Cell Number Remote Sensing

A report came my way of a new technology being used in the area of the red-shirt protests. Somebody I know claims he was sitting in a café not far from the center of the action, when his phone alerted him that he had a text message. He was surprised to read that the military was recommending that he leave the area immediately.

“How do they know where I am?” he thought. A few calls to friends in other parts of the city convinced him that the text was indeed only being sent to people in the vicinity of the several city blocks that have been under the control of the red shirts for going on 50 days already. Presumably some GPS-like device had detected his phone and generated the text.

Since then I’ve spoken to two other people who got similar text messages while riding the sky train through the affected area. Most likely a record of their phone numbers is now stored in some government computer, thus allowing some government official to cooperate with the phone companies to look up who was where when. Video surveillance is one thing, but this kind of remote sensing technique brings new meaning to the term Big Brother.