We Know Where You Are

Photo: Joe Ravi

No Expectation of Privacy

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has ruled that the government can extract historical communications data from telecommunications carriers without a warrant.  It ruled that this activity was not unconstitutional because location data is clearly a "business record". This ruling applies only to the region of the 5th Circuit, but other cases are pending before 4th and 11th Circuit Courts. ~ New York Times

This has nothing to do with GPS

This technology is not dependent upon a phones GPS system, but instead relies upon tower contact and antenna sector information, although the records may contain GPS data if the function is enabled on the phone.

Just for Fun

If you curious, go to antenna search and type in your address or any address for a complete mapping of all cellphone towers and antennas within 4 miles of the entered address.  The searches take anywhere from a few seconds up to a few minutes depending on the density of towers and antennas... my home address only took a few seconds (two towers) although my search on 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington DC took several minutes... undoubtedly as my request was most likely also routed to many federal agencies ;)