Tracking Down A Murderer By Mobile Phone

from the you-can-be-found-anywhere dept

Mon, Aug 18th 2003 1:27am — Mike Masnick

With all the stories about how scary location based technology in our phones are, I hadn't heard of a single case of someone being "found" via their mobile phone until now. Over in Japan, an admitted murderer was tracked down via his mobile phone. The article isn't entirely clear on how they tracked the guy down. Thus, it could just be that they discovered which tower he was closest to, and then concentrated the search on that area. However, once phones start coming equipped with full location-aware technology, I'm sure we'll hear plenty more stories like this one.

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John Fenderson (profile), 18 Aug 2003 @ 2:16am

There was this case, too
Couple Were Snared by Satellites
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Beck, 18 Aug 2003 @ 8:43am

Case in Cleveland
There was a case in Cleveland a couple of years ago where evidence presented at a murder trial showed that the defendant was moving towards the scene of the murder shortly before it happened. The defendant was making cell phone calls, and the records showed which towers he was hitting and could show that he was travelling towards the murder location. Unfortunately I can't find an online reference to the story.
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Doug, 18 Aug 2003 @ 4:24pm

Locating cell phones
Hmm, it seems that some people are under the misbelief that the best that the phone company can do to locate your cell phone is to determine which cell it is near.
In order to support "Enhanced 911" services, the FCC requires American cell-phone providers to be able to be determine the location of the phone to within 100 meters for 67% of calls, and to within 300 meters for 95% of calls. If using a handset-assisted location technique (GPS, etc.), the distances are halved.
According to Declan McCullagh, AT&T Wireless, Cingular Wireless and T-Mobile use the network-based (primarily triangulation) technique, while Verizon Wireless, Sprint PCS and Nextel Communications use handset-assisted location.
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Mike (profile), 18 Aug 2003 @ 4:52pm

Re: Locating cell phones
Not unaware. In fact, I write about E911 service all the time over on the Techdirt Wireless site. My point was that the article did not indicate which technology was used, and thus it *could* just be that they used the tower it was closest to.
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