Government/Feds GPS Tracking Nokia Phones
 

So there is this article on reddit.com
about Government being able to track Nokia phones even if GPS is turned off. Now I really dont care about the gov tracking me for I have not killed any one lately. But can the phone's gps be enabled remotely with its factory firmware?

Sub-Thread (Reddit):
http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/c...ompany/c0xqug5

Original Article:
http://www.news.com.au/technology/ir...-1225910475504

Re: Government/Feds GPS Tracking Nokia Phones
 

I didn't understand the article. It said Iranian authorities tracked him outside of Iran? If it's in Iran than the control the cellular towers so they can track you like any other government can. But this article makes it sound like the gps was remotely used.

Re: Government/Feds GPS Tracking Nokia Phones
 

all phones can be traced via cell broadcast anyway cant they? my gps position on ovi maps is never bang on anyway. they would bust down the house down the road looking for me lol

Re: Government/Feds GPS Tracking Nokia Phones
 

i would imagine they wouldn't need GPS if they can get a court order to access (or if they already have access by other means) to the cell network; i've read the other day that thing in movies and TV where they need to wait for a call to happen and last for a given time is ********, it's just to add suspense or help with the plot, in real life tracing a number is pretty much instantaneous, in some cases it doesn't even need a call to be done

Re: Government/Feds GPS Tracking Nokia Phones
 

Yes thats what I figured also. So the question is, is it possible to access the Nokia/N900 GPS remotely? I know this can be done if 3rd party software installed, but can it be done with the "Stock/Out of the box" Firmware?

!!You can track via cell towers but it just tells you the person is in the area, you wont really find the exact location of the person. Only GPS can find exact location!!

Re: Government/Feds GPS Tracking Nokia Phones
 

By triangulating the position with cell towers they can get fairly close. Nokia is by no means alone in tracking their phones..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_phone_tracking

Governments, Hackers (Phreakers), etc, have been able to trace and track cell phones for quite some time now.

Re: Government/Feds GPS Tracking Nokia Phones
 

no you cannot use the gps system inside the n900 with the out of the box firmware to track phones.

cell signal triangulations can give a pretty accurate location when you know who youre looking for. i personally know of cases where the police has used (abused) their powers to track down criminals/missing people. no legals problems at all in pakistan.

Re: Government/Feds GPS Tracking Nokia Phones
 

I've always wondered if keeping the phone in offline (tablet mode) would prevent them from triangulating your signal, and also accessing the mic, or is another method used?

Re: Government/Feds GPS Tracking Nokia Phones
 

I think that the exact word your looking for is Mobile Terminated Location Request. Its part of the standard, so not just Nokia or Nokias Phones

Re: Government/Feds GPS Tracking Nokia Phones
 

But since you can have multiple never-used Sims with you (and I think the international bad guys do), it's got to be very hard to know who to track; if you think you are being tracked, just throw in a different Sim, right?

Re: Government/Feds GPS Tracking Nokia Phones
 

the 911 thing doesn't need GPS to locate the caller?

Re: Government/Feds GPS Tracking Nokia Phones
 

They should still be able to identify you by the device's IMEI if they know it

Re: Government/Feds GPS Tracking Nokia Phones
 

I read the other day that Nikia/Siemens is being sued in the USA un relation to their deal with the Iranian government to supply equipment and tehcnology to track down cell phone users.

I think that this is in relation to the news mentioned by the GP

Re: Government/Feds GPS Tracking Nokia Phones
 

Wrong : )

Multiple SIM cards will only work if all your contacts also change their SIM cards (and phones) at the same time, but even then it still might not work - Traffic analysis is as much about identifying patterns and locations of activity as it is about IMSI, IMEI, and a myriad of other black and white data points.

Your average phone call these days very quickly becomes two separate data streams. One for signaling (dialing info, billing, SMS, and so on), the other for voice (or modems and faxes)

SS7 is the most common signaling system now I guess - it's used pretty much right throughout the world for all kinds of telephony, including GSM.

Probably the most important thing about SS7 (from an interception point) is that it does not have to go over the same trunk or communications path as the voice call it controls, and often, frequently in fact, it doesn't.

For your average man (or woman) in the middle, this makes the step of correlating your voice in some random time slot on some random trunk against the packet switched data running through the SS7 link a tad more difficult, but given enough resources it can be done.

The cool thing here is that you would not actually need to listen to a voice circuit at all to make assumptions about who the caller or receiver are. The signaling system is that friend you love to hate. Dump thousands of those in to a big database, you can very quickly build up a picture of call associations many levels deep.

We've all heard it before, security is only as good as your weakest link, well, humans are the weakest link. They are terribly professional and amazingly efficient at being the weakest link. It takes only one (1) person with a new phone and SIM to call some obscure and very distantly related individual to link the entire spider web of call associations back to you. Just one.

To summarize - good luck with that. You'll need military like levels of training, indoctrination, and discipline to be successful : ) Edit: Conversely you would need the same attributes to spot this, though I guess this is what secret 3 letter agencies are for.

Re: Government/Feds GPS Tracking Nokia Phones
 

worth a read. forget about any sort of privacy in the modern age

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/08599201315000

Re: Government/Feds GPS Tracking Nokia Phones
 

People should place GPS trackers on the judges' cars and update where they are live on the internet for everyone to see, just slap it with a magnet while the judge is waiting for the traffic light to go green, no expectation that the middle of street is private :p

Re: Government/Feds GPS Tracking Nokia Phones
 

Getting down to spy technology! I did not read the article yet as I don't care cause I know better. Cellphones can be tracked and traced even if turned off.
If turned on they triangulate cell towers, if that isn't possible they can track you by the possible movement on ground related to the celltower-range you move through (means as long as you move it is just enough to be logged in to one single cell-tower at a time). Now to the close range tricks... it is possible to locate cellphones even if turned off if you are in close range, how that works I do not know but we were meeting a Science & Technology lab for school and they showed fancy tricks... also within 5 meters the phone was traceable with removed battery. Creepy yes unusual no.

Re: Government/Feds GPS Tracking Nokia Phones
 

Ant this is the bullsheet part.
Well i wrote this down many times on different forums, wrote many articles about this but i write it down here too:
Phones CAN NOT BE TRACKED DOWN when they are powered off!

The answer is realy simple: when you turn off the phone, it sends a "logout" signal to the tower where it is connected, fully ignoring the fact that the tower will receive the signal, or not. After this, the phone do not sends and receives any signals, therefore become totally untrackable.


If you not belive me, then do it yourself: place your phone near to an old CRT television and turn your phone off there. You will hear the good old beep noises and flickers on your TV. This is the "logout" signal what i said above, but also randomly you hear noises from your TV even if the phone is just idle righ next to the TV. Remember the noise what you hear from your CRT TV is your phone transmit signal, the received signal is so so so weak that you not hear it on your television as noise.

OK so the phone is turned off. Now feel free to use any of your woodoo magic to force your phone to make any transmission signal, because after this, your phone will never make any noise on your TV at all.

Sorry if i was a bit fuzzy, but i hope it is still understandable.

Re: Government/Feds GPS Tracking Nokia Phones
 

i imagine it might be possible to detect the resonance of the antenna or somthing, dunno

Re: Government/Feds GPS Tracking Nokia Phones
 

Out in the real world, your 'turned off' N900 is going to be invisible. In the laboratory, sure you can induce a detectable current and radiated energy from an electronic circuit - It is also possible to sense powered passive electronics - but only because there really is no such thing as passive - every electronic circuit will radiate energy. Certain types of (extremely sensitive) purpose built equipment can detect certain types of emission - think of a fiber optic cable bent at such an angle that causes photons to leak, or the pulses sent through your keyboard cable, or the composite signal running through your AV cables, or...

Outside of a controlled environment - like the aforementioned lab, cell phones can not be remotely tracked or traced if turned off. Period.

Re: Government/Feds GPS Tracking Nokia Phones
 

talking about that, has anyone done an analysis of the N900 in regards to TEMPEST information leaks?

Re: Government/Feds GPS Tracking Nokia Phones
 

Saw this on gizmodo and had to share. Very relevant for this discussion
http://gizmodo.com/5622807/how-to-st...-your-location

Re: Government/Feds GPS Tracking Nokia Phones
 

Yeah metal detectors exists long time ago, even these detectors can detect the main 3 metals used in the industry but a turned off phone how the hell transmits data? Otherwise how else way you identify the phone?

Re: Government/Feds GPS Tracking Nokia Phones
 

There might be an RFID tag inside the handset equipment (phone), for the purpose of inventory tracking at the manufacturer. Though to get higher distances (like over a meter) one has to get quite directional with the scanning.

Chemist, can you describe the equipment used for detecting the powered down phones? Also, was it able to identify the phone, or just know there was a phone somewhere? The latter could even be an antenna resonance trick of some kind, but I doubt it would be possible to identify/discern two different phones of same model with that.

Edit:
On the original topic, for the ~20 years cellphones have been available to average consumers, there has been rumors that the government/teleoperator/CIA/Mafia has ability to activate a cellphone remotely for tracking or eavesdropping purposes even when seemingly powered off, the GPS location seems like a natural continuity for that. My honest guess is that it is not possible on the stock equipment out from the manufacturer. However, as with all IT security, if the hostile party can get physical access to your device, at any point of time, you're screwed. One way or other.

I have no reason to be too worried about this stuff. If someone truly has, my advice is: Simply, and completely, stay away from (a) technology, (b) other people.

Re: Government/Feds GPS Tracking Nokia Phones
 

gps is the collaboration of several satellites, so we can say anyone in the world can tell ur location. same if ur connected with the internet

as for cellular location only locally.

unlessss, there is more into the story

Re: Government/Feds GPS Tracking Nokia Phones
 

so your phone listens the timestamps those satellites send so anyone in the world can tell ur location simply just by .... ? (how?!?)

Re: Government/Feds GPS Tracking Nokia Phones
 

1) GPS chip don't transmit anything (but your phone still might)

2) Do you think any government would let other countries have control on the cell phones of their own citizens? Very remotely imaginable for not-imported USA-specific phones (that would be customly modified for the USA market). Never going to happen in most of the world (hey, at least europe/asia).

Re: Government/Feds GPS Tracking Nokia Phones
 

not exactly location, but even scarier, and this was from several years ago

http://www.zdnet.com/news/fbi-taps-c...ng-tool/150467

I feel sure that since 2003 or 4 when this took place, Govt has probably required this backdoor in most cell phones sold in US...or required carriers to have ability

Re: Government/Feds GPS Tracking Nokia Phones
 

In the light of this, i wonder how profitable it would be to sell modified mobiles with a physical switch to mute the microfone and cut the power to the camera...

Re: Government/Feds GPS Tracking Nokia Phones
 

Just side note - modern (aka produced in last 10 years ;P ) cell phones *do* receive special signals from cell towers even when turned off, after logout signal. They (turned off phones) normally *don't* send any signals - but, filtering conspiracy theories for some meritocratic content, there *is* possibility to include "act-dead wakeup", upon getting special, secret kind of signal from cell tower.

Still, AFAK most phones stop actively receiving any signals when battery is pulled out. Still, in modern technology era, and considering how low-level and low-bandwidth those signals can be, i would not be surprised, if some chip on phone would contain special backup power *just* for receiving this kind of signals.

Ho ever, I think it's not possible yet, to create such small and "sneaky" power source, than can power-up phone systems so much to *send* answer for that signal. Of course we're still talking about battery pulled-out scenario.