4 ms·

Can’t they use the towers to triangulate the exact position? So that area should be rather small. Furthermore, if they already had the IP of the offender, getti

Can’t they use the towers to triangulate the exact position? So that area should be rather small. Furthermore, if they already had the IP of the offender, getting a search warrant should not be the problem at all. This tells me there is more to this story.

falsedan 8y ago
I think triangulation works best when devices do handoff between towers, as they query each one to see which signal is strongest. For a stationary device like a mobile broadband dongle, I'd expect it to never handoff. Getting a search warrant is easy, but not getting one is even easier & leaves no paper trail.
- swebs 8y ago
  That's not true. Cell phones have been using clock synchronized triangulation since the mid 2000s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_9-1-1#Wireless_enhanced_911 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_9-1-1#Wireless_enhanc...
- ThrowawaySR 8y ago
  My memories from flashing phones circa 2003-2004 may be a bit rusty (btw. back than "flashing" meant something completely different than nowadays ROM uploads, it was more akin to poking machine code memory locations in BASIC on 8-bits :) ), but if I recall correctly, the device periodically scans all the BTSs it can see and sends that list with signal strengths to the network (and the network decides which tower should the device connect to!). Something tells me that the device even stayed connected to multiple strongest BTSs at once, but that may be a false memory. Of course, that was old GSM days, it may be something completely different today in 3G/4G/LTE, but so is on the other hand the location hardware and algorithms of carriers. But no, no handoffs were needed to track you very precisely even back then. There were ways around, but given the poor opsec in the case, it is doubtful something like that was used here.
deleted 8y ago
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driverdan 8y ago
Keep in mind this was 10 years ago. Phone triangulation was much less accurate then.

falsedan 8y ago

I think triangulation works best when devices do handoff between towers, as they query each one to see which signal is strongest. For a stationary device like a mobile broadband dongle, I'd expect it to never handoff. Getting a search warrant is easy, but not getting one is even easier & leaves no paper trail.

swebs 8y ago
That's not true. Cell phones have been using clock synchronized triangulation since the mid 2000s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_9-1-1#Wireless_enhanced_911 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_9-1-1#Wireless_enhanc...
ThrowawaySR 8y ago
My memories from flashing phones circa 2003-2004 may be a bit rusty (btw. back than "flashing" meant something completely different than nowadays ROM uploads, it was more akin to poking machine code memory locations in BASIC on 8-bits :) ), but if I recall correctly, the device periodically scans all the BTSs it can see and sends that list with signal strengths to the network (and the network decides which tower should the device connect to!). Something tells me that the device even stayed connected to multiple strongest BTSs at once, but that may be a false memory. Of course, that was old GSM days, it may be something completely different today in 3G/4G/LTE, but so is on the other hand the location hardware and algorithms of carriers. But no, no handoffs were needed to track you very precisely even back then. There were ways around, but given the poor opsec in the case, it is doubtful something like that was used here.

deleted 8y ago

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driverdan 8y ago

Keep in mind this was 10 years ago. Phone triangulation was much less accurate then.