The next time an investigator tells you he can legally “ping” someone’s cell phone to figure out where they are going, run away fast.
We’ve written before about the illegality of getting a friendly phone company employee to help out with cell phone tower signal data that helps to locate people. As we wrote in
Last week, the Associated Press reported that the Department of Justice had obtained confidential phone records for more than 20 telephone lines used by the staff of the Associated Press while investigating leaks of classified information. Only days later, news surfaced that the DOJ had also accessed the phone records and emails of James Rosen
Unbeknown to most cell phone users, just turning your cell phone on reveals your location. That’s because once turned on, your cell phone constantly “pings” (bounces a signal off of) nearby cell phone network towers. This data is collected by the cell phone company and can be traced to reveal your location.
Short of turning your cell phone off and pulling out its battery, there’s nothing you can do about this: This is just basic cell phone technology at work. Technology that can determine your physical whereabouts for as long as your cell phone is turned on, which for most of us means 24 hours a day.
Continue Reading Ping a Cell Phone, Cross a Line
Following is an entry from our firm’s website originally published in September 2009 and, we think, timely.
Plenty of people – even sophisticated lawyers – sometimes ask us in the course of an investigation: “Can you get me his phone or medical records?”
The answer for anyone interested in staying out of jail is no.