VIC Pinging Phone of Loved One in Case of Emergencies?

[Lindell Hamilton]

I viewed a program on Youtube of a young lady being abducted from a car park. If the parents could have had the phone pinged earlier as they requested, this may have helped save her.

Due to her parents hard work, Kelsey's Law was passed unanimously in America (or a state of) it has saved lives from other circumstances too. Do we have something similar here or can it be done?

An idea could be that we are personally able to decide with our provider whether we choose this on our plan?

 

[Lance]

Hi Lindell,

There are application you can put on all your devices to track them and applications that can trace phone numbers. I'm not sure on the legality of them. I assume its ok to tack your own devices but the one that tracks other numbers would be a step too far.

 

[Rod]

I viewed a program on Youtube of a young lady being abducted from a car park. If the parents could have had the phone pinged earlier as they requested, this may have helped save her.

Due to her parents hard work, Kelsey's Law was passed unanimously in America (or a state of) it has saved lives from other circumstances too. Do we have something similar here or can it be done?

After a quick Google search Kelsey's law seems to be about banning use of mobiles while driving. We have these laws already.

I think you mean the Kelsey Smith Act. We don't need these laws. You can put a GPS tracking app on your children's phones now if they are your parental responsibility.

The less authority we give to the government the better in my view.

 

[faustus]

i'm a little unclear about what you're asking. To my understanding, right now, the phone in your pocket is communicating with multiple cell towers, attempting to determine the closest tower in order seamlessly negotiate handover from one tower to the next.

If necessary, say, one could call someone for a brief second, send them an SMS, a silent SMS (different to a ping) and that will get delivered to their phone. in the process of it being delivered, multiple cells would register the timestamp of delivery, and

Right now the cellular providers can determine exactly where you are. So the question is, in an emergency, should they be obligated to hand over that little spreadsheet containing all of the cell IDs that registered the IMEI, its signal strength. Telstra already does it for $40/hour (Telstra - Data access - Privacy). Under some circumstances, shouldn't you i don't see why not.

The less authority we give to the government the better in my view.

I'll rephrase it another way. If I sent an SMS to sometime, as a customer, that SMS, all corresponding timestamps and cell ids relating to that SMS reflect information that the organisation is holding about me. Under the privacy act, I am entitled to all information a business stores about me, and by phrasing my request a particular way, I think one could identify the location of the recipient, without their personal data being breached.

Kinda the same way that if I send a registered post letter with person to person delivery to a particular party, I have a right to know the precise time it was delivered, where it was delivered, and the signature of the person who signed for it.


Unfortunately, through mere virtue of how cell phones function, we are all voluntarily carrying a tracking device. I am personally more concerned about how long that data is held before being flushed.

 

[Rod]

Kinda the same way that if I send a registered post letter with person to person delivery to a particular party, I have a right to know the precise time it was delivered, where it was delivered, and the signature of the person who signed for it.

Analogies do not always work. In your example you are really wanting to know which post office depots were used to help deliver your letter.

The legal fraternity have no idea on how technical systems work and consequently enact laws (eg data retention, privacy) without a complete understanding of the purpose of each set of data. And the engineers have a hard time explaining the detail to lawyers who really don't want to know how things work.

Routing data is created for the sole purpose of delivery and engineering (how to deliver the information, and ensuring the system works as intended and can carry the load). As this is the sole purpose of the data it should not be deemed 'personal information'. Personal information should be about you as a person (characteristics, health, relationships, employment, property, content of correspondence, name, contact details). Supplementary information created solely for the delivery of correspondence should not be made available to you OR the authorities without a court order and a payment of a fee for the collection of said data. It is not always a trivial exercise collating this information and redacting information about another party.

One of the problems with our data retention law is the exclusion of oversight by a court. This leads to misuse and abuse. So called 'Metadata' really only has value to law enforcement agencies, the companies that provide communications services, and people wanting to use data for inappropriate purposes (including individuals and groups within law enforcement). Problem is how to prevent Metadata being used inappropriately. Easy - do not make it available without court orders.

The privacy law people seem to lose the plot when it comes to technical data. Some technical data for the reason mentioned above should not be deemed 'personal information'. I think the definitions have changed somewhat since Ben Grubb's case was taken to court but I'm unclear on the detail.

Without some legal basis, people have no legal right to enquire into the whereabouts of another person. Disclosing information that does so should be an offence without a court order.

When you send an SMS to another person's phone, the other person's right to privacy should trump any right of yours to know how the SMS was delivered. Additionally, as SMS services do not guarantee delivery, then the sender should have no right to know how and where it was delivered.

Too many people assume ease of access to data confers rights and obligations that really do not, or should not exist. Before email and mobile phones were created who really cared if your letter went from Adelaide to Melbourne to Sydney, or Adelaide direct to Sydney.

 

[faustus]

Analogies do not always work. In your example you are really wanting to know which post office depots were used to help deliver your letter.

LOL actually no, in my particular case: I had a complaint with my mobile provider. I had come to the conclusion that the provider was so profoundly incompetent that not paying the extra $5 for the signature when sending my complaint...

Well, it would almost be negligence on my part. I even combed through the Australia post addressing standards to ensure that the address label complied with all the minutiae of a correctly addressed letter: correct typeface, pitch, spacing.

And true to form, somehow in between its delivery to the building and the in tray of the complaints department, someone, somehow, managed to lose it. so no, I didn't care for the depot: I wanted to see the scan of the signature so I could better understand this level of incompetence. i wanted to work out the name of who signed for it, and perhaps identify any handwriting disturbance suggesting the had been doing bumps of pure xanax powder right off an office key or overgrown fingernail in the hours leading up to it..

When you send an SMS to another person's phone, the other person's right to privacy should trump any right of yours to know how the SMS was delivered. Additionally, as SMS services do not guarantee delivery, then the sender should have no right to know how and where it was delivered.

Look I ain't a lawyer, so I won't argue against you because you know more than me about jurisprudence. I'm ok with that and I'm on this forum to learn more.

But I think you and I share the same privacy concerns. and I will be honest: I'm the type of person who refuses to talk to police precisely because I have nothing to hide... just so that it will protect the rights of others when they have plenty to hide.

Problem is how to prevent Metadata being used inappropriately. Easy - do not make it available without court orders.

If I believed that a court order was all that is needed to stop the parties I am most afraid of I would I agree with you totally.

To put it in context: in this cell pinging case, Verizon Wireless was concerned that pinging some missing girl could be breaching the law. I commend them, except for the fact that at around the same time, the NSA felt that court orders might be too onerous for them. so they had AT&T just hook them up with a direct connection to everyone's data in one server room; AT&T engineer: NSA built secret rooms in our facilities.

I'm sure you're familiar with parallel construction in law enforcement, yeah? Well the need a court order went out of fashion around the same time as hypercolour tshirts.

More Surveillance Abuse Exposed! Special DEA Unit Is Spying On Americans And Covering It Up


I think you're misunderstanding the scope of the problem. Metadata collection is bad, but at least its utilisation would imply that the people overseeing it believe the rule of law is something to aspire to. Instead, the ones you need to be afraid of are those whose conduct never has and never will be moderated by it.


So, what if I told you that some legitimately might want their precise cell tower data information so that they can better understand the way in which they are being tracked, with the view of developing the methods and means of undermining a global adversary with a limitless budget and few qualms about trivialities such as rights.

By way of example: one might think a way to prevent spying is to modify the IMEI of their device. IMEI, IMSI, these are all 10 years ago. the way in which you are being tracked now is far more insidious. for example, each electronic component in your phone is subtly different, and an individual can be accurately identified just very subtle skews in the CPU clock that their device might report.

So yeah, maybe I do want to know precisely when my phone is communicating with the towers. one idea might be to randomly inject microsecond skews in the CPU, which could blunt its utility to identify people.

Likewise, right now, my cellular radio is communicating with multiple cell towers in my neighbourhood. The more towers, the tighter the precision my current location can be known. a radius of 100 metres?

OK. let me see. Maybe I'll legally modify my phones radio so that instead of communicating omnidirectionally, it communicates with them in one direction. OK cool! My radio is being connecting to only one tower and one tower is all I need.

Let me see, fewer towers, lesser precision. awesome, I
know that my government's knowledge of my whereabouts is now less precise: now a 1 km radius. Maybe i'll share this information with my fellow citizens who also might be concerned about being monitored.

I could go on, ad infinitum.

I guess my point is: privacy is something that i'd willingly give my life to preserve. I just don't like being told that my knowing the most precise information about the azimuth and latency with which my phone hits one cell tower versus another is not personal data, because in my mind, it tells me how tightly our collars are being wrapped around our necks.