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.
The idea of privacy disappeared a long time ago. FB/Cambridge Analytica/IG/TT/SC is just the surface.
I'm not saying it's good or bad. But it is inevitable, and we need to adjust to that reality.
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.
If you have to put this disclaimer into your work, we already have a problem.
Incredibly worrying, as a member of a nation state with conflicting interests with the USA.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
Sure it is. The iPhone can do that right now with emergency SOS.
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...
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?
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
[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?
Just like with a single radio telescope you can simultaneously watch two closely located radio-galaxies emitting on the same frequency.
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.
iPhones 14+ are satellite phones to a limited degree. [1]
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...
[1] Score-based Source Separation with Applications to Digital Communication Signals:
https://paperswithcode.com/paper/score-based-source-separati...
