Traffic Analysis
The insurgents are giving themselves away:
There have been cases where terrorist gangs have tried to seize all the cell phones used in a neighborhood where their hideout was.
A computer run can quickly find a gang that is doing this. If a neighborhood all of a sudden drops down to nothing or near nothing in terms of their cell phone conversations, it would show up in tower usage reports and other cell phone company records. Giving each cell phone company software that can be used to detect this sort of hostage situation and you have a pretty good idea where the neighborhood hideout is without violating customer privacy. Then again, if they
don't take the cell phones away, the neighborhood rats them out by calling the police or military. It's a lose-lose for the insurgents.
I'm linking to Instapundit instead of just to Strategypage because the latter has no permalinks.
Posted by TMLutas at June 24, 2005 07:12 AM