GPS trackers - a potential weapon from hell

PeteS schrieb:

My suggestion was an anti-device that could perform the following three tasks, alternatively:

1 protocol at very close range all SMS and GPRS/EDGE traffic;

2 jam at very close range all GPS and GSM traffic;

3 help you to locate the original device.

Explanations for those who find them necessary:

1 That would put you in a position to prove that something dubious is going on in your car and ask a state attorney to investigate.

2 That would impede them tracking you, if you don't believe in a working legal system (my personal preference, after the experience gathered over here).

3 That would complete the job described at 2. Then you could stick the device to an enemy's or other patrol car.

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Unter blinden ist der ein=E4ugige k=F6nig.

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Reply to
Michael Laudahn
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You guys gotta be kidding me, your thinking way too Enemy of the State, way too sophisicated.

Yes, basic gps would be too difficult, but did you ever consider just hacking the phones firmware? Our local electronics parts shop is looking for other business to make up for the lack of sales of MRO parts ie selling NTE replacements and batteries and connectors and cable isnt that profitable these days. So they have finally given in to all the nut cases who want low cost bugs and monitoring devices. I was not impressed by the GPS unit with SMS, it was huge and difficult to hide, made of two different COTS modules with a little potted box holding the uC that glued them together.I bet it rattled like mad if not properly hidden in the car, and the antenna patch was too small for a decent gps. I'd find it by inspection or current draw, no problem. However I just got shown the latest toy. Its a modern digital cell phone with some not so obvious software changes. It phones "home" periodically and downloads its GPS position if available, and the last N numbers it has called. It runs off a "phone card" that you can buy from any gas station in the states.

Other then the fact that the outside packaging is not what one would expect from Rola or Nokia, its identical to any other "cheap" phone. I didn't mess with it to see if I could find any hidden menus etc, but I bet its pretty seamless to the user, if not invisible. I personally find the thing repulsive, but there seems to be a market for it, and since its a software gimmick and not the "phone company" providing the data, I bet it gets legally admissible here in the states in civil court.

According to the guy at the store, his Idea is that the jealous husband/paranoid wife will buy the unit, hand it off to their significant other, and wait for the data to come pouring in. I dont know if the service provides reverse number lookup, but I bet it does.

Its Disgusting, and priced to be affordable, and I'll bet the camera phone version comes out next week!

Steve Roberts

Reply to
osr

Well, no... no, it doesn't. There are direct satellite uplink options, some of which only require a few centimeters of wire antenna. But I'd rather detect leakage from the GPS receiver if I could.

Given a choice, I'd rather be able to detect the receiver and then decide what to do with it (for example, drive the bugged vehicle to a dummy location and then go rent a car) rather than simply jam it.

If you're out in a sparsely populated district, it probably doesn't matter if you can only see one tower - the assigned timeslot will tell you how far you out from the tower you are, which places your location inside a rather narrow annulus around that tower. Should be easy to identify which destinations of interest lie within that annulus...

Reply to
zwsdotcom

snipped-for-privacy@uakron.edu schrieb:

What else is necessary to make you guys comprehend what is clear to me?

Again: Have you visited

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? Then:

1: Open two web readers. In one of them, let the german version stand. In the other, open the english version (flag click).

2: Compare the nav bars on the left: Do you see that the german version has a folder the english doesn't have? It's called BOS. That stands for 'beh=F6rden f=FCr ordnung und sicherheit', or 'authorities for (public) order an safety' - something like your LEC?

3: Try to open the BOS folder. You'll see that it's PW-protected. Would you agree it contains things which the public isn't supposed to see? What the public is supposed to see can be found on the rest of their website: GPS/GSM trackers galore, 'the usual size'. Am I 'paranoid' etc for thinking that the ultra-small, ultra-sensitive versions of them are in the BOS folder?

Again: There was a constitutional court case almost a year ago about an incident where the police had used one of the 'invisible' bugs, which the victims hadn't found. These same people had found the first two planted by the police, however, and removed them. Would this also support the theory that there is a newer version which is 'invisible' and still works?

My guess is that you simply haven't realized the danger yet. Consider me a whistle blower. If we're affected over here by this technology, you are too. Wake up from your sleep and find a way out, along the technical outlines described by me (protocolling, short-range jamming GPS and GSM, finding)! The companies over here who could do it won't, because they all are state-dependent, one way or another.

--

Unter blinden ist der ein=E4ugige k=F6nig.

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Reply to
Michael Laudahn

Someone is paying me to design one for his company, none of the commercial ones will quite do what he wants. 8-)

Leon

Reply to
Leon

Leon schrieb:

In case you're serious and successful: Consider renting a stall at the Essen Security trade fair *) later this year! Why not try and get the one next to Fugon...

*)
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; apparently somehow comparable to the Hannover CeBIT, significance-wise

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Unter blinden ist der ein=E4ugige k=F6nig.

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Reply to
Michael Laudahn

They must have confused your car with someone else's.

When I first moved to Sacramento, it seemed that at least once a week, there was a police helicopter with a big searchlight flying circles around my neighborhood. For the longest time I thought they were just doing training runs. :)

Oh wait, maybe they were after ME? hahahaha

Reply to
onehappymadman

I know hughes has had company vehicle trackers since the 80's. I suppose they used topside antennas for the downlink and up link.

greg

Reply to
szekeres

Since the OP up there says "strong beacon," I took his intention as jamming over a large radius using plenty of power. I agree that conceivably you can build a jammer that's low enough power to only block GPS reception within a radius of a few meters.

There are many such devices that aren't powerful enough to override strong local stations stations. If you check out some posts about satellite radio receivers (nearly all come with FM transmitters), you'll see plenty of people asking about which have strong enough transmitters such that they won't have to re-tune as they drive through different towns and get "stepped on" by the locals.

Whether the problem is due to poor design more so than hitting the legal limit for unlicensed transmitters I don't know, however.

Sure, although depending on the transmitter architecture, this could be anywhere from trivially easy to nearly impossible. If it's using the commercial cell phone infrastructure to send back SMS signals, it probably is pretty straightforward.

Reply to
Joel Kolstad

Not true, It's dead easy to jam GPS for a defined, and short, radius. IIRC it was in 2000 when a stupid car rental mob in CT fined folk going over the speed limit, they had installed a GPS system for just this purpose. You will find much discussion on limited-range GPS jammers about that time.

I threw together a crude L-band LC oscillator with a 2N3866 roughly "modulated" with a gate running at about 1 MHz. It would easily block GPS out to about 3-4 metres. No doubt much further with an antenna, but I did not try that.

I was also doing integration and EMC intra-system trials on an aircraft at that time. The 5th or 7th harmonic of the V/UHF transceiver would easily bring down the GPS on the same airframe, and adjacent A/C within about 50 metres. To be expected really.

Then, just a couple a months ago, I also accidentally discovered that a model RC transmitter jams my Garmin 12 to a range of about 7-10 metres. Shortly, when I get some time, I intend to see what other legal transmitters do the same. I strongly suspect many cellphones will.

A friend who has an electronics-packed boat is well aware of the problem, and is extra careful if a GPS location is critical, and he knows which other equipment to turn off.

If you "jam" GPS with a legal transmitter used for legal purposes, then the problem lies with the GPS manufacturer. It's called designing for EMC.

Barry Lennox

Reply to
Barry Lennox

Yeah, everybody knows it's true - Just watch CSI! They just tape a GPS cellphone up under your back bumper, and they can track you wherever you go.

So, what do we do about it?

Thanks, Rich

--
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo Possum
Reply to
Richard the Dreaded Libertaria

On Thu, 23 Feb 2006 14:47:17 -0800, Michael Laudahn wrote: ...

I don't even know what that means.

And I don't read Greman.

Well, how about quoting a pertinent passage or two, in English?

Thanks, Rich

--
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo Possum
Reply to
Richard the Dreaded Libertaria

Well, if cell phones can work from inside an airplane, then somebody evidently has some pretty sophisticated RF technology in place.

Thanks, Rich

--
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo Possum
Reply to
Richard the Dreaded Libertaria

Three variables: Accuracy, sensitivity, and time to acquisition. ;-)

Cheers! Rich

--
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo Possum
Reply to
Richard the Dreaded Libertaria

This reminds me of the time I scanned a dollar bill and printed it out. I showed it to my brother, who's also a stoner, and he allowed as he'd like to put a bogus $100 into the change machine at the casino. I said, "I'd rather tangle with the feds than casino security!" (notwithstanding, I don't have any magnetic ink, or an embosser or a watermarker or a way to embed that mylar ribbon....)

I took the bogus bill, tore it up, and flushed it down the toilet. I met a guy once who had printed some bogus $20's on an offset litho press, and he did time. =:-O

Cheers! Rich

--
"We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo Possum
Reply to
Richard the Dreaded Libertaria

Yah, right. Strap it to any convenient wild animal:

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Cheers! Rich

--
Elect Me President in 2008! I will:
A. Fire the IRS, and abolish the income tax
B. Legalize drugs
C. Stand down all military actions by the US that don\'t involve actual
   military aggression against US territory
D. Declare World Peace I.
Reply to
Rich Grise

Well, one thing would be to educate the populace to quit electing neonazis, but the sheeple want guaranteed cradle-to-grave security, and apparently are willing to turn over a significant fraction of their paychecks to get this illusion of security, safety, comfort, bread, and circuses. And a major share of their Freedom. >:-[

Thanks, Rich

--
Elect Me President in 2008! I will:
A. Fire the IRS, and abolish the income tax
B. Legalize drugs
C. Stand down all military actions by the US that don\'t involve actual
   military aggression against US territory
D. Declare World Peace I.
Reply to
Rich Grise

I'm a Libertarian, but cats _are_ a problem, especially the ones that go stray and feral. And they are _NOT_ people, so they don't have "constitutional" rights. And those chips _can_ help with recovering a lost pet.

I even saw a CSI where rich bimbos got their own microchips, and got scanned going into the hotsy-totsy night club so they didn't need to carry any ID or money or anything. Hey, you never know!

But, back to the animal: I wish you'd said that it was required that it be sterilized.

And, just so you don't go off on your "liberal weenie" jag, I also think that dogs, ferrets, and kinkajous should be sterilized before being adopted as pets.

Snakes are another matter - if somebody wants to be a snake breeder, more power to him! ;-P

Thanks, Rich

--
Elect Me President in 2008! I will:
A. Fire the IRS, and abolish the income tax
B. Legalize drugs
C. Stand down all military actions by the US that don\'t involve actual
   military aggression against US territory
D. Declare World Peace I.
Reply to
Rich Grise

A few years ago, I was living in a trailer park that had a terrible cat infestation problem. So, I borrowed the park's live-trap, baited it with a can of tuna, and started trapping cats and taking them to the pound, unharmed.

Some idiot in the trailer park kept going back to the pound and bailing the filthy things out.

So, one day, I decided, the next cat I trapped, I'd very quietly pick up the trap with the cat in it, lower it into a garbage bag, and fill the garbage bag with car A/C freon, to suffocate it painlessly, and just toss it.

That very night, somebody stole the cat trap. It's definitely a conspiracy. ;-P

Thanks, Rich

--
Elect Me President in 2008! I will:
A. Fire the IRS, and abolish the income tax
B. Legalize drugs
C. Stand down all military actions by the US that don\'t involve actual
   military aggression against US territory
D. Declare World Peace I.
Reply to
Rich Grise

to

Problem: claws. They'll tear your garbage bag open.

Back to the drawing board.

Reply to
onehappymadman

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