Mobile phones as car security

ds20prefecture

Brought over from the stolen TT thread, where someone asked was there a low cost GPS locator available. As I understand it:

A low cost GPS locator is a mobile phone. There was a story on the news the other day how the police located a woman who had chrashed her plane by her mobile phone.

What baffles me is that the mobile telcos don't offer a number locator service to the gardai, so that you buy a pay-as-you go phone and hide the thing somewhere on your car, with a charger if necessary. 3 days battery life will help if they disconnect everything. It is small, cheap and ubiquitous. I can think of around 16 places on mine where it would only be found if they took the car apart. Hopefully, by that point, they'll be nabbed.

The problem is the lack of accuracy but if it is accurate to a 500m, they at least know where to look. I believe it is accurate to about 10m.

The reason why there isn't cheap GPS tracking devices is because they need a back end service provider to allow anyone to track the car. This is quite expensive to setup, apparently. O2 and Vodafone already have this capability, but I wouldn't offer it to everyone, just the Gardai.

Either way, this isn't high technology - we just don't have a market big enough to justify the investment.

ds20prefecture

Big Nelly wrote:

As far as I know it aint too cheap to trace a mobile phone like you mention they did in the UK.

It costs the telcos the staff to man the network, which they are already doing. The reason why 3rd party companies find it expensive is that Vodafone are not about to open up the location of their phones to a competitor. But the Gardai (at least at this point) aren't in the phone business. 10 or 20 grand in each telco would deliver a secure online querying system that the Gardai could use. They could even use if from the patrol car.

Heard about this and it is a few times they have done this in UK. Remember the two kids that where killed a few years ago. Reason they couldnt find quickly was there phones had been turned off.

Right, so you leave the phone on all the time

The Garda wouldnt have the time to track every car that is stolen in Ireland.

Or much fewer cars would be stolen if the Gardai could locate them within minutes? I agree there's no way at the moment the Gardai could track every stolen car, but if all cars had phones and the telco were obliged to offer a query system to the Gardai, I can assure you the criminal would need to be much more sophisticated before robbing the car.

You could see your car as being precious if worth a fortune, but also an older person who has a Micra or something that isnt worth much more to anyone else than her. If its stolen and garda spend a fortune trying to trace. Not sure if best explanation!

Indeed How has the age of the person or the type of car got anything to do with the fact that they were a victim of a crime?

My point is that the more sophisticated car security gets, the more "up close and personal" the crime becomes. Have a thumb print immobiliser on your car? That'll stop them, until they come up to your room with a bolt cutters. Hopefully they only cut your thumb off, but you might get a little bonus contraception for being a smart ass too.

Leave the keys in the hallway. Let them take the car. Don't even alarm it. Call the Gardai, and give them the phone number of your car and go back to sleep. The dispatcher can dial the number, query a secure web page in Vodafone/o2, wait until it stops and tell any patrols in that area. Now they have the car, and possibly the address of the perpetrator.

Maybe I'm missing something obvious here.

Alun

There are companies in the UK that do just this. Costs about £5 a month.

http://www.followus.co.uk/
http://www.traceamobile.co.uk

Can't see why it shouldn't be possible here too.

Villain

A car was stolen in Co. Carlow last year, a new Toyota Corrolla and the Gardai traced the location of the Car through a Mobile phone that the owner had left in the car!

ds20prefecture

Alun wrote:

There are companies in the UK that do just this. Costs about £5 a month.
http://www.followus.co.uk/
http://www.traceamobile.co.uk
Can't see why it shouldn't be possible here too.

Jeez - £60 a year is not much, is it? I'd still be happier if the Gardai owned the service, though. There's a temptation to go get your own car, bringing you up close and personal with the criminals again (hopefully this time YOU'LL have the pliers and a blowtorch). If the Gardai retrieve the car and nab the criminals, there's less likelihood of repercussions.

It's a good use for an old mobile too - just buy a pay-as-you-go number and credit.

Can mobile signals be jammed within the car?

el tel

Back in the day people just immobilised the car by removing the H-T lead.

Sorry to go off-topic but, can anyone tell me if so-called joy-riding is a commonplace thing in the Republic. (It is in the North).

Big Nelly

el tel wrote:

Back in the day people just immobilised the car by removing the H-T lead.

Sorry to go off-topic but, can anyone tell me if so-called joy-riding is a commonplace thing in the Republic. (It is in the North).

Used to be in Blanch years ago there was always cars burnt out when I was up here(was living in Enniskillen and Cavan) but since I have moved up I havent seen one burnt out car in the Blanchardstown area(Glenville/Roselawn). Maybe other areas of city and blanch itself are differnet

ds20prefecture

el tel wrote:

Sorry to go off-topic but, can anyone tell me if so-called joy-riding is a commonplace thing in the Republic. (It is in the North).

I think there's less press attention to it. No doubt we'll hear of a "crackdown on joyriders" coming up to election time.

el tel

I think the general consensus among people in the North would be that they'd rather have their car stolen by a professional thief for profit than by a joy-rider who would trash it then burn it. Personally I would hate the thoughts of someone having entered my home period.

hardCopy

A couple of years ago my parents had a high-end car and in order to get an insurance discount they had to have a gps tracker installed on the car. This system had a device with a gps locator and a simcard in the car, if the car went missing you just had to log on to a website to get details of location, speed and direction of travel. As far as I remember the insurance incentive outweighed the actual cost of the service and you could make 25 free queries on the webpage per year.

I also saw an item on a UK news programme (may have been from the North) where they were piloting a new tracking system that had a navigation system in patrol cars which automatically directed the police to a stolen car which had been fitted with the system.

Unfortunately I can't remember the names of either of these systems and google hasn't helped me so far. I'll ask the folks later and try to find out the name of the system they had.

[edit]Found itCelTRAK. Unfortunately the site gives no information without login details.[/edit]

maidhc

ds20prefecture wrote:

What baffles me is that the mobile telcos don't offer a number locator service to the gardai, so that you buy a pay-as-you go phone and hide the thing somewhere on your car, with a charger if necessary. 3 days battery life will help if they disconnect everything. It is small, cheap and ubiquitous. I can think of around 16 places on mine where it would only be found if they took the car apart. Hopefully, by that point, they'll be nabbed.

They do offer it to the gardai. It was used in trying to locate the last movements of Robert Holohan in Jan this year.

I thought o2 used to offer a service to parents to tell them where their childs phone was if they sent a text message to a certain number. This might be my imagination though.

I have never heard of a mobile being used to find a stolen car, but it would be a very very intelligent thing to install, the gardaí could hardly ignore its presence. I would certainly do it, but noone will ever bother stealing my car!

ds20prefecture

maidhc wrote:

They do offer it to the gardai. It was used in trying to locate the last movements of Robert Holohan in Jan this year.

As I understand it, the records are available to the gardai on request, but not in real time. They can subpoena the records from the phone companies with a court order.

Data protection are fighting for that to be removed too. But Data protection shouldn't be an issue if the owner gives consent to the Gardai.

maidhc

The Data Protection Act is a non-issue here (Sections 8(b)- catching criminals and (d) - protecting property) and as you say it can also be negatived by consent. Furthermore an unregistered sim card does not self evidently fall within the act. (Yes I have spent a lot of my life reading that act and everything written about it)

There should be no need for a court order, as unlike the music industry cases etc, stealing a car is a criminal offence, while IRMA are bringing civil actions.

It would be interesting to know though if the gardai would bother even making a request for something as trivial as a car getting stolen. I really dont know what the procedure is.

ds20prefecture

maidhc wrote:

It would be interesting to know though if the gardai would bother even making a request for something as trivial as a car getting stolen. I really dont know what the procedure is.

Me neither. Any Shickalonies online care to coment? I'll ask a Garda friend next time I see them. in the meantime, anybody know of a public Irish tracking site? I would test this out if I could.