[118688] in Cypherpunks
Cell towers can't track very short calls? (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jim Choate)
Tue Oct 5 19:52:46 1999
From: Jim Choate <ravage@einstein.ssz.com>
Message-Id: <199910052346.SAA25830@einstein.ssz.com>
To: cypherpunks@einstein.ssz.com
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 18:46:27 -0500 (CDT)
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Reply-To: Jim Choate <ravage@einstein.ssz.com>
----- Forwarded message from Greg Broiles -----
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 16:26:21 -0700
From: Greg Broiles <gbroiles@netbox.com>
Subject: CDR: Cell towers can't track very short calls?
The article quotes Bentley Alexander of AT&T's wireless unit as saying
that airborne use of cellphones creates a problem for cellphone
carriers, because the connection may not be active long enough at each
tower for the billing systems to account for the use, leading to free
calls.
Now, it certainly isn't appropriate to defraud cellphone carriers, but
it is interesting to note that, if a person wanted to defeat other
unpleasant aspects of the cellular system (such as the surveillance
features), a person might be able to achieve that goal by switching
towers frequently.
----- End of forwarded message from Greg Broiles -----
How long would a airborne user be over the average cell? A few seconds to a
minute at most? It implies that the call would be placed and the connection
made and but as the user switched quickly from cell to cell it would lose
track of the call and bypass the billing. This means the call
management/switching responce time is much shorter than the ability of the
billing software to stay up with it. This implies that one could take a
one sided conversation (e.g. calling your drug dealer and ordering your next
baggie of ganja) and split it into many small pieces. Then make sequential
calls which would be recorded and then re-spliced on the receivers end. The
whole process could be automated.
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