How can they track gps devices? I thought gps devices are passive in the sense that they don’t emit any signals but only read signatures from satellites.

Or am I reading the article wrong?

> (U//PROPIN) Additionally, HawkEye 360 satellites can detect RF signals in the GPS bands, as well as other GNSS systems, e.g. GLONASS. If detected by all three spacecraft, the RF energy from a GNSS interference can be geolocated to its point of origin using an adaptation of the company’s existing geolocation techniques. Due to the global coverage of the constellation, geolocation of GNSS jamming or spoofing can be conducted over denied areas without exposing airborne or terrestrial sensors or personnel to hostile conditions.

So you can target these jamming devices with force projection and disable them to improve location services for local assets (force projection can typically switch to ring laser INS or terrain guidance when GNSS is degraded or unavailable during terminal phase).

> HawkEye 360 satellites can detect RF signals in the GPS bands, as well as other GNSS systems, e.g. GLONASS

Seems like a misunderstanding. They claim detection in that frequency, not GPS devices that listen to that frequency. So jammers, probably.

There are also panic buttons for remote backpackers that collect gps coordinates and send them to a satellite. All things I wouldn't call satellite phones, even if they're basically just more rudimentary versions. Looks like the quote was referring to something else, though.

GNSS receivers are passive devices just like regular radio receivers, but in addition to regular radios they use math to process the deltas from GNSS satellite clock signals to pinpoint their position.

Exceptions to (most) include plasma antennas, which can disappear on demand.

In theory, a reflector antenna can have a zero RCS, so putting a reflector behind a dipole will reduce the RCS. It’s totally non-intuitive.

Despite the headline, the system does NOT track individual cellphones or GPS receivers. Cellular signal from a personal cellphone isn't strong enough to register at satellite altitude. The same goes for non-milspec walkie-talkies.

Measuring light bouncing off a window to hear conversations, using millimeter waves to see through walls, taking photos from space, and planes that could fly themselves were all the realm of science fiction at one point - while in the hands of intelligence agencies.

In most cases it's their ability to spend money to build large teams to employ tech, the complete scale of operations (XKeyscore+TEMPEST comes to mind), and the care they take is where things like the NSA dominate vs the average ability of the best hacker. Their unique advantages are only rarely in the individual technological leaps, which either a) industry has no match of or b) well informed technical experts are unaware of, like the things you reference.

Massive antenna arrays and SIGINT satellites have massive funding and decades of history, and they've already shown interest in tracking literally everything else [1]

This isn't some star trek type of thing, this is a "would the USG dump enough money into SIGINT to implement it?"

I'm very confident the technology exists to roughly track specific locations of interest for specific devices if not more.

I understand people may disagree but it would be foolish to assume it's beyond the realm of possiblity.

[0] https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/55143/is-it-possib...

[1] https://www.aerosociety.com/news/eavesdropping-from-space/

Laser microphones are old too. Clear and Present Danger features the use of a laser mic and that was written in 1989.

What's less feasible is having enough of these at good positions overhead of a single cell phone to multi-laterate it's position using shared timestamps on the downlinked spectrum from multiple satellites.

I think it's entirely feasible with the budget of a medium space services corporation that can launch 21 satellites.

Sure it is. The iPhone can do that right now with emergency SOS.

> Cellular signal from a personal cellphone isn't strong enough to register at satellite altitude.

This isn't entirely true. A primary limiting factor is the frequency-specific gain of satellites' antenna arrays. With a big enough antenna and fast and sensitive enough ADCs, much more is possible. Sifting through TD-SCDMA is the fun part.

Incredible.

Here is a video that explains it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDTnl4E9FiY

Incredibly dystopian. Since at least nine years ago, there hasn't a single place on the surface of the planet where you had any total and absolute privacy.

They aren't necessarily convenient places, but it's not like you can't find any privacy just because there are cameras up high pointing down. It's actually probably far less intrusive and privacy destroying than the electronic device you likely carry everywhere with you that reports you location and could (if it doesn't already) keep track of when it can't report and relay it when it can again.

If you think the trade-offs of that make it worthwhile most the time, consider that there may be trade-offs here that are positive that you are discounting with what we're discussing here.

Suppose we design walkie talkies such that two or more units can be hooked up together in a daisy chain. While the devices are daisy chained, a button can be pressed on the head walkie talkie which will generate a random symmetric key, like 256 bit AES or whatever. This is sent over the daisy-chained bus to all the others. They flash an LED or something to indicate they accepted the key. After that they can be split up and will all use that key.

The idea of privacy disappeared a long time ago. FB/Cambridge Analytica/IG/TT/SC is just the surface.

It's also in the country's favor to overclaim their capabilities.

I am generally pro-situational-awareness of things in public spaces.

Which don't exist.

I'm not saying it's good or bad. But it is inevitable, and we need to adjust to that reality.

https://radiolab.org/podcast/eye-sky-2306

"Persistent Surveillance System" google blackholed of course

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJLr0KMsRAA

After all, who could object to a safety measure?

I think he is wrong that everybody spying will help, when everybody discussing online doesn't. But it is useful to think about what world will be like when everybody can surveil.

It’s certainly an asymmetrical field but, especially moving forward, I doubt it will be an entirely one-way street.

Hence, people will choose to record every minute of their lives out of fear of something similar happening to them.

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2675415775

These types of signals wouldn't be obscured by clouds, presumably.

That being said, the more important question is, how's the temporal resolution.

Whoever they were, they're enough on our side(i.e. the west) that we chose not to name and shame them.

My guess is a Ukraine NGO but it could have been anyone with a couple hundred thousand dollars given the equipment required to accurately plant the explosives is so common now.

Edit: to their defense… my laptop was compromised at the time due to a Realtek chip supply chain hack that was persistent. The exploit was associated with “redgobot”.

Any serious military is tracking all known imaging/SAR satellites and uses their fly-by times (which are entirely predictable) for moving stuff covertly. I.e. you want to be out in the open in Area 51 testing a new RQ-180 derivative only when no one can be looking at you right now.

Also, there are global ADS-B satellite relays, and frankly I don't know why this data wasn't logged for MH370 - it must be explained somewhere. There's a guy on Twitter who captures those on a custom antenna + BladeRF setups (this data is plugged into adsbexchange for oceanic routes coverage). AIS relies even more on satellite relays, as the curvature of the planet limits signal propagation much more than for airplanes. What you see on any AIS website is mostly from a satellite.

The logged transmission round trip GroundStation -> Sat -> Aircraft -> Sat -> GroundStation provided an non unique "arc of travel" across the globe that was used by Australia to narrow the search area to a truckload of ocean floor that was substantially smaller than the entire planet.

The archived versions of the logs saved by the Malaysian gov are:

https://web.archive.org/web/20160304040818/http://www.dca.go...

Alternating sat routing would have given a more definitive fix and removed the ambiguity.

Your source conveniently omits weird data in the logs that start at 18:39:55UTC (a bunch of zeros, like something errored out).

Satellite pings switch to IOR at 15:59UTC and never change back to POR despite the plane flying east towards it. Going east until 17:21 UTC the plane should have pinged POR but doesn't

The specific issue I have with hyper focused attention on these specific logs and hoorah about "weird data" is that I haven't seen much in the way of properly comparative analysis of a super set of broad fleet Inmarsat logs ... these in general are the trailing edge of quality data, riddled with nuls, semi handshakes, line noise, etc.

Transponders are for positioning, black boxes for logging important flight data, diagnostic interfaces for mechanics in hangers ... and component level Inmarsat .. pretty much not more than a curiousity of "because we can" that's occasionally useful when a properly formed messages truly indicates an inflight issue.

Ping routing and ping times were never meant to be consistent nor used for gross "half-LORAN" positioning .. this is all happenstance after event signal engineering hack work.

It’s possible that NRO has a later observation of MH370 than any that have been publicly disclosed, but it would be sheer luck to have, like, video of the disappearance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molniya_orbit

https://missilethreat.csis.org/defsys/dsp/

If you have to put this disclaimer into your work, we already have a problem.

https://www.planet.com/

I get that the satellite can track the radio emissions from phones, but can they differentiate between different phones? - pick up the signal and track device by SIM IMEA/ICCID etc

Also radio waves do not just go away. We are probably incredibly loud planet to any radio wave sensitive alien/creature.

If you aren't putting in any effort to obfuscate your data you are not doing enough. There is a reason why our VIPs and anti-censors both do it. Encryption and other privacy tools alone aren't enough. The IETF and others are putting great effort into encryption but not enough here. Recently Google announced MLS support, hopefully as that is adopted you'll see more effort with Pluggable transports and making it easy to hide data over more than TLS.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/03/fcc-aims-to-help...

I can see text messages, maybe, like the iPhone... but real time voice too?

https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/19/23879527/att-cellular-sat...

https://lynk.world/

Just like with a single radio telescope you can simultaneously watch two closely located radio-galaxies emitting on the same frequency.

Also, the total number of criminal laws (including violations of treaties) is huge. One of the reasons we aren’t all prosecuted is because of the lack of prosecution resources and technology. As technology and automation increase, more average people will increasingly get prosecuted.

Not necessarily worried about the outcome of this Lockheed satellite system, but it is another tool which could contribute to this trend.

And the use of ML to assist bail / parole is aside from my point. Those are attempts to get a more accurate (potentially less biased) evaluation of already existing cases. I’m talking about the increase in cases.

So people can be coerced into pleading guilty. I'm glad we don't have this system where I live.

Also worth pointing out that local prosecutors are elected, so there are tons of perverted incentives in trying cases. When prosecutions get backlogged, voters get frustrated and will vote for change.

If you are referring to the “progressive prosecutors”, I suggest you actually spend some time to hear long-form interviews with them. They have a genuine interest in lower crime and crime rates; they just don’t believe that the current pattern of prosecutions and warehousing criminals together in mass numbers achieves the goals.

It’s perfectly reasonable to criticize their solutions and outcomes, but to say they have no interest in prosecutions is flat wrong.

Chris Hayes interview with Chesa Boudin: https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/amp/ncna1307198

https://sd15.senate.ca.gov/news/governor-signs-senator-corte...

That is what trained security guards are for.

Where minimum-wage cashiers are pitted up against violent criminals in order to protect the theft of a company's insured products.

That's certainly true.

Think about trying to "disappear" now. 50 years ago, it wasn't so hard. Police data wasn't available online. People didn't carry devices that were constantly connected to the mobile network. CCTV cameras and facial recognition didn't exist.

Now? It would be far, far harder.

Can someone furnish evidence that ordinary cell phones are actually trackable... from space? When 5g is typically 200 ft, at best ~4km; LTE being ~100km at best... and the literal record for the lowest satellite orbit (Tsubame; which merely sustained it for 7d) being 2711.5km?

Yes, sure, maybe at the obscenely low signal received in space, one could pick up some kind of signature as opposed to it being even marginally usable for tx. But to infer that some kind of high-fidelity tracking could be done with that? Come on.

Source? Wikipedia says it was 167.4 km.[0]

Heck, even the ISS is well below 2700 km. It orbits at roughly 420 km altitude.[1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Low_Altitude_Test_Satell...

[1] https://www.heavens-above.com/IssHeight.aspx

Also, the ISS orbits at ~450km, so I'm not sure where you're getting that record lowest orbit from. Microsatellites will decay pretty quickly there, but these spy satellites are typically bigger with thrusters for orbit maintenance.

The fact that every government in the world is stumbling over themselves to become customers?

https://www.amsat.org/two-way-satellites/so-50-satellite-inf...

I assume tracking mobile phones from space would be way harder and more expensive, although the progressive addition of satellite connectivity to recent iPhone models might help with that?

I dunno which way I'd bet on that; on one hand any cellphone signal sent upwards is wasted energy, wasted battery - the cell towers are sideways. And cell towers are local so phones will try to use as little power as possible to get to the closest mast also to save battery, 5G picocells can be down to 100 meters. But you can't be sure to radiate sideways when phones are used at all sorts of angles, can you?

On the other hand, signal going upwards has clear line of sight and rapidly thinning atmosphere. A Google result tells me that cellphone base towers can "typically reach up to 25 miles and sometimes up to 45 miles", and this article[1] says cellular macrocells can be up to 100 miles (diameter?). Wikipedia[2] says "Mobile phones are limited to an effective isotropic radiated power (EIRP) output of 3 watts" and Reddit[3] says you can reach the International Space Station as an amateur with 5-10 Watts and a good aerial.

So ... maybe? a tuned sensitive receiver constantly listening for moments of phones doing a high power ping?

[1] https://www.emnify.com/blog/5g-small-cell

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_device_radiation_and_...

[3] https://old.reddit.com/r/HamRadio/comments/rvzj11/can_i_make...

The directionality of phone network comes from the towers which have arrays of antennas pointing in different directions.

Also, the cell phone doesn't know where the towers are. Especially with all the smaller cells that may not know where they are.

I'm assuming they are operating in low earth orbit. Which means that the satellite could be around 200-300km above the earth. Apart from the atmosphere its direct line of sight.

You have the advantage that you are not really trying to decode data, just figure out where something is, so you can use a large phased array antenna to electronically sweep an area. Because you're in orbit, you can localise a RF source as you fly over.

in terms of RF power, GPS is transmitted at ~40 watts from ~20200km I haven't done the maths, but as its inverse square, I'd punt that GPS signal is weaker than a phone signal at 200km

https://www.mathworks.com/help/radar/ug/spaceborne-synthetic...

How much POWER do the GPS Satellites output on the 1575mhz L1 frequency?

In the frequency allocation filing the L1 C/A power is listed as 25.6 Watts. The Antenna gain is listed at 13 dBi. Thus, based on the frequency allocation filing, the power would be about 500 Watts (27 dBW).

Now, the free space path loss from 21000 km is about 182 dB. Take the 500 Watts (27 dBW) and subtract the free space path loss (27 - 182) and you get -155 dBW. The end of life spec is -160 dBW, which leaves a 5 dB margin.

And if you really get into it, you'll discover ALL of the following represent the same approximate signal strength for GPS on the face of the earth (m stands for milliwatts and m2 stands for meters squared):

-160 dBW, -130 dBm, -135 dBW/m2, -105 dBm/m2, -223 dBW/Hz, -163 dBW/MHz, -193 dBm/Hz, -198 dBW/m2/Hz, -138 dBW/m2/MHz

Once you figure out why they're all the same, you're well on your way to understanding power, power density, and power flux density as it relates to GPS. For those that wish to quibble, I am assuming an even distribution of power density over a 2 MHz C/A bandwidth.

http://gpsinformation.net/main/gpspower.htm

I got around -79dbm for a phone at 200km, now I think thats probably a bit high. Even so even -90dbm is certainly something thats workable with

iPhones 14+ are satellite phones to a limited degree. [1]

1. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT213885

[1] Score-based Source Separation with Applications to Digital Communication Signals:

https://paperswithcode.com/paper/score-based-source-separati...

In terms of timestamp, when multiple satellites measure different times of receipt from same cell signal they could reverse compute the location

Could probably incorporate differences in received signal strength as well

At least thats my guess

I don't think you'd wanna use timestamp info from the sender, since you have no control over the accuracy of that, even if it was available

The info on the foreign buyers is pretty spicy, though it's generally known that UAE's high-level relationship with the USA is built upon recycling a good chunk of their oil money back into the military industrial complex (Wikileaks Cablegate said $19 billion/year as of 2010) - which is only one part of their overall Wall Street/London investment portfolio, but it does have a special significance.

> "HawkEye’s advisors have helped lead a large percentage of U.S. military and intelligence organizations — including the Central Intelligence Agency’s technical surveillance programs — and have included two former members of Congress who pivoted into lobbying, Norm Coleman and Lamar Smith. And so one can only conclude that HawkEye’s surveillance support for Gulf dictatorships is not an anomaly, but rather a corporate extension of official U.S. foreign policy."

UAE is also known for buying Israel's NSO Group (Pegasus etc.) surveillance tech:

https://gulfstateanalytics.com/pegasus-as-a-case-study-of-ev...

Yes, “cell phones” but like, satellite ones.

They might make some kind of addition to the 5g standard or something. Because yes, indeed, there are such things as satellite phones and satellite internet.

Please consider being more technical here and instead of just believing a random website or parroting one of Elon's audacious claims (of which its hopefully become painfully clear that none can be taken as truth on face value).

assuming a phone transmits 0.5watts at 1m, inverse square law[1] says that it will be 0.0000000000125 watts at a distance of 200km.

Thats -79dbm, so kinda shitty wifi level of signal. GPS by contrast is -125 dbm. (logarithmic scale) Your phone can pick out a GPS signal reliably with a tiny chip antenna. Imagine having a 4 meter phased antenna array.

[1] https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/inverse-square-law