding the technical details: I haven't seen an article that discusses the details of how they used the cell phone signal, but I don't have any reason to believe that it has anything to do with GPS capabilities. (Even if the phone did have GPS, it's not clear to me that you can track a GPS device: a GPS device doesn't (as far as I know) need to transmit information--it just needs to receive satellite signals. In any case, I'm guessing that if they could have activated her phone, they probably could have called her.) I believe that cell phones do transmit a signal when they're trying to locate a cell tower to use--this is why cell phones that can't connect use up their battery faster. If you knew to look for such a signal, you could presumably triangulate on it.
Regarding the wider issues: of course I recognize that there can be good uses for this sort of remote activation. One of the reasons why I posted this article in the first place, though, is that I think that it's good to be aware of the fact that these capabilities exist, regardless of whether one thinks that they are likely to be abused.
Thanks for the comments, though. :)