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Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

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Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#251

Post by Maxious »

nimbius wrote: post #197

Trying to steer this thread back on topic. This article is incorrect. Cellular services aren't polling GPS data from the device, they're using imei and subscriber identification triangulation from the towers which the FBI and law enforcement overlay on google maps. It works with big providers albeit I feel like this parlour trick becomes tougher if your target is using a resell carrier like mint or cricket.

As sibling comment has pointed out the protocol for a cellular service to request GPS data directly RRLP, is part of the LCS (LoCation Services) section of 3gpp.

And if you run your own cellular service using OpenBSC you can try it out...

> RRLP is not just a theoretical feature specified in the GSM/3GPP specs. It is implemented by numerous high-end smartphones. There is no authentication of the network. There is no notification of the user. There is no way for the user to disable this [mis]feature.

> Impact: Public debate about this feature is needed. Operators probably need to consider working on some terms about how they use this feature in their privacy policy.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160106074623/http://openbsc.os...

Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#252

Post by cengizIO »

flotzam wrote: post #45
542458 wrote: post #21

Does anybody have info on how this works on a technical level? I.e., is it an actual report of the phone’s GPS position, or is it tower-side triangulation? If the former, do all devices support it?

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21088576/march-2019-f... (PDF page 57)

This is unbelievable. Some of the sensitive information like phone numbers are censored by drawing a box on top, rather than replacing certain digits by * or something else.

Reader can get the digits by simply copying them underneath.

How can someone miss this?

Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#253

Post by UncleMeat »

alistairSH wrote: post #113
UncleMeat wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Driving the speed limit actually becomes dangerous. I've lived in VA for decades and have driven all over the state. There is no highway where driving the speed limit is actually dangerous and there certainly isn't a highway where the norm is 20 over.

I was referring to the interstates in general, and I-95 specifically. Not just within Virginia. Particularly stretches through South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.

But the context was VA's reckless driving laws. There is no stretch of 95 in VA (I've driven it across the entire state many times) where it is unsafe to drive the listed limit.

Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#254

Post by alistairSH »

vkou wrote: post #174
alistairSH wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how about sticking to the speed limit? Because the speed limit in much of the US is below the “natural” speed of that roadway. We have highways where 80+mph is the norm, but the posted limited can be anywhere from 55-70mph (I-95 along the east coast). Driving the speed limit actually becomes dangerous. At this point, speed enforcement becomes a hit-or-miss affair, where you’re at the mercy of the police officer. Bett…

The problem with this line of reasoning is that the 'natural' speed limit of a freeway is a death sentence in the event of a crash. I have zero sympathy for this. If you're doing 20 mph over the limit, you shouldn't be driving, whether it comes from taking away you car, or from putting you in a cage for a few weeks.

In that case, the road isn’t fit for purpose.

Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#255

Post by syspec »

kingcharles wrote: post #164
sixothree wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume they target these people because they can seize assets. And drug dealers often deal in cash. Why else would they be so absolutely inept solving or prventing most crimes (looking at just about any metric available), yet still be laser focused on these certain crimes.

Asset forfeitures can be beneficial to police departments, but not usually of much concern to individual police officers, except in ad hoc situations where they can easily pocket cash they take during a search (happens very frequently from my experience). And to add to that, a lot of jurisdictions have cracked down massively on forfeitures (technical term: civil in rem forfeiture) because of how badly abused the syst…

In some places the arresting cop is legally given a percentage of the money

Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#256

Post by throwaway0a5e »

UncleMeat wrote: post #92
alistairSH wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how about sticking to the speed limit? Because the speed limit in much of the US is below the “natural” speed of that roadway. We have highways where 80+mph is the norm, but the posted limited can be anywhere from 55-70mph (I-95 along the east coast). Driving the speed limit actually becomes dangerous. At this point, speed enforcement becomes a hit-or-miss affair, where you’re at the mercy of the police officer. Bett…

> Driving the speed limit actually becomes dangerous. I've lived in VA for decades and have driven all over the state. There is no highway where driving the speed limit is actually dangerous and there certainly isn't a highway where the norm is 20 over.

>here is no highway where driving the speed limit is actually dangerous

That's only true if you're oblivious to other traffic to the point of being dangerous to said traffic.

I used to zip down I95 in my personal car, get in a commercial vehicle and then proceed to get in a commercial vehicle and be a rolling obstruction at 55-60. The latter was way less safe than just being another ant in line like I was in my personal vehicle.

Sure, if someone clipped me while I was driving the truck it would have been their fault but I was though my actions still creating a bunch of unnecessary danger. There was a constant stream of people having to merge to go around me. It was all the problems you get at an on-ramp with merging traffic. I will cut some slack to heavily laden vehicles, big slow trucks and shitboxes that can't maintain traffic speed. But some self-righteous jerk in his Camry or whatever has no excuse.

>There is no highway where driving the speed limit is actually dangerous and there certainly isn't a highway where the norm is 20 over.

I95, literally every weekday morning and evening just before and just after rush hour clogs things up. Sign says 55. Most traffic goes 75+/-5 with the occasional fast and slow vehicles well above/below that speed.

Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#257

Post by 542458 »

kube-system wrote: post #183
542458 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm. Re: chipset firmware, the GPS chip and the cellular modem are typically separate and not directly connected, right? So doesn’t that mean there is necessarily something in the main phone software that’s handling passing GPS data from the gps to the modem chip on-demand from the modem firmware?

I believe it is pretty common for LTE modems to include GNSS support these days. I know many modems for even for data-only applications do. And it sounds like Qualcomm does it on their phone modems from this description: https://www.qualcomm.com/news/onq/2021/07/27/qualcomm-locati...

Good info. Thank you.

Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#258

Post by kornhole »

I agree that laws and procedures should be tighter, but I don't expect any change. I don't even know the number attached to my SIM card. I bought it anonymously for $16 a month. I rarely turn off airplane mode. I pay $1 a month per number at VoIP.ms. Privacy and security is cheaper for me.

Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#259

Post by egberts1 »

You probably want this phone which will merely alert you of such cellular activities not commonly detected by most commercial cellphones.

It is only an alerting mechanism, nothing avoidance there (as far as I can read of their marketing papers go).

https://www.armadillophone.com/

Re: Virginia police routinely use secret GPS pings to track people’s cell phones

#260

Post by Threeve303 »

advisedwang wrote: post #35

This is all under a warrant. Of course police can and do get location records from cell companies with a warrant, and it doesn't seem like a huge stretch for a warrant to require the cell company to "ping" to get the most quality location data. The problem here is the judges granting the warrants. Judges in Virginia are chosen by legislatures [1], which means they're accountable to political establishment who in turn…

The unfortunate reality is that law enforcement can track you 24/7 without a warrant. A warrant is only necessary if they use the location data against you in court. Otherwise, it is open season. The tech companies, etc have shown many times that there is a revolving door between advertisement/surveillence, and so on. Often they maintain very close relationships.

Even if it isn’t that bad now, and a warrant is absolutely required without proving the case in court, a warrant could still obtain historical data. So the end result is the same. We are being tracked all of the time and it is stored and sold, sometimes illegally.

Finally, consider the pratice of parallel construction in law enforcement and how easily this entire process can take away your basic constitutional rights.

Good luck proving any of this by the way. Gaslighting is becoming the norm when rights are violated.

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