Comment by AlexanderYamanu

Comment by AlexanderYamanu 13 hours ago

euhm, well. 112 programmer here. There are multiple levels. Cell tower triangulation come in automatically from providers. But they are only in tower numbers. They might be wrongly entered by engineers, hence the confirming question about where you are. Second is subscription information, as in registered address. Chances are if called from nearby your address, you are at your address. Next is a text to your phone number, which is intercepted by firmware and sends gps coords back. This can be turned off, since implementation.

jeroenhd 12 hours ago

American carriers have a different protocol than the EU. The EU (and probably EU derived networks) uses a """secret""" SMS format that's opt-in, but the 911 system works differently.

The 911 feature can be activated fully remotely, the 112 feature is supposed to only activate when dialing an emergency number.

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yencabulator 11 hours ago

The US one is called E911: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_911

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gruez 10 hours ago

>The 911 feature can be activated fully remotely
Source? Even if the phone isn't actively doing a 911 call?

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- Havoc 10 hours ago
  
  GP likely means any 911 call automatically has geo tracing.
  >The dispatcher's computer receives information from the telephone company about the physical address (for landlines) or geographic coordinates (for wireless) of the caller.
  
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stavros 7 hours ago

Wait wait, so if I know the "secret" SMS format I can text someone's phone and get their coordinates back?

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- defer 7 hours ago
  
  No, the SMS is initiated by the device upon calling emergency, not requested by the emergency service. The standard is called AML.
  The format is not secret either, it's just binary encoded.
  
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  stavros 5 hours ago
  
  Ahh OK, well that just sounds reasonable.
  
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dfc 10 hours ago

Did you read the article or are you merely responding to the title? The article begins by acknowledging triangulation and then moving on to the point of the article. The article is about commands built into the UMTS and LTE specs for requesting GPS from the device. Your comment seems to be about everything but the main point of the article.

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jb1991 2 hours ago

The hacker news guidelines forbid you from suggesting someone has not read the article. Please do not participate in this forum with such conduct.

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M95D 9 hours ago

Did you read the complete comment?
> Next is a text to your phone number, which is intercepted by firmware and sends gps coords back.

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- dfc 9 hours ago
  
  Yes I saw that and also took it to mean the person didn't read the article. A text to your phone number? The article never mentions SMS. Heck I think the 2g/3g "feature" does not even require the phone to even have a SIM installed. This next sentence also seems to have been written without reading the article: "This can be turned off, since implementation."
  
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  jfyi 8 hours ago
  
  The poster is giving information relevant only to the European Union ("112"). They are talking about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Mobile_Location I believe.
  I don't think it indicates their article reading either way and wouldn't personally wager a guess. They are just adding their own personal experience to the conversation.
  
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IshKebab 13 hours ago

> This can be turned off, since implementation.

Not by users. The new thing is that Apple allows users to disable this feature. Hopefully they still detect emergency calls on the phone and enable it unconditionally for those.

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jeroenhd 12 hours ago

I believe they're talking about this feature (https://support.google.com/android/answer/9319337?sjid=18079...).
This is a system you can disable as a user, but it's not the on-modem feature discussed in the article.

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KellyCriterion 11 hours ago

Note sure: In my country exactly this feature is used by police & state enforcement to find locatin, because this "ping" message is not forwarded from the modem to the OS, so the OS is not aware of any of these messages

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AlexanderYamanu 12 hours ago

yeah, there always was. It's a service code, like getting your imei. But it was a weird long one, and manufacturer dependent. Now UI switches are created for it apparantly. Can't find it anywhere on the internet though. I don't work there anymore, so can't look it up.

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