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This topic comprises 4 pages: 1 2 3 4
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Author
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Topic: More Cell Phone Justice
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 08-13-2004 12:22 PM
I must admit that terrorists didn't occur to me - it was an image of your friendly neighbourhood drug dealer lurking on a street corner of some sink estate which came to mind as being the obvious user to take advantage of the anonymity offered by 'pay as you go' mobile/cell 'phones.
quote: John Hawkinson
It's really frustrating when tools of anonymity are cast as tools of terrorists. It's perfectly reasonable for private citizens to want the privacy that comes with not telling the government who is calling whom.
Actually, it's not telling the government I have a problem with - it's giving the information to businesses which then use it to spam the hell out of you. I do now have an 'anonymous' pay-as-you-go mobile. This isn't because I want to hide my communications from the government - in fact, I accept that law enforcement agencies being able to find out who owns what mobile 'phone number is probably desirable in the fight against all sorts of crimes from low-level drug dealers all the way up to people trying to plot a 9/11 type incident. One of the reasons I terminated my contract mobile earlier this year and replaced it with a prepay one is that previously I was being constantly 'phoned up (both on the mobile itself and my home land line), sent text messages and being sent emails by the 'phone company trying to sell me goods and services I didn't want. Even though I'd written to them twice asking them not to do this, they persisted.
Theoretically, the information probably does exist somewhere linking me to my new mobile number, as I ordered the new SIM card online using my bank debit card number (having first established by email that the supplier would not pass my details on to the 'phone company). Even so, the 'phone companies try hard to get the personal data out of you. For example, I was offered £5 free call time if I registered with them, providing all the information they needed to start spamming me again. And when you buy a top-up card, you're invited to register that, which means that you can buy further credit over the 'phone, online, or even through some ATMs. I have absolutely refused to do this and bought all further top-up cards using cash, and then thrown them away after entering the number.
I would have no problem if all purchasers of pay-as-you-go mobiles were required to register the 'phone numbers with the police against their name and address, just as long as some safeguard mechanism was in place to ensure that they did only use that information for bona fide law enforcement purposes. But I absolutely do not want this information to be used to bombard me with spam, junk mail and cold sales calls, and I've taken advantage of the anonymity offered by a pay-as-you-go to achieve this.
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David Buckley
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 525
From: Oxford, N. Canterbury, New Zealand
Registered: Aug 2004
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posted 08-13-2004 04:00 PM
Big Brother is alive and well. This was a widely reported story:
June 03, 2004
Are all UK SMS text messages being intercepted ?
The Sun "newspaper" reports:
"Cops swoop on fan's txt
By HARRIET ARKELL
and JOHN KAY, Chief Reporter
PUNK rock fan Mike Devine sent an innocent text message containing lyrics by The Clash — and was quizzed as a terror suspect after it was INTERCEPTED.
Computer worker Mike, 35, was confronted by a Special Branch cop at his office and taken for a grilling.
He was stunned to be shown a printout of his text which contained the words “gun” and “jet airliner”.
Mike, who in his spare time plays bass in a Clash tribute group, had sent the lyric from the song Tommy Gun to a bandmate a month earlier.
The cop accepted his explanation and let Mike go. But last night experts said the amazing incident proved NO phone call or text was now safe from monitoring in the war on terror. Mike, of Bristol — who works for mobile firm Orange — admitted: “I was bricking it.”
He told how his tribute band London Calling — named after a Clash album — had been struggling to remember a line in Tommy Gun. His text to singer Reg Shaw, 35, read:
“How about this for Tommy Gun? OK — SO LET’S AGREE ABOUT THE PRICE AND MAKE IT ONE JET AIRLINER FOR TEN PRISONERS.”
Mike told how he was leaving a meeting at work last week when a Special Branch detective introduced himself.
Mike said: “I was thinking, ‘God, what have I done?’ We went into a room and sat down and he asked me if I knew about Special Branch.
"I said, ‘Yes’ — even though I didn’t really.
“He asked me lots of questions about my phone, such as was this my number and did I use it at the end of April. Then he produced a printout of a text and asked me if I had sent it.
“I said, ‘That’s the lyrics from Tommy Gun’. I explained, ‘I’m in a tribute band and was sending the lyrics to the singer.’
“The bloke said, ‘Oh I see’ and looked a bit embarrassed.”
The song, written in the late 1970s, is about terrorists.
Mike said: “It hadn’t even occurred to me that it might look a bit dodgy. The man wrapped the interview up quite quickly. I was so relieved to find out that was all it was. It was quite nerve-racking for Special Branch to come looking for you at work.”
Terrorism expert Chris Dobson said: “It is clear from this incident that the computers at the GCHQ listening operation in Cheltenham have been programmed to listen in on all vocal and textual mobile phone traffic.
“They are probably programmed to pick out key words like bomb and hostage.
“Having this kind of surveillance is the price we have to pay in a modern society to protect us from terrorists.”
Does this mean that the Home Secretary David Blunkett has signed a certificate under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 permitting GCHQ to speculatively trawl the content of every SMS text messages sent within the United Kingdom ? If not, then this alleged interception is illegal.
Why did it take from "the end of April" when the SMS text message was sent until "the end of last week" i.e. May before Special Branch got around to investigating this affair ?
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David Buckley
Jedi Master Film Handler
Posts: 525
From: Oxford, N. Canterbury, New Zealand
Registered: Aug 2004
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posted 08-13-2004 04:29 PM
'Tis interesting, isn't it.
I don't know about contract or not.
What I do know is that the primary function of a cellphone network is to track they pysical location of handsets, 'cos without locational information, incoming calls cant be processed. Quality of locational information varies, depending on where the cellphone is. If the cellphone can be "seen" by three base stations, then triangulation gets the location down to a few yards. if there is just one base station in range all you have is a distance, and vague direction, based on which antenna on the base has the strongest signal.
I do know that the police have access to cellphone locational data. I also know that cellphone test equipment could with a simple directional aerial be used to find the thing, much in the same way that (some) radio amateurs engage in a sport called fox-hunting, which is about finding a hidden transmitter.
The scary thing is all this stuff costs money and resources, and a simple SMS message was enough to bring out the dogs in this manner. eek.
And to John - the incorrect attribution was done by UBB which seems to try and find where something was last said. Don't like that feature, I'd rather you had to specifically state where a quote came from, like some other software does. Ghosts in the machine and all that :-)
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 08-14-2004 04:14 AM
quote: David Buckley
The scary thing is all this stuff costs money and resources, and a simple SMS message was enough to bring out the dogs in this manner. eek.
The scary thing for me is that they're spending all that taxpayers' money on those resources: yet it still takes them four months to analyse the data, and when they finally do so, they misinterpret it and send the dogs after the wrong person.
You can just imagine what's going on in all those nasty camps in Afghanistan and Syria. 'OK, welcome to International Terrorism 101, folks. Now remember, when you're plotting to blow up skyscrapers, switch your mobile off first...' Anyway, we're sailing dangerously close to the political wind, so if cinemagoers could heed that advice too, I'd be happy!
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