How can cops track a cell phone

Kentucky Police use of cell site simulators unknown. Maine Police use of cell site simulators unknown. Mississippi Police use of cell site simulators unknown. Missouri Local police have cell site simulators Local Police - St.

Montana Police use of cell site simulators unknown. Nebraska Police use of cell site simulators unknown. North Dakota Police use of cell site simulators unknown. Ohio Police use of cell site simulators unknown.

Oregon Police use of cell site simulators unknown. Rhode Island Police use of cell site simulators unknown. South Carolina Police use of cell site simulators unknown. South Dakota Police use of cell site simulators unknown. By Rebecca Pirius , Attorney.

Electronic devices track and store an amazing amount of data regarding our personal lives, including location data. Our cellphones, smart devices phones, watches , and even cars know our almost every move.

What privacy protections, if any, does the Fourth Amendment provide when it comes to the government accessing this data? Does law enforcement need a search warrant? As the typical legal answer goes, it depends. The law requires—in most situations—that the police get a warrant in order to gather historical cellphone location information kept by cellphone and wireless network providers. The U. Supreme Court established this privacy rule for all the country in the case Carpenter v.

United States. But, this ruling addressed technology used in So where does the law stand on newer technology? Cellphone and wireless service providers and tech companies like Google store certain historical and real-time location data gleaned from cellphone connections with cell towers, GPS satellite tracking, and smart device applications and operating systems.

Law enforcement can request this data using a court order or warrant. Some examples of this data include:. Historical CSLI. A typical cellphone produces a time-stamped record every time it connects to a cell site. This record is referred to as "cell-site location information" CSLI.

With CSLI, police can get a really good idea of where someone's phone has been, allowing them to piece together past events—for instance, connecting the dots as to a suspect's location at the scene of a crime. Real-time CSLI. To obtain real-time data, a service provider can either contemporaneously monitor a phone's CSLI connections or "ping" a user's cellphone and force it to reveal its location.

This real-time data can provides police with information on a suspect's phone's current whereabouts. GPS movements. The appellate court affirmed the conviction, holding that Carpenter had no reasonable expectation of privacy with regard to the location data because the data was already being shared with wireless carriers.

If you are doing something in public or providing information publicly, without an expectation of privacy, then law enforcement agents do not have to get a warrant before obtaining that information or observing your public behavior. The Supreme Court disagreed with the lower courts. The Court found that location data is a new phenomenon, but more closely resembles GPS tracking, which a previous case decided requires a warrant. Even though the information is shared with the wireless carrier, people have a right to expect that their every waking movements are not being tracked, catalogued, and shared with police.

For these reasons, the Court found that people do have a reasonable expectation of privacy with regard to cell phone location information, and if the government wishes to obtain that information for use in a criminal proceeding, it must obtain a search warrant by establishing probable cause. But there's more Your phone can be located in two main ways, using GPS or mobile network location: 1. It might also be collected by any app that you use that has access to your GPS location. Mobile network location Mobile network location or Global System for Mobile Communications GSM localisation relies on your cellular network, and can be determined as soon as you are connected to the network i.

Your approximate location can be determined with an accuracy range of a few dozen metres in a city, or hundreds of metres in rural areas. This location data is stored by your network provider. There are a number of methods the police can use to can gain access to your phone location: 1.

Access to your GPS data may also be possible through device hacking , an advanced technique which might not necessarily require physical access to your phone and could be done remotely.

If your GPS data is also stored on an online account e. Mobile network location Your approximate location data can be accessed by the police through your service provider. This means that the police don't need access to your phone handset to determine that you were within a certain proximity of a protest. How to better control your location data 1. GPS The best way to prevent your location being accessed is to limit the generation of the location data in the first place.

But bear in mind that the location data of any previous occasions where you did have it switched on might still be accessible.