The Expert Podcast

…So how exactly does cell phone tracking or GPS tracking with cell phone data work? Well first look at this photo of a cell phone antenna We've all seen these You drive down the street you're on the highway. You see these antennas. All over the place These are cell mobile device antennas. And if you notice most of them have a triangular shape for the antenna Mount you can see at the very top of this, you see a triangle and it's got one face of the triangle facing this way One facing another way one facing a third way, and each face has multiple antennas on it. and you also notice sometimes there's another array of antennas lower down on the pole This one has another triangle In fact, if you look halfway up these vertical lines are even a third. Array of antennas What do these mean Well, in most cases each one of these arrays is for a different provider. T-Mobile at T and T sprint Verizon whatever the case might be. So at T and T might have this. Verizon may have this one in T-Mobile might have the one on the bottom. Now, why is it important to recognize these shapes of the triangle Because that's going to come in handy when you're looking to do a cell phone location of a device. So let's take a look and see how that geometry works and how cell data is used to locate an individual. Here we see a map We happen to just pick a map of a suburbs of Chicago. And you see the streets on the map This comes from Google maps. And what we've drawn is a circle with three quadrants suppose And imagine that there's a cell tower right at the center of this circle where these three lines come together. When you look at cell data from the cell company. It's going to tell you. A number of things about that tower. It's going to tell you every device that's connected to it So on each one of these streets, there are people with cell phones. All of those devices. will be connected to this tower Even if you're not on the phone it's going to ping that tower on a regular basis to know who is in the range And here's why if you have your phone. And you're driving down the street. And a call comes in. The cell networks needs to know where to send that call. So it pings your phone on a regular basis to know where you're at. So it's going to know you're in range of this tower. So if somebody calls you, it knows to route that call to this tower and then broadcast that call data. Out to you in that range. So just because you're in range of that tower in this circle. It also will identify even more It'll tell you what quadrant you're in which of those three antenna sections. Is connecting to you. For example if the connection section that's facing this way, Is the one that's connected to your phone Now you know that you're in this area So when a crime is committed or there's fraud or police are looking to find out. Where a person is, they can say okay this phone number one, two, three, four is not only in this tower but it's in this quadrant It's in this second It's actually really not a quadrant because it's a third a quadrant will be a fourth, but it's in this sector. Of that cell coverage. Well that's still a big area There's lots of streets there There's a lot of location How do you know where the person is Well you can take it a step further. You can also. From the cell data determine the distance from the tower because when radio waves are broadcasted from the tower to the phone and back to the tower, there's a certain amount of time It's instantaneous milliseconds, radio waves take the travel so it can calculate based on the time. That it's a certain distance from the tower. Let's say that distance is…400 meters, right 400 meters from the tower. So let's say here's a circle that's 400 meters from the tower. Well, you know that that cell. Connection. is 400 meters away, but you also know what's within this sector So you know it's somewhere along this line. It can't be over here because it's not in that sector. It can't be over here because it's not in that sector. It can't be in the middle here where peak wants pizza is, and it can't be outside here It's gotta be right along this line at that time, but still that's a lot of area to cover. But then you can also determine from the cell. data what the speed of that vehicle is if that vehicle or that device presumably in the vehicle. Is maintaining 400 meters in the distance is not changing and it's going 70 miles an hour Well where could it be? It can't be on right what avenue Because first of all you probably can't go 70 miles an hour and right What avenue. It can't be on…this cross street because if it was here and remaining that distance. The distance would be getting shorter as you travel down the street, but here's a section of the highway right here that stays right along that 400 meter. distance, and you can go 70 miles an hour on that highway. So now the data will prove that during that period of time the vehicle must have been traveling on this highway for that four or five minute period however long that is. So what can you do to find that vehicle Now what you can do is you can look at traffic cameras You can look at, private security cameras to look at vehicles that were on that route at that time. So this is a very good way to prove. The location of a person or of a device where it was at a certain time And sometimes what law enforcement will do is if there's a crime committed let's say peak wads pizza gets robbed. At two o'clock in the afternoon, it'll do a tower dump. It'll dump all the data. From that tower for that time period. And. It will save it even if…they're not going to use it right Then they'll dump the data hold it in their records so they can compare it later to other records Maybe a lot of the people in that tower dump they're there all the time Maybe somebody works at peak Watts pizza Maybe somebody works at another, business in that area. They can eliminate those. To know that those probably aren't the robber because they work there. Right They they are eliminated, but if there's a device that only was there during that course of that robbery really doesn't come there before wasn't there afterwards. Well now you know that could be a potential. suspect in that crime or. If it's a private matter, you know a fraud case to force case you can prove the same data. So this is where cell phone records can help identify the location of a person at a certain date at a certain time. So. On the other hand if you have somebody who says look. I didn't do this because at that time I was at Costco over here. I was shopping at Costco. There's no way I did that Crime aisle shopping at Costco Well, if they're shopping at Costco first of all they're too far away to reach this…And if they weren't there at that time it didn't make sense. Also What if they were down here on goose island and they said look, I was on goose island when that robbery happened or when that fraud happened or when do you think that I was cheating on you with another woman? Well that doesn't make sense because your phone shows up in this sector not in this lower sector sector of ranch triangle goose island right? So there's a lot of records that can prove or disprove a person's story or their alibi, or show that they're at a certain place in time. If a subject for example, is suspected to do money laundering or. asset concealment. If you can show that they're going to a bank every single day at a certain time, which matches when there's ATM deposits, that's another way to use GPS data to prove the record So. That is what…you see visually, when you see one of these cell towers, each one of these sides is a sector in that triangle Most of them are are triangles There's some that are for. and. They will give you data because these antennas are connecting to your phone. They're recording the data off your phone Accelerometer speed. Altitude sometimes Barometer. sometimes it'll record other data being transmitted like text messages. phone calls emails. and other records that that phone is exchanging, or if you text a picture sometimes it'll capture the photo. So anytime you see one of these antennas. Imagine that anything in this sector can be recorded and identified that it was on that direction and also the distance from that cell tower And that can help solve a crime or prove, data or facts in court.