Tracked through mobile phone masts

A startling investigation by The Observer has revealed our government is behind a new project which could enable them to track us using our mobile phones.

As they reported yesterday:

The technology 'sees' the shapes made when radio waves emitted by mobile phone masts meet an obstruction. Signals bounced back by immobile objects, such as walls or trees, are filtered out by the receiver. This allows anything moving, such as cars or people, to be tracked. Previously, radar needed massive fixed equipment to work and transmissions from mobile phone masts were thought too weak to be useful.

The system works wherever a mobile phone can pick up a signal. By using receivers attached to mobile phone masts, users of the new technology could focus in on areas hundreds of miles away and bring up a display showing any moving vehicles and people.

An individual with one type of receiver, a portable unit little bigger than a laptop computer, could even use it as a 'personal radar' covering the area around the user. Researchers are working to give the new equipment 'X-ray vision' – the capability to 'see' through walls and look into people's homes.

Ministry of Defence officials are hoping to introduce the system as soon as resources allow. Police and security services are known to be interested in a variety of possible surveillance applications. The researchers themselves say the system, known as Celldar, is aimed at anti-terrorism defence, security and road traffic management. 

It's the same familiar triumvirate – terrorists, 'public safety' and drivers. How many of our freedoms and liberties have been curtailed out of concern with these three issues? If something can be done, the government tends to think it ought to be done; regardless of the privacy implications.

This passage of the report was particularly scary: After a series of meetings with Roke Manor, a private research company in Romsey, Hants, MoD officials have started funding the multi-million pound project. Reports of the meetings are 'classified'.

So, the MOD are spending taxpayers' money, but won't tell us on what. Our state is secretly financing a project that could enable it to know where we are at all times.

Celldar – a nightmarish future that is no longer so far away.

By Dylan Sharpe