Cellular disruption in Afghanistan brought to you by the Taliban

The terrorists are at it again threatening to manually (a.k.a. things that go boom in the night) disrupt cellular service if all 4 cellular providers in Afghanistan don’t start shutting down their networks at night. Their reasoning? They believe that occupying forces are using the networks to track members of the Taliban.

Chances are they are right; it’s quite easy to track people by their cell phones thanks to the large numbers of towers that are required for even remotely decent coverage triangulation is quite easy. Cell phones not only transmit to these towers when they are in use, but all the time, for some phones, even when they are turned off.

So, instead of removing the battery and calling it quits, the Taliban is threatening the cellular networks, even though they themselves primarily use cell phones for communication. So much logic is lost here, like the thought that they aren’t tracking you by cell phone during the day too.

[via gearlog]