Tracing a Sat or Cell Phone

[eclecticquill]

Time: Present day.

My MC is trapped in South America (Brazil/Venezuelan border) without a phone, passport, luggage, etc.  Her family knows she's missing but don't know the circumstances or where she is.

At one point, the MC tries to make contact with her family. I haven't decided on a method yet. Could be a cell phone she finds or a Sat phone or

Comments

[bunnikins]

I don't know if this is helpful, since I don't know *why* it happens, but when I get incoming calls from an overseas number that's not already stored in my phone, it doesn't show me the number that's calling at all - the call comes in from '00'. And if I don't answer, it shows as a missed call from '00', and I have to listen to the message to work out who's calling me:) I know I'd never be able to trace anything from that, and I suspect neither would her your character's family...

[alpha_orionis_v]

It has something to do with the relay of the towers and the originating rate centre. Who's your carrier?

[bunnikins]

CTM. I live in Macau.

I did try asking about it once, but the customer service reps who speak English don't actually know a lot about the technical stuff, although they're very helpful with the plans...

[alpha_orionis_v]

It sounds like it's something in the switch that doesn't quite know how to translate the originating rate centre's information.

What that basically means is that the switchboards (which are all computer-operated these days, but they still call them switchboards) see the information from say, Germany, but since it doesn't speak German, it has no idea WTF is going on, and just assigns it a number. Some companies will have a default (sounds like yours is 00), and others will just spit out a random string of numbers.

[alpha_orionis_v]

If they haven't called the police, just give her a mobile. Even if they have, it's a bitch and a half to get any information out of a costumer service rep. You literally have to subpoena information from the companies, even if it's information regarding your own account

[uplinktruck]

Without Police involvement, any of your three options are good. E-mail would be the easiest for your amateur sleuth to think he has a chance to track and then fail (proxy server, anonymous relay, etc.)

With police involvement satellite phone would be either the easiest or the hardest to track depending on the phone and the carrier. The original Iridium phones had no GPS let alone GPS position reporting back to the switch. Tracking one of those can be done, but the nature of the low earth orbit satellite constellation makes this extremely difficult. It would be rare for a satellite phone call to last long enough to get a location fix tight enough to be useful

[eclecticquill]

Thanks for the excellent response. The brother does have a military background. And he does have friends in the Police and FBI. I suppose if necessary, he could dig up someone in just about any other federal agency. So if he couldn't hack the phone, then he probably knows someone else who could.

You mentioned hacking into the Sat phone control center. Is it possible to determine a sat phone provider from one short phone call?
If the Sat phone's GPS tracking hardware were disabled, would they be unable to track it completely? Meaning, they wouldn't even be able to tell what hemisphere the call was made from?

Also, your reference to military and government use Sat phones. Let's say, my MC comes across the Sat phone of some military/government official. Would the family be able to track what government it belongs to?
Do you know if Civilian sat phone companies supply foreign countries?

[uplinktruck]

If the satellite phone number came up in the caller ID, that will identify what carrier handled the call and tell the Brother where to stick his hacking shovel. Either that or your MC could mention that she is using an Iridium or Globstar (Qualcomm) phone. It would more then likely be printed on the phone somewhere and the company logo will probably show up on the LCD when the phone is turned on

[eclecticquill]

Thanks, you've given me a lot to think about. (Like the best ways to screw this all up. :-)) I had an additional question, but lost it. It'll come back to me once I've had a chance to read through this all again.

Thanks.