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Lockheed is now tracking phones and walkie-talkies from space
- teleforce 3y agoThere's a new paper related to this RF signal identification technology by MIT [1]: [1] Score-based Source Separation with Applications to Digital Communication Signals: https://paperswithcode.com/paper/score-based-source-separation-with https://paperswithcode.com/paper/score-based-source-separati...
- jaynetics 3y agoThe text only mentions satellite phones, so the headline might be a bit click-baity. I assume tracking mobile phones from space would be way harder and more expensive, although the progressive addition of satellite connectivity to recent iPhone models might help with that?
- nyokodo 3y ago> The text only mentions satellite phones iPhones 14+ are satellite phones to a limited degree. [1] 1. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213885 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213885
- jodrellblank 3y ago> "I assume tracking mobile phones from space would be way harder and more expensive" I dunno which way I'd bet on that; on one hand any cellphone signal sent upwards is wasted energy, wasted battery - the cell towers are sideways. And cell towers are local so phones will try to use as little power as possible to get to the closest mast also to save battery, 5G picocells can be down to 100 meters. But you can't be sure to radiate sideways when phones are used at all sorts of angles, can you? On the other hand, signal going upwards has clear line of sight and rapidly thinning atmosphere. A Google result tells me that cellphone base towers can "typically reach up to 25 miles and sometimes up to 45 miles", and this article[1] says cellular macrocells can be up to 100 miles (diameter?). Wikipedia[2] says "Mobile phones are limited to an effective isotropic radiated power (EIRP) output of 3 watts" and Reddit[3] says you can reach the International Space Station as an amateur with 5-10 Watts and a good aerial. So ... maybe? a tuned sensitive receiver constantly listening for moments of phones doing a high power ping? [1] https://www.emnify.com/blog/5g-small-cell https://www.emnify.com/blog/5g-small-cell [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_device_radiation_and_health https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_device_radiation_and_... [3] https://old.reddit.com/r/HamRadio/comments/rvzj11/can_i_make_a_contact_with_the_iss_with_a_handheld/ https://old.reddit.com/r/HamRadio/comments/rvzj11/can_i_make...
- ianburrell 3y agoCell phones don't have directional antennas. It is impressive that they fit the anisotropic antennas. You can hold the phone in any orientation and move it around. The directionality of phone network comes from the towers which have arrays of antennas pointing in different directions. Also, the cell phone doesn't know where the towers are. Especially with all the smaller cells that may not know where they are.
- KaiserPro 3y agoExpensive, yes, but difficult, not as much as you think. I'm assuming they are operating in low earth orbit. Which means that the satellite could be around 200-300km above the earth. Apart from the atmosphere its direct line of sight. You have the advantage that you are not really trying to decode data, just figure out where something is, so you can use a large phased array antenna to electronically sweep an area. Because you're in orbit, you can localise a RF source as you fly over. in terms of RF power, GPS is transmitted at ~40 watts from ~20200km I haven't done the maths, but as its inverse square, I'd punt that GPS signal is weaker than a phone signal at 200km
- instagib 3y agoSAR is nice for satellites too. https://www.mathworks.com/help/radar/ug/spaceborne-synthetic-aperture-radar-performance-prediction.html https://www.mathworks.com/help/radar/ug/spaceborne-synthetic... How much POWER do the GPS Satellites output on the 1575mhz L1 frequency? In the frequency allocation filing the L1 C/A power is listed as 25.6 Watts. The Antenna gain is listed at 13 dBi. Thus, based on the frequency allocation filing, the power would be about 500 Watts (27 dBW). Now, the free space path loss from 21000 km is about 182 dB. Take the 500 Watts (27 dBW) and subtract the free space path loss (27 - 182) and you get -155 dBW. The end of life spec is -160 dBW, which leaves a 5 dB margin. And if you really get into it, you'll discover ALL of the following represent the same approximate signal strength for GPS on the face of the earth (m stands for milliwatts and m2 stands for meters squared): -160 dBW, -130 dBm, -135 dBW/m2, -105 dBm/m2, -223 dBW/Hz, -163 dBW/MHz, -193 dBm/Hz, -198 dBW/m2/Hz, -138 dBW/m2/MHz Once you figure out why they're all the same, you're well on your way to understanding power, power density, and power flux density as it relates to GPS. For those that wish to quibble, I am assuming an even distribution of power density over a 2 MHz C/A bandwidth. http://gpsinformation.net/main/gpspower.htm http://gpsinformation.net/main/gpspower.htm
- KaiserPro 3y agothanks for this, my maths is a bit weak and I last did this sort of calculations in 2008. I got around -79dbm for a phone at 200km, now I think thats probably a bit high. Even so even -90dbm is certainly something thats workable with
- fatboy 3y agoCan anyone explain how this works? Are these satellites in a similar orbit to GPS satellites? Do signals from cell phones etc include timestamps? Or is there a high resolution way of detecting the direction of a signal?
- Gare 3y agoMaybe just plain old triangulation? The constellation consists of 21 satellites. If multiple satellites receive the same signal, the difference in arrival can be used to precisely locate the source.
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- DenisM 3y agoIirc, SAR satellites in polar orbits measure Doppler effect of distress beacons to compute coarse latitude. It’s been working for decades, so I imagine recent advances in signal processing might be able to significantly improve precision.
- livueta 3y agomodern DoA algs like https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUSIC_(algorithm) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUSIC_(algorithm) can use a small phase coherent array of antennas to estimate DoA by, in grossly simplified terms, measuring minute phase differences across the array as a signal arrives: https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:724272/FULLTEXT01.pdf https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:724272/FULLTEXT0...
- spoonfeeder006 3y agoYou'd need unique signature of cell phone signal to separate it from other cell signals In terms of timestamp, when multiple satellites measure different times of receipt from same cell signal they could reverse compute the location Could probably incorporate differences in received signal strength as well At least thats my guess I don't think you'd wanna use timestamp info from the sender, since you have no control over the accuracy of that, even if it was available
- phero_cnstrcts 3y ago> including satellite phones, walkie-talkies, cellular towers, and GPS. How can they track gps devices? I thought gps devices are passive in the sense that they don’t emit any signals but only read signatures from satellites. Or am I reading the article wrong?
- Aloha 3y agoEvery radio has a local oscillator that can be detected at some distance - from space however? I am highly skeptical.
- dreamcompiler 3y agoI think the gist of the article is that they are detecting active transmitters, not the IF of receivers.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoSMH. The majority of oscillators are shielded to prevent interference and to pass regulatory approvals. Civilian GNSS receivers are passive devices.
- jon_richards 3y agoThere are some dedicated GPS devices that phone home for things like tracking trucks.
- beebeepka 3y agoAh, but do they use cellular networks, which I presume is the standard, or some other technology?
- jon_richards 3y agoProbably application-specific. Satellite for ships, cellular for commercial trucks, radio for remote mining trucks. There are also panic buttons for remote backpackers that collect gps coordinates and send them to a satellite. All things I wouldn't call satellite phones, even if they're basically just more rudimentary versions. Looks like the quote was referring to something else, though.
- Dumble 3y agoA $10 MIO investment seems like nothing in that area.
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- helsinkiandrew 3y ago> Lockheed is now tracking phones I get that the satellite can track the radio emissions from phones, but can they differentiate between different phones? - pick up the signal and track device by SIM IMEA/ICCID etc
- Sparkyte 3y agoIt is probably because even if the signal is within a certain band the band still has a frequency legenth longer than a simple decimal point. Channels operate in a range of frequency for example. Even if a device 5g and it needs to connect to a tower it will do its best to replicate the upstream / downstream signal with little noise as possible. However the noise is the difference between the devices, they are distinct and this is how they are probably determining the device. Also radio waves do not just go away. We are probably incredibly loud planet to any radio wave sensitive alien/creature.
- szundi 3y agoSince 4g lots of devices talk on the same freq at the same time and they do math to decode separate logic streams of data - so freq in itself is not enough
- Sparkyte 3y agoI imagine it is distinct enough if you're coned into a specific place. They are probably not looking at the global as a whole but like a radio telescope pointed back at Earth.
- Consultant32452 3y agoI think you're right here. To give a hypothetical from current events, the US/NATO forces may not have direct access to information from Russian cellular networks, but a bunch of cell signals in an unusual place could indicate a troop movement or something.
- leoh 3y agoIt’s not possible to track ordinary cell phones this way. They’re tracking stuff that is much higher energy afaiu. Yes, “cell phones” but like, satellite ones.
- livueta 3y agoThey claim to be able to track FRS ptt radios, which implies a sensitivity to .5w transmissions, and iirc a phone will put out max .2w (on 4g). Lower, yes, but not massively so, so if it really does work on FRS I wouldn't be shocked if it worked on a conventional smartphone. The phone operating in a higher frequency range than ~470mhz frs/gmrs is admittently an additional challenge, but since the thing runs up to 15ghz I wouldn't count on it being unable to track a phone
- stackskipton 3y agoDepends on radio but FRS are now allowed up to 2W on lower/GMRS channels.
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- sroussey 3y agohttps://lynk.world/ https://lynk.world/ And AST and Starlink are all working on it for consumers which is far more complex (actually pushing a 5G signal to the phone and getting a response back in orbit). Just identifying that there is a phone transmitting is far simpler.
- leoh 3y agoThis is just an incredibly confused comment. 5g simply does not allow for transmission distances of 200+km. Period. They might make some kind of addition to the 5g standard or something. Because yes, indeed, there are such things as satellite phones and satellite internet. Please consider being more technical here and instead of just believing a random website or parroting one of Elon's audacious claims (of which its hopefully become painfully clear that none can be taken as truth on face value).
- hammock 3y agoI just learned about the SBIRS mission that Lockheed built, which is a constellation of far earth orbit satellites that are constantly scanning every inch of the entire globe with IR cameras with missile/plane/boat/person(?) level resolution. And has been for at least nine years now. Incredible. Here is a video that explains it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDTnl4E9FiY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDTnl4E9FiY
- H8crilA 3y agoThere are hundreds if not thousands of those up in the space. You can even rent one yourself as a civilian (order one to point the camera/SAR at a specific location).
- hammock 3y agoWhy was it so difficult to determine the MH370 flight path then?
- stirlo 3y agoBecause who is looking in the middle of the Indian Ocean at commercial airliners. There’s far more important targets and areas for these systems to focus on
- H8crilA 3y agoYes indeed. You can see for example here what kind of lead times are we talking about: https://sar.iceye.com/5.0/productguide/ordering/ https://sar.iceye.com/5.0/productguide/ordering/ Any serious military is tracking all known imaging/SAR satellites and uses their fly-by times (which are entirely predictable) for moving stuff covertly. I.e. you want to be out in the open in Area 51 testing a new RQ-180 derivative only when no one can be looking at you right now. Also, there are global ADS-B satellite relays, and frankly I don't know why this data wasn't logged for MH370 - it must be explained somewhere. There's a guy on Twitter who captures those on a custom antenna + BladeRF setups (this data is plugged into adsbexchange for oceanic routes coverage). AIS relies even more on satellite relays, as the curvature of the planet limits signal propagation much more than for airplanes. What you see on any AIS website is mostly from a satellite.
- photochemsyn 3y agoPretty sophisticated surveillance technology - though it's worth remembering that you can't use it to look back in time and the footprint of each satellite is probably fairly small? I imagine that number is highly classified. The info on the foreign buyers is pretty spicy, though it's generally known that UAE's high-level relationship with the USA is built upon recycling a good chunk of their oil money back into the military industrial complex (Wikileaks Cablegate said $19 billion/year as of 2010) - which is only one part of their overall Wall Street/London investment portfolio, but it does have a special significance. > "HawkEye’s advisors have helped lead a large percentage of U.S. military and intelligence organizations — including the Central Intelligence Agency’s technical surveillance programs — and have included two former members of Congress who pivoted into lobbying, Norm Coleman and Lamar Smith. And so one can only conclude that HawkEye’s surveillance support for Gulf dictatorships is not an anomaly, but rather a corporate extension of official U.S. foreign policy." UAE is also known for buying Israel's NSO Group (Pegasus etc.) surveillance tech: https://gulfstateanalytics.com/pegasus-as-a-case-study-of-evolving-ties-between-the-united-arab-emirates-and-israel/ https://gulfstateanalytics.com/pegasus-as-a-case-study-of-ev...
- leoh 3y agoExtraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Can someone furnish evidence that ordinary cell phones are actually trackable... from space? When 5g is typically 200 ft, at best ~4km; LTE being ~100km at best... and the literal record for the lowest satellite orbit (Tsubame; which merely sustained it for 7d) being 2711.5km? Yes, sure, maybe at the obscenely low signal received in space, one could pick up some kind of signature as opposed to it being even marginally usable for tx. But to infer that some kind of high-fidelity tracking could be done with that? Come on.
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- bagels 3y agoEven with phased arrays, you think it's not possible? I didn't check link budgets on and off target or anything, just curious. Also, the ISS orbits at ~450km, so I'm not sure where you're getting that record lowest orbit from. Microsatellites will decay pretty quickly there, but these spy satellites are typically bigger with thrusters for orbit maintenance.
- mike_d 3y ago> Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The fact that every government in the world is stumbling over themselves to become customers?
- leoh 3y agoSuppose I wrote a blog post saying that the US government had invented a way to read your thoughts from a satellite — would you believe it merely because they would be a paying customer?
- op00to 3y agoI can communicate via a satellite using my amateur radio walkie talkie using a few watts. Imagine what’s possible with nation state budgets.
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- randcraw 3y ago"HawkEye’s current constellation of 21 satellites is trained to locate the sources of electromagnetic emissions with wavelengths ranging from roughly 2 meters down to 2 centimeters, with “Signals of Interest” including satellite phones, walkie-talkies, cellular towers, and GPS." Despite the headline, the system does NOT track individual cellphones or GPS receivers. Cellular signal from a personal cellphone isn't strong enough to register at satellite altitude. The same goes for non-milspec walkie-talkies.
- sneak 3y agoDepends on the satellite and the altitude. SpaceX/Starlink have claimed their new satellites (in LEO) will be able to provide limited service to existing and unmodified mobile phones with a view of the sky.
- superkuh 3y agoAmateur radio operators with just a moderate bit of gain (small uda-yagi antenna or the like) uplink to LEO satellites with ~5 watts all the time. At peak power a cell phone can be about 3 watts... but their antennas are not directional. So that loss of ~8dB of antenna gain has to be made up by increasing the sensitivity or gain of the satellites in LEO by increasing antena aperture or better front end low noise amplifiers. It's all very feasible given the clear line of sight. What's less feasible is having enough of these at good positions overhead of a single cell phone to multi-laterate it's position using shared timestamps on the downlinked spectrum from multiple satellites. I think it's entirely feasible with the budget of a medium space services corporation that can launch 21 satellites.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoCivilian GPS receivers are passive reception devices. > Cellular signal from a personal cellphone isn't strong enough to register at satellite altitude. This isn't entirely true. A primary limiting factor is the frequency-specific gain of satellites' antenna arrays. With a big enough antenna and fast and sensitive enough ADCs, much more is possible. Sifting through TD-SCDMA is the fun part.
- op00to 3y ago
- timcavel 3y ago[dead]
- 1letterunixname 3y agoThis capability has existed at least 70 years and improved over time. See also: TRUMPET, Rhyolite, Magnum, Mercury, Orion.
- ipunchghosts 3y agoThis capability isn't new.
- wejjjo2 3y agoHopefully aliens also have some powerful SIGINTs, so they could detect American military and exercise certain actions against the north American warmongers.
- networkchad 3y ago[dead]
- matricaria 3y agoI think the title is misleading and should be changed. Most phones don’t have satellite capabilities.
- punnerud 3y agoThere are satellites now where 4G/5G phones can roam to them. This is just listening, not roaming. The title look correct.
- cactusplant7374 3y agoDetecting GPS spoofing would be useful in Ukraine?
- thephyber 3y agoTangential: I have argued that privacy is largely an artifact of the lack of technology. As technology increases, the total amount of information which can be kept private shrinks. Also, the total number of criminal laws (including violations of treaties) is huge. One of the reasons we aren’t all prosecuted is because of the lack of prosecution resources and technology. As technology and automation increase, more average people will increasingly get prosecuted. Not necessarily worried about the outcome of this Lockheed satellite system, but it is another tool which could contribute to this trend.
- stvltvs 3y agoAs long as we don't automate the court systems, that should rate limit prosecutions. On the other hand, we're already automating things like early release through machine learning scoring of likelihood of recidivism.
- soundnote 3y agoIt's not like many US cities are really interested in prosecuting criminals in the first place.
- thephyber 3y agoThis is a take so bad it’s borderline negligent. If you are referring to the “progressive prosecutors”, I suggest you actually spend some time to hear long-form interviews with them. They have a genuine interest in lower crime and crime rates; they just don’t believe that the current pattern of prosecutions and warehousing criminals together in mass numbers achieves the goals. It’s perfectly reasonable to criticize their solutions and outcomes, but to say they have no interest in prosecutions is flat wrong. Chris Hayes interview with Chesa Boudin: https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/amp/ncna1307198 https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/amp/ncna1307198
- hellojesus 3y agoCalifornia recently passed a law banning employees from confronting shoplifters, exempting trained security guards. So now businesses have to comply with this nonsense or be prosecuted for stopping crimes. I don't believe the state has any interest in prosecutimg crime. https://sd15.senate.ca.gov/news/governor-signs-senator-corteses-sb-553-preventing-workplace-violence https://sd15.senate.ca.gov/news/governor-signs-senator-corte...
- arendtio 3y agoThe name HawkEye reminds me somehow of the movie Eagle Eye from 2008 (which is also about tracking people).