Can the police track a mobile phone? Forums

DaMann

Given that a mobile phone can be traced to its local polygon by the phone company, what would be wrong with keeping a covert pay as you go cheapo phone hidden in your van, and permanently wired to the leisure batteries?

If the baddies nick the van, surely all you need to do is report it to the police along with the phone number, and then they can ask the service provider which polygone it resides in, followed by politely asking for the van back!

Does that sound like sense or drivel?

artona · Moderator

Hi

Its quite easily done. Do a search on the internet and you can buy the kit very cheaply. A friend of mine, a PI has been doing this for sometime. The ringer and speaker are taken out of the phone. You can then use the phone to track the vehicle, using autoroute you can see where it is. You can even call the phone, have it on auto answer and you can then listen to the conversation the other end.

Use the words tracking vehicles in your search

stew

grumpyman

Monitoring telephomes falls under the Interception of communications and Regulation of Investigatory Act (RIPA). Due to Human Rights issue it only covers serious crime.The grounds where the provider will carry out this work are very tight.( Don't shoot the messenger I am just passing onto you the legislation which I have some experience of.)

asprn

jimcanswim

if anyone has info on this, I'd be interested too.

Cheers

Snelly · Eastern Rally Co-ordinator

I know we can locate a mobile phone at ambulance control, BUT it costs a lot of money per track, so is used very rarely!

chapter

you mean sum thing like this

G2EWS

Some years ago I was approached to launch a product made by a company for Vodafone.

Basically Vodafone had an engineer who had a heart attack whilst working on his own and Vodafone needed a lone man monitoring system.

At about the same time taxis in Rome where reporting problems of being mugged and needed to come up with a system that would assist them.

The set up was trialled in the Newbury as it is the home of Vodafone. For those of you with either knowledge of war time triangulation systems that where pioneered by the UK for tracking our aircraft after returning from missions in Germany or people like me who worked on the UK based auto triangulation system for tracking an aircraft when it called on an emergency frequency, this system is self evident.

The system works because a mobile will communicate with multiple base stations or cells. This communication as most will know happens the moment you switch your mobile on. The trial was based around software that was installed at the cells that could then triangulate the location of any mobile phone. If you imagine looking at a mobile from a distance and drawing a line on a map, and then seeing it from another direction and drawing a line on a map and then you have a third direction, it will become self evident that the lines will cross at the exact location of the mobile phone.

This system had far reaching capabilities and after a white board open session we came up with a device similar to a pocket pager that could be used:

1. Estate agents who go out with customers could if necessary touch a button on the 'pager' device, which would set off an alarm at the Estate agents office and bring up a computer map with their exact location. If required one or two way speech could be enabled or alternatively the on site agent could feel a vibrator alarm telling them the office was aware they had a problem.

2. Exactly the same as above for your children!

3. Bearing in mind this was before the boom in GPS based satellite navigation. We came up with the idea of the system being installed at say the RAC and if you got lost or needed directions you hit the button and the RAC would have your exact location and be able to give you directions.

You can imagine that the list was totally endless. I decided that it was too big for us and declined to proceed further with it. What I am aware of is the software has been installed into cells around the country. I am not sure if all of them have it and I am not sure if it is in use for Police surveillance. What I am aware of, is that it has the potential for uses similar to MH/Caravan/Vehicle tracking that would make it invaluable. Of course similar products are now being sold based on GPS information. But this system was and is available as a virtual no cost operation!

Regards

Chris

DaMann

Well from both private and public sources it appears that any solution will be either home grown or via a third party agency as the the law specifically forbids police etc from triangulating except in exceptional circumstances.

The technology seems pretty simple and divides into either GSM enables or not. It is difficult to see why the hosted solutions are so expensive, other than it is still first wave technology and no real competition has entered the marketplace. I suspect that will change rather rapidly as the regulators in the EU are keen to reduce communications costs.

A very interesting note from G2EWS, although how one would tap in to that is beyond me.