[109298] in Cypherpunks
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daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mixmaster)
Wed Mar 17 11:22:19 1999
Date: Wed, 17 Mar 1999 07:15:55 -0800 (PST)
From: Mixmaster <mixmaster@remail.obscura.com>
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Reply-To: Mixmaster <mixmaster@remail.obscura.com>
Wednesday, March 10, 1999 - 10:45:17 MET
this comes from the only rational israeli newspaper left in existence:
see: http://www.haaretzdaily.com/htmls/6_3.asp for original
begin forwarded text:-
Now hear this: Your every move is being tracked
Cellphone companies have been keeping computer records of
your phone's whereabouts
By Nicole Krau
The Pelephone and Cellcom cellular phone companies have been
storing precise records in their computers of all their customers'
movements throughout the country, to an accuracy of several hundred
meters.The monitoring, which has been going on for at least several
months - perhaps years - occurs all day long when the phone is
switched on, even when it is not actually being used for a
conversation.
Information about the movements of hundreds of thousands of phone
users may, following a court order, be handed over to any law
enforcement agency. This confidential and private information may
also fall into unauthorized hands.
Cellcom regularly provides the information to subscribers as a
customer service - phone owners can get information regarding the
hourly whereabouts of a phone without breaking the law. Thus, for
example, a husband can find out where his wife was at a given hour if
she uses the phone registered in his name. In the same way, an
employer can locate any of his employees at a given time if the staffer
is using a company cellular phone.
The service is very expensive. Cellcom charges NIS 2,500 to provide
a chart of a single phone's whereabouts over one day.
Unlike Cellcom, Pelephone does not provide details on a phone's
location to individual customers.
"If this is in fact the case, then Orwell's 'Big Brother' is dwarfed by
this serious invasion of... privacy," said Professor Baruch Bracha, a
lecturer on constitutional law at Tel Aviv University.
He added: "I find it hard to justify this geographic monitoring by the
cellular phone companies and the storing of this data for lengthy
periods. It seems to me that the authorities licensing these companies
should call them to order and ensure that this blatant invasion of
privacy stops."
This past February, during the trial of the would-be assassins of
underworld figure Roni Harari, an electrical engineer at Cellcom, Ofer
Yonah, testified about the method of monitoring the whereabouts of
phone users.
According to Yonah, the country today is divided into over 800
geographical areas or "sites." He said there is a site every 10 to 15
kilometers along the Arava road, for example, while in Tel Aviv, a site
covers only several hundred meters.
Pelephone has a larger number of sites (about 1,200) because it
operates two different networks, one analog and one digital. Each site
has antennas for transmitting and receiving cellphone signals along the
network."The cellphone," Yonah explained in his testimony, "issues a
reading every hour to announce its location in order for another
cellphone looking for it to be able to find it. The moment a phone
makes a call, it requests a call channel allocation from the site nearest
to it."
Yonah explained that if the phone owner remains in the same spot, he
continues to conduct the call via the same antenna. If he changes his
or her location, there are a number of antennas to which the phone
may switch to continue transmitting. Thus one call can continue
uninterrupted while the user moves from Kiryat Shmona to Eilat.
When a cellular phone is switched on, the system registers the site
where it is located every hour. When the user is talking on the phone,
the location is registered more frequently - every few seconds. These
records are stored in the computers of the cellphone companies.
The records are kept, Yonah explained, so that customers may be
billed according to the time and length of their calls. Additionally, if in
the future regional rate plans are enacted, it will be possible to bill
calls accordingly.
Cellcom declined to tell Ha'aretz how long this data is kept on its
more than one million customers. It is, however, clear that the
information is stored in company data bases for at least six months.
Regarding the suggestion that registering and storing this information is
an invasion of privacy, a Cellcom spokeswoman said, "Cellcom is
registered as a data base and acts in accordance with the law for the
protection of privacy... Information is handed over only after a court
order is issued."Regarding the fees the company charges for providing
customers with information on the whereabouts of their phones, the
Cellcom spokeswoman noted that "Cellcom charges money to cover
the cost of producing the printout; every such operation requires the
allocation of numerous resources, manpower and computers."
A Pelephone spokesman said the information is kept for several years
and that this is done in order "to keep track of customer accounts and
credits and in order to make engineering improvements in the
company."
He noted that Pelephone is strict about matters of data security and
adheres to laws ensuring individual privacy. "Data is relayed to official
bodies after a court order is issued and is done in accordance with the
laws of the state," he said.
Information about how cellphone companies track their customers'
whereabouts was first publicly disclosed during the trial of the parties
charged with the attempted assassination of Roni Harari, brother of
Yossi Harari, head of the Ramat Amidar gang.
Prosecution witness Meir Zeidorf claimed he was present at meetings
the suspects held in the Nemerim pub near Geha junction, where
assignments were handed out for the hit.
Following his testimony, the defense attorneys - Menachem
Rubinstein, Avigdor Feldman, Yoram Halevy and David Speigel -
submitted a printout of the calls made by the defendants with their
cellular phones at the time Zeidorf testified they were conducting their
planning meeting. The defendants paid around NIS 70,000 for the
printout.
A review of the printout shows that at the time they were allegedly in
the pub, their phones were far away.
On March 18, the court will decide whether to free the suspects in
light of this evidence
© copyright 1999 Ha'aretz. All Rights Reserved
--end forwarded text--
