Ive trouble doing this though. Perhaps Im just an impatient guy when it comes to police procedural shows but one episode on CSI came across as gut-wrenchingly sloppy. It showed a low-level programmer realigning a satellite from his laptop without any assistance from any other agency. I nearly fell out of my chair. It takes an insane amount of teamwork and coordination between other agencies to do something of that technical caliber.
Mobile phone tracing does require more resources than a landline since a cell phone number is not connected to a single switch. But it isnt impossible for a mobile phone provider to locate which towers the phone used or what region the call was made. One way of doing it is by comparing signal strength and then correlating that with the antenna that held your signal. If youve got an unencrypted non-burner phone, the GPS chip inside will give up your location to any who are in possession of it.
I bet youre wondering how come you cant trace a mobile phone like your cell phone company can.
The reason is the same reason that you cant identify individuals by IP address alone. Only the telephone company knows because they have the logs. They own the equipment. They have easy access. Even police need a subpoena to get subscriber access from a VPN, (or virtual private network). They cant hack the system for one individual without risking their job (or political career). Well, the NSA can I suppose, only thats a whole other enchilada. But for the internet itself no node within it is any more special than any of the others since it uses the same band.
