Cell Phone Records

If you’re one of over 200 million people in the United States who keep cell phones in your pockets, the powers that be might have the ability to locate you at any time —even if you’ve never made or received a telephone call.

You’ve seen the Verizon advertisement in which a lockstep throng of people embodies the system that follows its clients all over the place? Well, inside that apparently friendly flock, a state-of-the-art Big Brother is creeping around.

Most individuals are aware that authorities have the ability to use telephone company machinery to pinpoint the customer’s location, sometimes within several feet, whenever they place a mobile call. One example would be in a 911 crisis.

A lesser-known piece of information: Cellular phone companies have the ability to find you whenever you’re within the range of any towers and your cell phone is not turned off. Cellular phones are made to operate with worldwide placement satellites or via “pings” that enable towers to identify as well as triangulate signals. Every time your telephone “spots” a phone tower, it will ping it.

That’s what occurred this past month after a murder in the city of New York publicized the the fact that cell phones have a built-in ability to trace individuals when they’re not even making telephone calls. Imette St. Guillen’s case enthralled the media in the city of New York in the only way that the killing of an attractive, youthful, middle-class Caucasian woman can. Part of the evidence that lead police to capture Darryl Littlejohn, who was a bouncer working in the club in which Ms. St. Guillen was last spotted, was what law enforcement described as “cellular phone records.” It wasn’t an actual phone call that put Mr. Littlejohn at the scene of the crime. In fact, the NY Daily News reports that the police mapped out Littlejohn’s steps on the date of St. Guillen’s murder by tracing his cellular phone’s “pings”, which had been “stored” in a phone tower and subsequently recovered from the T-Mobile company by police officers.

Telecom firms and government officials aren’t enthusiastic about publicizing this tracking ability. Also, the companies won’t disclose whether they’re archiving the path of pings from cell phones to allow them—or the authorities— to pinpoint, afterwards, the customer’s location at a specific time. “Certainly, that capability exists,” states Bruce Schneier. He is the chief technical official of Counterpane Internet Safety. “Verizon along with the other firms can obtain that information. There is no chance that they would not sell the information if it was lawful as well as lucrative. and the probability are zero that they would not sell it if it isn't illegal and profitable. After all, we do live in a capitalist society.”

However, it can be difficult pin down legality, particularly if national safety and corporate earnings come into play. Communications firms and government authorities have been frequently caught working together in very dubious practices. Wiretapping without a warrant, now generating calls for George Bush to be impeached was put into practice by the National Security Agency gaining access to the “gateway” controls that direct phone calls all over the world. Sprint, AT&T and MCI have control over the majority of these.