Continuation Part Seven: Discussion of the Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito case

[LondonJohn]

There is a difference between you locating yourself with the GPS on your phone and the network tracking you.

GPS enabled phones started becoming available in 2002. People assume today that if they get in a car accident or need the police that if they call 911 on their cell phone, the dispatcher will know where they are. This is only sometimes true. Tell them where you are.

Firstly, I can say with almost total certainty that the PAYG handset used by Lumumba in November 2007 would not have had embedded GPS.

Secondly, as you rightly say, GPS is not a 2-way service: the GPS system is incapable of pinpointing any given GPS receiver, just as a TV satellite cannot tell who is watching TV via its service.

However, if GPS embedded within a phone transmits its known GPS position to any third parties (for example, restaurant finders), then the GPS-generated location information can become useful via this sort of feedback loop. But that's moot because Lumumba's phone almost certainly wouldn't have been GPS-enabled.

And if it was a standard GSM "dumbphone" (as it almost certainly was), then the only location information that could be gleaned would be in reference to the handset's connectivity to certain nearby base stations. The best that could possibly be done would be software-based triangulation (analysing the relative proximity of the handset to three or more nearby base stations by measuring the relative signal strengths). But this would only be accurate to within hundreds of metres. At worst, one could only gauge location from knowing which particular base station was coupled to the handset,and then calculating the geographic area in which handsets would couple with this particular base station. This would only be a very blunt tool for estimating location, with a margin of error of up to a mile.

 

[anglolawyer]

Just searching around for the point about tailing Patrick I came across further confirmation that the Kerchers were in Italy by the 5th. This is from Follain:

 

[LondonJohn]

The ability to locate precisely where a phone is at any specific moment in time varies greatly. That is because the equipment while designed to work together is still a mix of capabilities that vary not only from cell phone company to cell phone company but from cell antenna to cell antenna. This equipment is expensive and tends to become obsolete in only a few years with new model antennas and base stations and software revisions being introduced almost every 6 months. Each cell phone company is constantly evolving. Some portions of their network can be quite antiquated while other portions are constantly improved. It's absolutely impossible to know with any real certainty today just what the true capabilities were in Perugia in November 2007.

Most people assume that they can be tracked by GPS today all the time. Nothing could be further from the truth. While your phone may have a GPS chip in it, that doesn't mean that the base station that is handling your call has the capabilities or software rev. to track it. There are essentially lots of holes in the network. They might be able to triangulate a call through records of multiple antennas, yet as we see in Perugia, they really only were keeping the record of the actual cell tower that connected the call. I wonder if their records would have shown a cell antenna handoff if that happened in the middle of a call or not?

I agree with everything here. And the important point is that it would not have been possible to pinpoint the location of Lumumba's handset with anything more than the simple technique of knowing what base station it was connected to. As I pointed out, it's a virtual certainty that Lumumba's 2007 PAYG GSM handset would not have been GPS-enabled. As such, the very best that could have been done would have been base station triangulation, and the worst that could be done (apart from nothing!) would have been simply to know which base station the handset was using at a given point in time.

In summary, the police simply would not have been able to pinpoint the location of the cellphone Lumumba was using with anywhere near enough accuracy to enable them to identify Lumumba as the phone's owner/user.

 

[acbytesla]

Now you're talking.

There is a part of me that thinks "I really can't imagine a scenario where on the November 5th that the police didn't already know who Amanda had called or texted" before the interrogation. It really depends on how cooperative the phone companies are and the professionalism of the investigators and just how seriously they considered Amanda and Raffaele as suspects.

They discover the body on November 2nd mid day. They question the residents that day. Now it is November 3rd. We've all assumed that they immediately focused their attention on Amanda and Raffaele. While I'm sure they were persons of interest, the question is, when did they really consider them serious suspects. When did they start tapping their phones, what other phones were they tapping? Getting the phone numbers that they called and texted is a very simple act. They could have made a 5 minute phone call to Amanda's cell carrier and got the numbers faxed to them. Then they have to go through them, then they have to call back and get the names of the people they called.

Maybe they were just lazy and weren't in that big a hurry?

One of the questions I have are about privacy. Do you need a warrant? At first it has to be basically a fishing expedition. Is Meredith being dead, pc enough to search through all of your calls? My guess is yes.

Just thinking...

 

[acbytesla]

I agree with everything here. And the important point is that it would not have been possible to pinpoint the location of Lumumba's handset with anything more than the simple technique of knowing what base station it was connected to. As I pointed out, it's a virtual certainty that Lumumba's 2007 PAYG GSM handset would not have been GPS-enabled. As such, the very best that could have been done would have been base station triangulation, and the worst that could be done (apart from nothing!) would have been simply to know which base station the handset was using at a given point in time.

In summary, the police simply would not have been able to pinpoint the location of the cellphone Lumumba was using with anywhere near enough accuracy to enable them to identify Lumumba as the phone's owner/user.

This is the part I have a question about. I would think that identifying Lumumba would have been easy. That's just a reverse lookup..unless it's a disposable phone then it's grunt work.

The location would have been limited to a pie wedge area extending out from the specific antenna. That's the best you can do from one antenna. Two antennas and you can cut it down considerably. Three and they can they can pinpoint your location to within a couple hundred feet. GPS which uses triangulation as well can locate you within inches. In fact, they are using GPS today for surveying. Amazing world that we live in.

 

[Dan O.]

A reverse lookup. If the Sim is registered to a specific user, that is easy. If it is a disposable phone where the customer bought the sim or phone and minutes with cash.....NOTHING.

Can you show me a disposable plan that includes multiple phones with the same number?

We know who Patrick's service provider was and we have researched the plan that he was using. It's stupid that these discussions keep running in circles because the group can't remember their facts correctly. You all deserve a solid whack to the back of the head.

 

[anglolawyer]

This is from Candace Dempseys book. It's a transcript of a telephone call between RS and AK. It refers to Le Chic. It is an instance of intelligence pointing to her workplace and evidences the fact she was being closely monitored.

 

[Grinder]

Per Amanda's Blog.

As you can see, without the doctored-up SMS story, there is no meeting with Lumumba and no objective evidence against Lumumba.

I question whether they would have been able to arrest Lumumba if Mignini hadn't lied by omitting the important half of the SMS (and maybe deleting the underlying SMS).

I'm not sure there wouldn't have been enough without leaving off the "good night" or not but I found this interesting:

Regarding the elements against SOLLECITO, there are numerous incongruities verified in his first declarations in respect to his latest and the fact that, from preliminary observations, the shoe print of the shoe worn by SOLLECITO appears compatible in form with that found at the scene of the crime. Furthermore, the fact that KNOX declares to not remember what happened between the scream of the victim and her reawakening in the morning in Sollecito's bed who, furthermore, was found to have in his possession a pocket knife that could in the abstract be compatible, in type and dimensions (full length 18cm, of which 8.5cm being the blade), with the object that produced the most severe wound in the neck of the victim.
​

They on one hand say that Amanda lied because Raf said she left, but on the other hand they had him at the scene. Did it ever cross their mind that Amanda was one asleep and Raf snuck out.

This has the description of the knife that appeared in the tabs after the murder. a pen knife. Note that they attribute the most severe wound to such a knife. This has always nonplussed me as to why they picked up a knife that didn't fit what they said killed her.

 

[acbytesla]

Firstly, I can say with almost total certainty that the PAYG handset used by Lumumba in November 2007 would not have had embedded GPS.
Secondly, as you rightly say, GPS is not a 2-way service: the GPS system is incapable of pinpointing any given GPS receiver, just as a TV satellite cannot tell who is watching TV via its service.

However, if GPS embedded within a phone transmits its known GPS position to any third parties (for example, restaurant finders), then the GPS-generated location information can become useful via this sort of feedback loop. But that's moot because Lumumba's phone almost certainly wouldn't have been GPS-enabled.

And if it was a standard GSM "dumbphone" (as it almost certainly was), then the only location information that could be gleaned would be in reference to the handset's connectivity to certain nearby base stations. The best that could possibly be done would be software-based triangulation (analysing the relative proximity of the handset to three or more nearby base stations by measuring the relative signal strengths). But this would only be accurate to within hundreds of metres. At worst, one could only gauge location from knowing which particular base station was coupled to the handset,and then calculating the geographic area in which handsets would couple with this particular base station. This would only be a very blunt tool for estimating location, with a margin of error of up to a mile.

You're right, I just looked at some articles and GPS chipsets were being added to CDMA phones but not really to GSM phones in 2007. There was a FCC mandate to add them to phones sold in North America. This was not true in Europe.

"In Europe the regulatory push is less important because E-112 (the European Union’s counterpart to E-911) is a soft mandate, and governments are letting operators decide the best way to implement emergency calling. The competitive factor is also less critical due to the absence of CDMA."

"Handset Manufacturers. If they want to implement GPS in advanced GSM handsets by 2007, then handset manufacturers now need to be evaluating price, performance, and form factor of the wares from the different chipset vendors."

Operators. GSM operators need to ensure that their handset partners plan to include GPS functionality in some of their advanced tier handsets.

Considering it can take close to a year to design and test a new function such as GPS in a mobile phone, operators should be in their final stages of discussions on GPS hardware architecture, performance parameters such as time-to-first-fix (TTFF), RF sensitivity when stationary and when in motion, and the chipset power consumption. They should also be performing trade-off analyses of GPS chipset architecture versus cost.

 

[Grinder]

Well, if they used mafia style (whatever the heck that is) her message should have said: cool, thanks. Goodnight!

I have reported a certain person for naming a disease after me, a very Commonwealth sort of thing: the German Measles, the Spanish Flu etc.

Mach tore BW a new one when BW said Mach had called Amanda's word code when in fact he maintained he had said style. Never get those 5 seconds back.

I repeat that I appreciate these efforts to answer my JREF long question: What did they know was correct?

With that in mind, I think her saying "see you later, good night" is equivalent to "cool, thanks".

The fact that the police would interpret her response that way doesn't hurt your main points.

I do think this exercise is one of the most important to get to the bottom of what really happened.

 

[Grinder]

A reverse lookup. If the Sim is registered to a specific user, that is easy. If it is a disposable phone where the customer bought the sim or phone and minutes with cash.....NOTHING.

That's here. We don't have to register with ID at most hotels and the hotels don't report it to the authorities. How did they find Raf in Austria?

I would bet that they can track calls to their owners without calling other numbers.

 

[acbytesla]

I'm not sure there wouldn't have been enough without leaving off the "good night" or not but I found this interesting:

Regarding the elements against SOLLECITO, there are numerous incongruities verified in his first declarations in respect to his latest and the fact that, from preliminary observations, the shoe print of the shoe worn by SOLLECITO appears compatible in form with that found at the scene of the crime. Furthermore, the fact that KNOX declares to not remember what happened between the scream of the victim and her reawakening in the morning in Sollecito's bed who, furthermore, was found to have in his possession a pocket knife that could in the abstract be compatible, in type and dimensions (full length 18cm, of which 8.5cm being the blade), with the object that produced the most severe wound in the neck of the victim.
​

They on one hand say that Amanda lied because Raf said she left, but on the other hand they had him at the scene. Did it ever cross their mind that Amanda was one asleep and Raf snuck out.

This has the description of the knife that appeared in the tabs after the murder. a pen knife. Note that they attribute the most severe wound to such a knife. This has always nonplussed me as to why they picked up a knife that didn't fit what they said killed her.

I of course think that the cooking knife is absurd. There is no way in hell that knife had anything to do with this murder. My bet is that all of Meredith's wounds were the result of a something like one Raffaele's knives. I also don't think he or is knives were involved in any way.

And just because they didn't find any DNA or blood on those knives, that wouldn't have proved that one of them wasn't the knife that killed Meredith.

But this all of course flips the burden of proof all around, making the defendant responsible for proving his innocence instead of the police proving their guilt.

 

[LondonJohn]

As a small point of interest (and to correct ignorance/bias among certain pro-guilt commentators:

The Knox "documentary" on BBC Three yesterday apparently got 700,000 viewers (according to the "overnights" - the official BARB figures will not come in for another week or so). This corresponds to a 3% market share. That, by the way, is the share of people who are actually watching TV at that time. So 97% of people watching TV in the UK at 9pm yesterday were watching something else.......

Another interesting factor is the alleged market share "blip" that the programme might have caused. The Hollywood reporter article that is seemingly the only current source of viewing figures and market share (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/amanda-knox-special-bbc-draws-681028) makes a significant error when it makes reference to BBC Three's normal average share for 9pm on a Tuesday night - the Knox "documentary" was broadcast at 9pm on Monday night.

But even if one assumes that this was a writing error, and that it's BBC Three's Monday 9pm market share that is typically 2%, then a reasonable, sceptical person ought to be careful when comparing that share with the 3% share that the Knox programme apparently got. What a reasonable, sceptical person would do would be to examine the types of programme that BBC Three has put out in this time slot in recent weeks. And a reasonable, sceptical person would discover that this Monday 9pm-10pm slot has recently been filled with repeat runs of a stand-up comedy show called "Live At The Apollo" - shows which were first shown (and subsequently repeated once already) on BBC One.

A reasonable, sceptical person would take this rather significant factor into account before considering the 50% rise in audience share. A biassed, ignorant person would probably not bother to consider this context, and might instead crow about the "success" of the Knox programme. Just sayin'..........

 

[Grinder]

I am pretty confident that a primary source for this information exists somewhere, and that I have seen it. Certainly this commentary from The Machine would tend to support my level of confidence.

I remember this from way, way back. I'm sure it was reported.

 

[acbytesla]

That's here. We don't have to register with ID at most hotels and the hotels don't report it to the authorities. How did they find Raf in Austria?

Every time I've ever registered at a hotel, I've had to show ID, either a credit card or cash and a driver's licence.

I would bet that they can track calls to their owners without calling other numbers.

Not if it is a disposable cash phone.

 

[Grinder]

This is from Candace Dempseys book. It's a transcript of a telephone call between RS and AK. It refers to Le Chic. It is an instance of intelligence pointing to her workplace and evidences the fact she was being closely monitored.

Hey I think you tried to take a yacht from me saying that the cops didn't know this before the interrogation.

Actually I think I couldn't believe that in all the interviews Patrick's name never came up as in her employer.

What did they talk to her about for all those hours?

 

[Grinder]

huh?? I'm just saying that even in Europe, cell phone companies have records of who pays the bills.

I'm saying that the police could look at Amanda's call records and find numbers associated with her and easily ID the owners of the phone. It did not seem you believe that was true at the time.

 

[acbytesla]

I'm saying that the police could look at Amanda's call records and find numbers associated with her and easily ID the owners of the phone. It did not seem you believe that was true at the time.

Not if Patrick's phone was a disposable phone..a cash phone. Then it would only be a number in the database.

 

[LondonJohn]

I'm saying that the police could look at Amanda's call records and find numbers associated with her and easily ID the owners of the phone. It did not seem you believe that was true at the time.

This would not be possible in a PAYG environment where pre-paid SIM cards could be bought over the counter for cash.

In the UK, for example, it is utterly impossible for anybody - whether the police or the mobile operators - to discover the identity of someone who has bought a pre-paid SIM card using cash, even if they know the mobile number (or, for that matter the SIM number or even the IMSI number).

But...... a relevant factor for Italy is that there is now anti-terrorism legislation in place there that mandates the registration of all SIMs (whether contract or PAYG) using official identification. I do not currently know whether this legislation was in place in 2007 (and/or if Lumumba's initial purchase of his PAYG SIMs predated any legislation).

If Lumumba's SIMs were subject to such registration in 2007, then the police would have been able to discover his identity and name simply by knowing his mobile number. However, I'd even caveat that by suggesting that even since this legislation was introduced, there are very likely plenty of black-market work-arounds whereby people can get working SIMs without having to register. For example, I've read industry reports that claim that plenty of mobile operators where such registration is mandatory (e.g. Greece and Italy) turn a blind eye to unregistered SIMs but simply omit them from their official subscriber figures.

 

[LondonJohn]

ETA:

Regulatory measures can also impact the proportion of prepaid and postpaid subscribers
in certain European countries. SIM registration programmes to combat fraudulent activity
have been introduced in several European countries. As a result of these programmes,
unregistered SIM cards (that are most likely prepaid) are removed from operators’ reported figures, usually decreasing the proportion of prepaid subscribers in the country. This was the case in Greece, where the mandatory SIM registration programme introduced in late 2009 resulted in an 8% decline in the proportion of prepaid subscribers from 2009 to 2011.

http://www.gsma.com/publicpolicy/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/emofullwebfinal.pdf