Mobile phones are also commonly used to collect location
data. While the phone is turned on, the geographical location of a mobile phone
can be determined easily (whether it is being used or not), using a technique
known as multilateration to calculate the differences in time for a signal to
travel from the cell phone to each of several cell towers near the owner of the
phone.
The movements of a mobile phone user can be tracked by their
service provider and, if desired, by law enforcement agencies and their
government. Both the SIM card and the handset can be tracked.
China has proposed using this technology to track commuting
patterns of Beijing city residents. In the UK and US, law enforcement and
intelligence services use mobiles to perform surveillance. They possess
technology to activate the microphones in cell phones remotely in order to
listen to conversations that take place near the phone.
Thefts
According to the Federal Communications Commission, one out
of three robberies involved the theft of a cellular phone. Police data in San
Francisco showed that one-half of all robberies in 2012 were thefts of cellular
phones. An online petition on Change.org called Secure our Smartphones urged
smartphone manuacturers to install kill switches in their devices to make them
unusable in case of theft. The petition is part of a joint effort by New York
Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and San Francisco District Attorney George
Gascon and was directed to the CEOs of the major smartphone manufacturers and telecommunication
carriers.
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