[2574] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: Position escrow
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steve Schear)
Thu Apr 23 13:47:49 1998
In-Reply-To: <199804212208.PAA22084@servo.qualcomm.com>
Date: Thu, 23 Apr 1998 10:27:02 -0700
To: Phil Karn <karn@qualcomm.com>, die@die.com
From: Steve Schear <schear@lvdi.net>
Cc: cypherpunks@toad.com, cryptography@c2.net, karn@qualcomm.com
At 3:08 PM -0700 4/21/98, Phil Karn wrote:
>I expect the main countermeasure to cellular position tracking will be
>the use of one-way pagers. Keep your cell phone turned off, and if you
>get a page when you're someplace you don't want them to know, wait
>until you leave before you return the page.
>
>Perhaps if the "just turn it off" approach is widely promoted, the
>carriers and vendors will see the threat to their business and press
>for some safeguards. Otherwise they just won't give a damn.
Another, more sophisticated measure is to replace the omni with a
directional antenna (corner reflectors are pretty small at analog cellular
frequencies and above and can have excellent gain and front-to-back
ratios). The disparity of your received signal between different cell
sites, plus the near-far problem for CDMA systems, could make accurate
location much more difficult.
--Steve
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