Headline China, as they roll tanks to put down protests, the cops are using cellphone data to chase people after the fact.
A protester told CNN they received a phone call Wednesday from a police officer, who revealed they were tracked because their cellphone signal was recorded in the vicinity of the protest site.... When they denied being there, the caller asked: "Then why did your cellphone number show up there?"
Just remember, ladies and gentlemen, that your cell phone does not work for you. You pay for it, and you carry it around, but who it really works for is Apple or Google and the government.
Also, just in case you are an oblivious Normie and you are thinking "Ha, this is Canada! [or America, you Americans] That could never happen here!" I will remind you that it already happened here in February 2021 at Coutts border point in Alberta, at Niagara Falls border in Ontario, and in Ottawa Ontario. Freedom Convoy. The cops recorded the location data for every phone in town.For you Americans, January 6th 2020 is the date.
I mention those occasions because we have verification from court documents and testimony that these things occurred. The truth of the matter is that location data is recorded 24/7/365 and stored forever. Furthermore that location data gets data-mined for all kinds of information by both government and private concerns, the most obvious of which is advertising.
Day to day, none of us care about this. It's not important. But when a cop shows up and wants to know why you were at the corner of Spruce and Bruce at 2:30pm last Tuesday, you are suddenly going to care.
Just sayin'.
4 comments:
Yet another reason to be outside big cities; the towers are farther apart so locations are less precise and the local cops don't have the time and resources to get information from Google or Apple.
Of course, there are also less likely to be reasons to need to hide your activity there ...
To be perfectly fair, the "why did your phone number show up there?" thing would have happened the same way even with a phone that *does* belong 100% to you and doesn't do anything behind your back. The police in this case got the phone number from the nearby cell tower, not the person's phone. If a cell phone is going to function as a cell phone and be able to receive calls, it has to notify the nearby cell towers of its phone number, so that the system can know that all calls for 555-1212 should route to *this* specific tower. The police didn't need to pull GPS data from that person's phone to know that, they just needed to subpoena the cell tower records from the phone company.
My understanding of the location data for phones is that signal triangulation allows the phone to record it's position to an accuracy of feet if there are at least three towers visible. More towers means more accuracy, but not that much more, really.
The phone then transmits that data to Apple, or Google, or in this case the Chinese government. It is always on, 24/7/365. It has been revealed that the phones transmit location data even when you opt out of tracking.
And by the way, so does your car. Let's not forget that beauty. Your car phones home. Some newer models can be deactivated remotely.
Next time you feel the need to go out with five thousand close friends, slap a piece of tape over your mouth and hold up a blank sheet of paper, just bear that in mind. Ride your bike and take a Polaroid camera.
The accuracy of tower data depends significantly on range to the tower, antenna direction on the tower, quality of tower equipment, and other factors.
Unless the towers are close and new, there is not "feet" in the accuracy. They can't prove which house you were in, but they may be able to prove you were at a large event.
Here is an FCC article selling an app that helps with 911 location; it gives numbers for tower data accuracy and the federal specification that phones are supposed to meet but often don't (300 ft). PDF warning! https://transition.fcc.gov/pshs/911/Apps%20Wrkshp%202015/911_Help_SMS_WhitePaper0515.pdf
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