Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!killer!vector!telecom-gateway From: westmark!dave@rutgers.edu (Dave Levenson) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Cellular Phones and Big Brother Message-ID: Date: 4 Apr 89 22:05:38 GMT Sender: news@vector.UUCP Organization: Westmark, Inc., Warren, NJ, USA Lines: 32 Approved: telecom-request@vector.uucp X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@vector.uucp X-TELECOM-Digest: volume 9, issue 124, message 4 of 7 In article , xrtll!rsnider@nexus.yorku.ca writes: > Yesterday I sat in my office and had a nice chat with a friend of mine > who called my from his truck while driving through Toronto... > Afterward I thought about this and relized that the cellular service > providers here have a VERY good idea of where you are with your phone. > There seems to be a potential here for the police department to locate > stolen vehicles with cellular phones in them by simply having the > service providers tell them where they are. As well, the phones will > respond if polled so there does not have to be a conversation in progress > in order to do this. A few years ago, a friend had a cellular mobile phone stolen from her car. She called the local service provider to ask them to try to locate the vehicle. (She worked at Bell Laboratories, and was involved in the development of the software that makes Cellular Telephony work.) They refused to do any kind of tracing, and suggested that their equipment did not make the information available. They did offer to turn off the service (by causing their switch to reject calls to/from the mobile number). The stolen equipment turned up on my friend's door step one morning a few weeks later! -- Dave Levenson /-----------------------------\ Westmark, Inc. | If you can't give me your | Warren, NJ USA | Phone number, don't call! | {rutgers | att}!westmark!dave \-----------------------------/