http://www.goodwin.id.au/2011/04/21/iphone-tracking-heatmap/ A blog about all sorts of stuff Sun, 05 Jun 2011 01:39:14 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=3.8.35 http://www.goodwin.id.au/2011/04/21/iphone-tracking-heatmap/comment-page-1/#comment-553 Sun, 05 Jun 2011 01:39:14 +0000 http://www.goodwin.id.au/?p=442#comment-553 I know someone who worked for a phone company… The mobile companies probably only keep the information relating to individual calls – including the cell phone tower that switched the call – because all they really have to keep are billing records – required for tax purposes I guess. The police can request these call charge records (for just about any incident, ie a shoplifting offence would do) and the info from the phone company would show the time, date and duration of call, the cell tower/s used for the call and what number the call was made to. Usually about 90% of calls within a certain area use the same cell tower, otherwise they use the next closest tower from that network during busy periods. You can estimate an area the caller is in but it’s not the location data stored on the phone. It will show if someone is on the move though if they make lots of phone calls during a long drive (the case of Einfeld perhaps). The location data captured by handsets is not kept by the phone companies (as far as I know) and certainly isn’t something the police are using. If the police need more info that’s not kept on the billing database the telcos can send an engineer/technician out to the towers. This is very expensive and the cost prohibits the police from using this unless there’s immediate fears for a person’s life etc. The data at the cell tower can detail every IMEI / SIM that’s used the tower during a time period but I doubt again that it’s capturing location data from handsets (but who knows). Generally, if police suspect you are involved in an offence they can get info about most of your calls from the billing databases held by phone companies within a couple days. The catch for police is that some calls are “free” and the companies aren’t keeping the info becuase the calls aren’t billed. There is no legislation requiring the telcos to keep anything for law enforcement purposes or to even share it for law enforcement purposes. Technically the telcos could demand a warrant every time the police want info, but instead as a goodwill gesture they will usually hand it over for a small fee if the police confirm it is for law enforcement purposes – no subpeona required.

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