When your cellphone has coverage...

[SandStorm]

George,

Apologies for the delayed reply. This is extremely interesting, and I might add controversial, technology. From what I understand, Triggerfish and StingRay are very similar devices. In essence, they have the ability to mimic a cell tower and perform various functions from "pinging" a cell phone's location in order to triangulate it to collecting various numbers associated with it, such as serial numbers and (I believe) numbers of other phones it interacts with. There are other devices which operate much the same way (and I suspect vary only in degrees of speciality in certain key functions) such as StingRay II, AmberJack, KingFish and LoggerHead. They are all manufactured by an entity called Harris Corp, based in Florida. Apparently little public information is available on this stuff. DOJ and the military are understandably playing this pretty close to the chest.

There's a couple good articles on the WSJ site and the usual smattering around the Googleverse.

Hope this helps.

[gdurkee]

SandStorm:

Thanks. That's what I thought. I'd read one WSJ article when I started researching the possibility during the search for Larry. Unfortunately, the battery on his phone was very likely dead by the time I was able to suggest it to Incident Command. FBI in San Francisco apparently has one.

I've got the contact with Harris corp. and was thinking of contacting them. SAR people don't need the full specs, only how the devices might be used to more accurately find a phone absent a tower. The downed plane in Yosemite two weeks ago is another example where such an ability might have been useful (as well as Larry two months ago and the couple stranded off Highway 88 a few weeks back). Depending on its capabilities and availability, it could be extremely useful for SARs in areas without cell towers but where the missing person might be carrying a phone that's turned on. Do you work in that industry??

Which is all to say I'm hopeful they could talk about the non-classified stuff. Also, all SAR teams are associated with Sheriff's departments, so maybe the request could be made through law enforcement.

So if I can get any of this to happen, we'll record the webinar and will make it available to anyone.

thanks,

g.

[SweetSierra]

I've hiked the Oat Hill Mine Road a few times, once from the Mt. St. Helena area. If you are hiking up the road from Calistoga and back, it's straightforward. But, if you go up as high as the Pallisades and wander around on a use trail and not pay attention, you could get disoriented. From St. Helena, it would be easy to get off the route if you don't know it well and are an inexperienced hiker. On both sides of the Oat Hill Mine Road from the trailhead in Calistoga (such as it is. It's not marked), it's private property. That's probably why you encountered that strange sign, Balzaccom. It's a beautiful hike though, past wagon ruts in the road from the late 1800s.

[gdurkee]

More on the Stingray cell phone gizmo:

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense ... phone.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I called Harris Corp. to talk to a rep about the non-classified stuff. Haven't heard back yet but I'll keep folks updated (though maybe of limited interest...).

g.