Cell Phone Ping - Is it Legal?

The Debate

This questions has come up in many forums including our own PI discussion groups. Is it legal to perform or hire someone to perform a Cell Phone Ping to determine the location of a person?

What is a Cell Phone Ping?

Pinging a cell phone is finding out what cell tower their phone is in. This can be used to locate a person that you know has the cell phone. This is used by law enforcement on a regular basis.

Usually the information is provided by the cellular provider and you have to have an account with them. In 911 systems the location is broadcast with the call. If a bad guy is carrying a cell phone the phone is constantly sending signals to the closest cell tower, even if the phone isn't in use. The location of the cell tower will tell you that the person is within a certain range. When the person moves they can be tracked by which cell towers the signal is bouncing to.

Now cell phones come with GPS so your exact location can be traced. Even when your phone is turned off!! Also, the phones can be used as a listening device. It can be activated via a cell phone tower and law enforcement can listen to everything said within range of the cell phone. The phone doesn't even have to be turned on. It's like you are carrying around a microphone (see my blog titled "Is Your Cell Phone Bugged").

Many ways of listening to people are being developed and put to use right under our noses. ONSTAR has been used to listen in on criminals by law enforcement. the microphone for ONSTAR in your car can be activated remotely so your conversation in the car can be listened to.

If you want to remain anonymous with a cell phone use a prepaid phone and don't send in your information for a mail in rebate. Because the phone will then be registered to your name. If nobody knows your phone number or ESN (electronic serial number) then they can't trace your phone by cell towers. And definitely not by GPS. As for the ONSTAR, well, most people in the know disconnect it. Cable boxes are also being used to listen in on people in their homes. The signal is sent over the same coax cable to the head-end where a server records you conversations if you have been targeted.

But, back to Pinging a phone, it's finding out what cell tower grid the phone is in so a person can be located. The ESN or phone number of the cell phone needs to be known. The cell phone provider can provide this information but you have to be allowed to have it, meaning you can get it if you are LEO (law enforcement officer), government agency and have a subpoena.

The Law

On January 12th 2007 President Bush signed H.R. 4709 The Telephone Records and Privacy Protection Act of 2006. It is now illegal to sell, transfer, or possess confidential phone records. Confidential phone records are defined in the act as: information relating to the the quantity, technical configuration, type, destination, location, or amount of use of a service offered by a phone company.

The Telephone Records and Privacy Protection Act of 2006 also includes an "Extraterritorial Jurisdiction" clause which prohibits foreign companies from selling or reselling any telephone records.

According to this law, the Cell Phone Ping is illegal because the persons "location" is defined as "Confidential Phone Records" under H.R, 4709.

The "Legal" Ping

The only way to perform a Legal Ping is by performing a number of LEGAL procedures to determine the physical location of the cell phone user.

What most services provide is a pretext. They will send an SMS message (text message) to the phone advising the recipient that they have "won a prize, call in the next few minutes to claim your prize". The number to be called is an 800 number. When the "winner" calls they get a recording stating that cell phone calls are not allowed, go to the nearest wired phone and call. If they fall for that, the number is"trapped" (as with all toll free calls) and a public records search may show the location of that wired or land line phone. This is a totally legal pretext.

Here is one place where you can perform a Legal Cell Ping - Click Here. The service is No Hit - No Fee in most cases.

Any feedback on this topic is greatly appreciated - please click on the "comments" button at the end of this blog to post your feedback or comments, you may post your comments anonymously.

Patrick L. Baird
Private Investigator

Report Handicapped Parking Fraud

The Problem

Ever see someone using a handicapped space who shouldn't be? Now, there's a place online where you can report this type of fraud.

The Solution

Handicappedfraud.org was launched as a community service effort to end the misuse of handicapped parking spaces and placards. The disabled have run out of places to park, as their designated handicapped parking spaces are being taken by fraudulent individuals. Our cities are being robbed of serious metered parking revenue to to this abuse as well. The police are far too valuable and busy to stake out parking lots to ticket handicapped parking violators. The abusers therefore go largely unpunished. It is time for our community to become the ambassadors for our cities, and report handicapped parking violators when they see it.

Any feedback on this topic is greatly appreciated - please click on the "comments" button at the end of this blog to post your feedback or comments, you may post your comments anonymously.

Patrick L. Baird
Private Investigator

Wireless Provider Sells YOUR Private Information

Verizon Wireless is selling your phone call data

Recently a small storm erupted over new legal language that Verizon Wireless is passing quietly on to its subscribers. It appears as though the cellular provider is changing its terms of service to give the company the right to share sensitive calling data with third parties.

To opt-out, call 1-800-333-9956

Customers who do not want their CPNI (Customer Proprietary Network Information) data shared need to call 1-800-333-9956 to "opt-out." Upon dialing the opt-out number, Verizon customers will be prompted for their phone number, billing ZIP code, and last four digits of their Social Security Numbers (in the case of businesses, their Employer ID numbers). Failure to opt-out will be interpreted by Verizon Wireless as"consent" to the company's data-sharing practices.

Any feedback on this topic is greatly appreciated - please use the "post comments" button at the end of this blog to post your feedback or comments.

Patrick L. Baird
Private Investigator

Big Brother Collecting Data on Your Travel Habits

US effort more extensive than previously known.

The U.S. government is collecting electronic records on the travel habits of millions of Americans who fly, drive or take cruises abroad, retaining data on the persons with whom they travel or plan to stay, the personal items they carry during their journeys, and even the books that travelers have carried, according to documents obtained by a group of civil liberties advocates and statements by government officials.

The personal travel records are meant to be stored for as long as 15 years, as part of the Department of Homeland Security's effort to assess the security threat posed by all travelers entering the country. Officials say the records, which are analyzed by the department's Automated Targeting System, help border officials distinguish potential terrorists from innocent people entering the country.

But new details about the information being retained suggest that the government is monitoring the personal habits of travelers more closely than it has previously acknowledged. The details were learned when a group of activists requested copies of official records on their own travel. Those records included a description of a book on marijuana that one of them carried and small flashlights bearing the symbol of a marijuana leaf.

The Automated Targeting System has been used to screen passengers since the mid-1990s, but the collection of data for it has been greatly expanded and automated since 2002, according to former DHS officials.

Officials yesterday defended the retention of highly personal data on travelers not involved in or linked to any violations of the law. But civil liberties advocates have alleged that the type of information preserved by the department raises alarms about the government's ability to intrude into the lives of ordinary people. The millions of travelers whose records are kept by the government are generally unaware of what their records say, and the government has not created an effective mechanism for reviewing the data and correcting any errors, activists said.

The activists alleged that the data collection effort, as carried out now, violates the Privacy Act, which bars the gathering of data related to Americans' exercise of their First Amendment rights, such as their choice of reading material or persons with whom to associate. They also expressed concern that such personal data could one day be used to impede their right to travel. "The federal government is trying to build a surveillance society," said John Gilmore, a civil liberties activist in San Francisco whose records were requested by the Identity Project, an ad-hoc group of privacy advocates in California and Alaska. The government, he said, "may be doing it with the best or worst of intentions.... But the job of building a surveillance database and populating it with information about us is happening largely without our awareness and without our consent."

Gilmore's file, which he provided to The Washington Post, included a note from a Customs and Border Patrol officer that he carried the marijuana-related book "Drugs and Your Rights." "My first reaction was I kind of expected it," Gilmore said. "My second reaction was, that's illegal."

DHS officials said this week that the government is not interested in passengers' reading habits, that the program is transparent, and that it affords redress for travelers who are inappropriately stymied. "I flatly reject the premise that the department is interested in what travelers are reading," DHS spokesman Russ Knocke said. "We are completely uninterested in the latest Tom Clancy novel that the traveler may be reading."

But, Knocke said, "if there is some indication based upon the behavior or an item in the traveler's possession that leads the inspection officer to conclude there could be a possible violation of the law, it is the front-line officer's duty to further scrutinize the traveler." Once that happens, Knocke said, "it is not uncommon for the officer to document interactions with a traveler that merited additional scrutiny."

He said that he is not familiar with the file that mentions Gilmore's book about drug rights, but that generally "front-line officers have a duty to enforce all laws within our authority, for example, the counter-narcotics mission." Officers making a decision to admit someone at a port of entry have a duty to apply extra scrutiny if there is some indication of a violation of the law, he said.

The retention of information about Gilmore's book was first disclosed this week in Wired News. Details of how the ATS works were disclosed in a Federal Register notice last November.

Although the screening has been in effect for more than a decade, data for the system in recent years have been collected by the government from more border points, and also provided by airlines - under U.S. government mandates - through direct electronic links that did not previously exist.

The DHS database generally includes "passenger name record" (PNR) information, as well as notes taken during secondary screenings of travelers. PNR data - often provided to airlines and other companies when reservations are made - routinely include names, addresses and credit-card information, as well as telephone and e-mail contact details, itineraries, hotel and rental car reservations, and even the type of bed requested in a hotel.

The records the Identity Project obtained confirmed that the government is receiving data directly from commercial reservation systems, such as Galileo and Sabre, but also showed that the data, in some cases, are more detailed than the information to which the airlines have access.

Ann Harrison, the communications director for a technology firm in Silicon Valley who was among those who obtained their personal files and provided them to The Post, said she was taken aback to see that her dossier contained data on her race and on a European flight that did not begin or end in the United States or connect to a U.S.-bound flight.

"It was surprising that they were gathering so much information without my knowledge on my travel activities, and it was distressing to me that this information was being gathered in violation of the law," she said. James P. Harrison, director of the Identity Project and Ann Harrison's brother, obtained government records that contained another sister's phone number in Tokyo as an emergency contact. "So my sister's phone number ends up being in a government database," he said. "This is a lot more than just saying who you are, your date of birth."

Edward Hasbrouck, a civil liberties activist who was a travel agent for more than 15 years, said that his file contained coding that reflected his plan to fly with another individual. In fact, Hasbrouck wound up not flying with that person, but the record, which can be linked to the other passenger's name, remained in the system. "The Automated Targeting System," Hasbrouck alleged, "is the largest system of government dossiers of individual Americans' personal activities that the government has ever created."

He said that travel records are among the most potentially invasive of records because they can suggest links: They show who a traveler sat next to, where they stayed, when they left. "It's that lifetime log of everywhere you go that can be correlated with other people's movements that's most dangerous," he said. "If you sat next to someone once, that's a coincidence. If you sat next to them twice, that's a relationship."

Stewart Verdery, former first assistant secretary for policy and planning at DHS, said the data collected for ATS should be considered "an investigative tool, just the way we do with law enforcement, who take records of things for future purposes when they need to figure out where people came from, what they were carrying and who they are associated with. That type of information is extremely valuable when you're trying to thread together a plot or you're trying to clean up after an attack."

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff in August 2006 said that "if we learned anything from Sept. 11, 2001, it is that we need to be better at connecting the dots of terrorist-related information. After Sept. 11, we used credit-card and telephone records to identify those linked with the hijackers. But wouldn't it be better to identify such connections before a hijacker boards a plane?" Chertoff said that comparing PNR data with intelligence on terrorists lets the government "identify unknown threats for additional screening" and helps avoid "inconvenient screening of low-risk travelers."

Knocke, the DHS spokesman, added that the program is not used to determine "guilt by association." He said the DHS has created a program called DHS Trip to provide redress for travelers who faced screening problems at ports of entry. But DHS Trip does not allow a traveler to challenge an agency decision in court, said David Sobel, senior counsel with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has sued the DHS over information concerning the policy underlying the ATS. Because the system is exempted from certain Privacy Act requirements, including the right to "contest the content of the record," a traveler has no ability to correct erroneous information, Sobel said.

Zakariya Reed, a Toledo firefighter, said in an interview that he has been detained at least seven times at the Michigan border since fall 2006. Twice, he said, he was questioned by border officials about "politically charged" opinion pieces he had published in his local newspaper. The essays were critical of U.S. policy in the Middle East, he said. Once, during a secondary interview, he said, "they had them printed out on the table in front of me."

Beware....

Patrick L. Baird
Private Investigator

Public Land Records Database

Locating and obtaining property data has never been easier. DocEdge.com™ automates the ordering and retrieval of recorded land document images and provides property ownership and sales information. In an instant, you’re connected to the nation’s largest database of recorded property documents nationwide—online, anytime.

Search for documents quickly and easily using owner name, street address, assessor parcel number, or document ID. DocEdge.com also has the tools you need to work efficiently. You can view, annotate, email, or print the document images directly from your browser window.

• Document Images • Deeds • Mortgages • Assignments • Foreclosures • Maps • Easements • Other Records
• Property Information • Transaction History • Involuntary Lien Search • Legal Descriptions • Property Detail Report • Comparable Sales Report • Tax Status Report • Legal & Vesting Report

Connect to DocEdge.com from any computer with an Internet connection—whether at home, in the office, or while traveling. The user-friendly web site is easy to navigate and will quickly guide you to the documents and information you need.

Good Luck,

Patrick L. Baird

Private Investigator

Hacking-by-subpoena ruled illegal

Issuing an egregiously overbroad subpoena for stored e-mail qualifies as a computer intrusion in violation of anti-hacking laws, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday, deciding a case in which a litigant in a civil matter subpoenaed every single piece of e-mail his courtroom adversary sent or received.

Alwyn Farey-Jones was embroiled in commercial litigation with two officers of Integrated Capital Associates (ICA) when he instructed his attorney, Iryna Kwasny, to send a subpoena to the company's Internet service provider -- California-based NetGate. Under federal civil rules, a litigant can issue such a subpoena without prior approval from the court, but is required to "take reasonable steps to avoid imposing undue burden or expense" on the recipient.

By the time ICA learned of the subpoena, NetGate had already provided Farey-Jones with a sample of 339 e-mails from ICA officers and employees -- most of them unrelated to the matter under litigation, and many of them privileged or personal. When ICA found out, they quickly got the subpoena quashed. An outraged district court magistrate termed the subpoena "massively overbroad" and "patently unlawful," and hit Farey-Jones with over $9,000 in sanctions.

Read the entire story here

Patrick L. Baird
Private Investigator

Beutiful Women Performing a Striptease Part of a New Scam

In a new online striptease, the buxom, beautiful blonde who promises to remove her slinky scraps of lingerie doesn't want your money. She's interested in your brain. Really.

The creation of online scammers, she's trying to trick unsuspecting Internet users into helping the scammers break the online barriers that banks and e-mail services set up to thwart crooks.

The striptease is the latest attempt to defeat so-called CAPTCHA systems, which is short for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart. Those safeguards require users to prove they are human by reading wavy, oddly shaped jumbles of letters and numbers that appear in an image and typing them out.

In the new scam, an icon of an alluring woman suddenly appears on a Windows computer infected by a virus. After clicking on the icon, the user sees a photo of an attractive woman who vows to take off an article of clothing each time the jumble of figures next to her is entered.
But the woman never fully undresses, and after several passwords are entered the program restarts, possibly enticing unsuspecting users into trying again.

Trend Micro researchers say the scam appears to be isolated for now to spammers trying to register bogus e-mail addresses and flood chat rooms with unwanted pitches. But they worry schemes to infiltrate financial institutions could soon appear.

Paul Ferguson, network architect at Trend Micro, speculated that spammers might be using the results to write a program to automatically bypass CAPTCHA systems.

"I have to hand it to them," Ferguson said, laughing. "The social engineering aspect here is pretty clever."

Beware,

Patrick L. Baird
Private Investigator

FREE International Country Code Lookup

Search International Country Codes

Search for International Country Codes used for long distance calling. This Search will allow you to find all international country calling codes available and the specific phone area code. Phone country code directory is constantly updated.

International area code lookup will be fast and convenient. The Online Searcher will instantly show you all telephone prefixes needed to call from one area code to another in seconds and FREE!

Reverse International Number Lookup

If you need a reverse search done on an international phone oe cell number click HERE! The search is quick, accurate and if there is no information found, there is no charge.

Good Luck and Enjoy!

Patrick L. Baird
Private Investigator

Nationwide Registered Agent Make Serving Papers Easy

CT Corporation

Every process server or investigator that serves papers should know about this company. CT Corporation is the registered agent for more than 300,000 corporations nationwide. If you need to serve papers to a large corporation you simply need to contact CT Corporation and see if the company you need to serve is represented by them. If so, your service has just become very easy.

Best way to research this is go online to CTcorporation.com and find their local branch office in the state where you need to serve papers, call their office and inquire if your business is one of their clients.

Enjoy!

Patrick L. Baird
Private Investigator

FREE Search for Bank Name from Credit Card Number

Have you ever been in a position where you have a credit card number and need to contact the financial institution, however, you do not have possession of the credit card or a good contact number for the owner of the credit card?

Here is a toll free number you can call to get the issuing banks contact number, call 1-800-326-7991 choose option two and enter the credit card number. The automated attendant will immediately read back the contact number for the issuing financial institution.

This has come in handy countless time for me, I hope you keep this in your tool box, you will need it sometime.

Enjoy!

Patrick L. Baird
Private Investigator

FREE Social Security Number Lookup

Free SSN Lookup

Social Security Number Lookup is FREE! They guarantee with absolute certainty that their unique free ssn search is the best free ssn lookup tool on the Internet.

Register now for FREE and receive 5 FREE SSN look up searches every day. Or, become a monthly VIP subscriber and receive 500 FREE unlisted phone number searches every month.
Register now and automatically receive five ssn searches at no cost.

Not only can you enter any SSN and have immediate access to the most reliable and comprehensive free SSN databases on the Internet, but you have unlimited access to reverse trace SSN and your first 5 searches are free everyday.

Find out who an SSN belongs to, if it is active, assigned and if the SSN is assigned to is living or not.

• Registration is FREE
• SSN Lookup Search is FREE
• Unlisted Land Line Searches are FREE
• No Set-up, Monthly or Annual Fees

No reason not to register!!

Patrick L. Baird

Private Investigator

License Plate Recognition

The swift arrest of a San Jose man in the abduction of a 12-year-old girl this week was aided by an eye-opening gadget that can scan the license plates of a street full of cars and instantly alert police to which vehicles have been reported stolen.

It was a breakthrough moment for license plate recognition, a technology that is spreading to law enforcement around the Bay Area - and is prompting privacy concerns.

San Jose police Officer Max Boyer was on routine patrol Monday, hours after the girl had been rammed with a stolen car and pulled inside while she was walking with her sister in the Willow Glen neighborhood. Police said her attacker had tried to sexually assault her before she fought back and escaped barefoot.

As Boyer passed by parked cars, one of four cameras mounted on his cruiser seized on a plate, compared its characters to a database of stolen cars and triggered an alarm.

"Stolen car," a computer voice said. Boyer pulled up next to a white Toyota sedan, which investigators soon concluded was the one that had struck the girl.

Read the whole Story here

Enjoy,

Patrick L. Baird
Private Investigator