Unconscionable Conduct By Telstra

[Scott]

I have an iPhone - if I set the map app to give me directions and then remove the sim and have no wifi it will still track where I am on the journey and give me directions how to get to my destination

I didn't know that, going to have to give it a go.

[smidsy]

yep Telstra are bastards.
I worked in the residental faults call centre for 6 months, back stabbing, using, infighting among staff.
The most interesting part was the 2 weeks training, at the end they said "oh by the way, if a customer threatens to go to the media or a politican you are to ignore every rule and policy there is and do what you have to do to get the fault fixed.

Two years working for iinet, a customer rings up to churn from another ISP - every ISP except Telstra it's a 3 day process, with Telstra customers it's up to six weeks.

Unfortunately Helstra have the infrastructure, I use them for my mobile cos no one else has the coverage outside the metro area.

Home phone and net though - Iinet, 2000 to now as a customer, 2005-2007 as a staffer.
Not the cheapest in town but a rock solid connection and good staff on the rare occasions you have to call them

[Master Splinter]

You'll find that the iPhone uses a Broadcom GPS chip - Single-Chip AGPS Solution - BCM4750 | Broadcom - so it's nothing sinister, just standard GPS capability.

And why is everybody treating this as new????

Echelon was discussed in the European Parliament in 2000-01, and their recommendations were that citizens should "routinely use cryptography in their communications to protect their privacy, because economic espionage with ECHELON has been conducted by the US intelligence agencies".

[DaveTTC]

I didn't know that, going to have to give it a go.

I dont know how it does it. If you go off route it does not replot - it seems to need the net or SIM card to do that but yeah it definately works

[DaveTTC]

You'll find that the iPhone uses a Broadcom GPS chip - Single-Chip AGPS Solution - BCM4750 | Broadcom - so it's nothing sinister, just standard GPS capability.

and that works without a sim or internet ...... how does that work?

[Master Splinter]

and that works without a sim or internet ...... how does that work?

Just like your car GPS system. A GPS receiver listens for a psudorandom timing signal from the GPS satellites and triangulates your position by seeing how much each GPS satellite's timing signal varies from both its own timing count and that of the other satellites.

IE:
Phone GPS chip: "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12"
Satellite A: "2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12"
Satellite B: "16, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12"
Satellite C: "3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14"

Phone GPS: "Hummm, I'm 1 off from satellite 1, -1 off sat 2, and 2 off from sat 3. Now if I check in my handy ephemeris of satellite position and velocity data, add in propagation delay caused by conditions in the ionosphere, then calculating the speed-of-light induced delay from each satellite's position gives me my position.
"Now, I'll just pull out my accurate-to-within-14-nanoseconds-stopwatch, time the delay, and it looks like I'm....just entering the tunnel under Sydney Harbour...I don't know why I bother. La la la, not listening...."

A phone GPS will be able to show your position on the map if it happens to have the map data for that area still in memory. Once you hit a location that you don't have map data for, it can't place you on a map.

Since the sim is out and there's no wireless data connection, it can't download the map data for the new area. It'll still know where you are (with reference to satellite locations), but until it gets new map data, it can't draw the map for you.


(Trivia: The theoretical accuracy of the current GPS system is about 3-4mm....but that's with lab-grade equipment, not something you bung on a chip and sell for under $5.)

[DaveTTC]

Just like your car GPS system. A GPS receiver listens for a psudorandom timing signal from the GPS satellites and triangulates your position by seeing how much each GPS satellite's timing signal varies from both its own timing count and that of the other satellites.

IE:
Phone GPS chip: "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12"
Satellite A: "2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12"
Satellite B: "16, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12"
Satellite C: "3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14"

Phone GPS: "Hummm, I'm 1 off from satellite 1, -1 off sat 2, and 2 off from sat 3. Now if I check in my handy ephemeris of satellite position and velocity data, add in propagation delay caused by conditions in the ionosphere, then calculating the speed-of-light induced delay from each satellite's position gives me my position.
"Now, I'll just pull out my accurate-to-within-14-nanoseconds-stopwatch, time the delay, and it looks like I'm....just entering the tunnel under Sydney Harbour...I don't know why I bother. La la la, not listening...."

A phone GPS will be able to show your position on the map if it happens to have the map data for that area still in memory. Once you hit a location that you don't have map data for, it can't place you on a map.

Since the sim is out and there's no wireless data connection, it can't download the map data for the new area. It'll still know where you are (with reference to satellite locations), but until it gets new map data, it can't draw the map for you.

(Trivia: The theoretical accuracy of the current GPS system is about 3-4mm....but that's with lab-grade equipment, not something you bung on a chip and sell for under $5.)

thats cool to know, now I know that should work with my ipod too if it has GPS

so can I be tracked by my phone GPS even if I have no SIM card in?

[Master Splinter]

It should work the same in your iPad. It works that way in my Samsung tablet (there's even an option on my Samsung to explicitly cache the map data for later use).

And as for tracked, if you are using the GPS facility then it'll certainly know where you are (that's by definition). What it does with this information will depend on the software. Judging by what I've seen happen, it'll store your 'last known position' data (the point where you switched it off) till the next session.

If you've switched it off, then driven to the other side of town, stayed there overnight and then switched it on in the morning, it'll typically display the map for your last known position for a minute or so while it listens to the latest ephemeris data from the satellites to update itself. During this time you'll probably see your position suddenly jump when it realises you ain't where you were last time.

If you have 'assistive GPS' enabled, this'll happen much faster as assistive GPS also uses cell phone tower signal strength data to locate you. As this doesn't have to wait for a satellite delivered ephemeris update, it'll typically update in seconds.

[SAISAY]

yep Telstra are bastards.
I worked in the residental faults call centre for 6 months, back stabbing, using, infighting among staff.
The most interesting part was the 2 weeks training, at the end they said "oh by the way, if a customer threatens to go to the media or a politican you are to ignore every rule and policy there is and do what you have to do to get the fault fixed.

Two years working for iinet, a customer rings up to churn from another ISP - every ISP except Telstra it's a 3 day process, with Telstra customers it's up to six weeks.

Unfortunately Helstra have the infrastructure, I use them for my mobile cos no one else has the coverage outside the metro area.

Home phone and net though - Iinet, 2000 to now as a customer, 2005-2007 as a staffer.
Not the cheapest in town but a rock solid connection and good staff on the rare occasions you have to call them

Been with Iinet since it was Westnet, never had a complaint about service and the staff is GREAT.
Every time I contact I get an email asking me how the staff performed.

[Gra]

People want to sleep safely at night but don't want to know what it takes to provide that safety.

These measures are required to stop and catch bad people who want to do bad things.

Personally I couldn't care less what it takes to stop these people and if they want to read my facebook status' then go for it. Some of them are quite witty

I would sleep better if the main phone company didn't assist other countries with economic espionage.

You also stated that this is saving lives. prove it. show were it has saved a single life. Even the americans can't show that to their own politicians,its just the Americans overreaching and should be shut down and our government should be complaining to the American government in the strictest terms. they are treating us as "enemies of the state". If they want to treat us as enemies, then fine close the bases now

[corbs]

You also stated that this is saving lives. prove it. show were it has saved a single life. Even the americans can't show that to their own politicians...

You are correct, I cannot point to specific lives which have been saved by the use of this information just as you can't prove lives haven't been saved.

There is a big difference between can't show their politicians and won't show their politicians though. By giving out that type of information it may very well compromise ongoing investigations.

While the NSA have indicated that up to 50 terrorist plots have been discovered through the use of this information. From what I've read most of those have been discovered through traditional investigative techniques but it does appear that there are at least four or five which have been discovered by analyzing the information.

...they are treating us as "enemies of the state"...

How do you figure this? I'd be very surprised if there wasn't a country that wasn't storing this type of information. The French came out all up in arms about the yanks doing it until it was pointed out that they have their own program which does exactly the same thing.

I'm certainly not a fan of the Americans but quoting someone else (can't remember who at the moment ) "you can't have 100% security and 100% privacy".

[Master Splinter]

How do they define 'terrorist plot' when talking about their successes?

Is it something like 'an accurate and informed discussion of explosive initiation techniques between a known explosives expert resident in an overseas country and a US citizen with connections to extremist groups who is, on arrest, found to have a shed full of 500 kilos of ammonium nitrate', *

OR

Does the definition also include arrests of teenagers making jokes in online games - Texas teen makes violent joke during video game, is jailed | The Daily Caller as a success??

And what's the NSA's false positive rate? If we assume the 'terrorist rate' to be 0.01% of the population and the NSA's information mining is 90% accurate, 10,000 people will be incorrectly labeled as terrorists (however defined) for every nine actual terrorists caught (and one missed).

*note the use of a specific chemical and quantity, not a general term such as 'chemical used in bombmaking', as that definition could include the contents of anyone's laundry or bathroom cabinet. Even large quantities could have explanations - if you are like me, and like play around with things like anodising aluminium, you'll find that no, you can't buy that convenient one litre bottle of sulphuric acid from Super Cheap Auto as they now only sell them with batteries, so you have to take a half hour drive to a specialist battery retailer and buy it from there; since I've invested an hour of time just to get there, am I going to buy just one litre, or will I buy the 20 litre drum which only costs four times as much as the one liter??? I'm not all that keen on having 20 liters of sulfuric acid in my garage, but I'm not keen on killing an hour of my time just to get a single litre, either.

[DaveTTC]

And I bet this thread is being followed closely by the powers that be

[Dragonstaff]

if I set the map app to give me directions and then remove the sim and have no wifi it will still track where I am on the journey and give me directions how to get to my destination

Dave, it will track you anyway- no need to set the app going.

[Dragonstaff]

I'm certainly not a fan of the Americans but quoting someone else (can't remember who at the moment ) "you can't have 100% security and 100% privacy".

And to para-phrase Ben Franklin- Anyone who would give up their liberty in the name of security deserves neither, and will get neither.