Can mobile phone pings help investigators in the Madeleine McCann case?

[pegasus]

... Or that someone out of these 8 people had their phone pinging from near OC and then SUDDENLY ( means impossible to do the distance on foot) their phone pinged near the Smiths sighting. This is possible to establish if the OC and the Smiths sighting area are served by different phone towers.
The police would by now know through the phone records if something like this is possible.  We cannot possibly know it because we don't have these phone records.

I think you are overestimating the ability of the current investigation to define a phones location to this accuracy within the town of PDL in 2007..
Yes I am aware of the great value of triangulation as used in other cases (including that case in Cambridgeshire).
However here in this PDL case:
1. The original 2007 cellphone analysis was headed by a British phone forensics expert provided via the Met.
2. In the 2007 cellphone analysis I have read every file and there is absolutely no use of triangulation (the comparision of signal strength received simultaneously at two or more towers from a single phone transmission).
3. Therefore the current investigation working from the same data used in 2007 is unlikely to be able to do  triangulation as defined above, and I think unable to pinpoint a phone to anything better than something like "phone was in or near PDL".


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[VIXTE]

I think you are overestimating the ability of the current investigation to define a phones location to this accuracy within the town of PDL in 2007..

I am not overestimating. I researched for a number of towers serving PDL in 2007 and they are at least 2.
We don't know where in PDL these two towers are based but they can record movements between them.
OC and Smitsh sighting areas are not very close so it is possible that these two places are served by different towers.
Not only that but I believe that SY have a sophisticated software which can even if these areas are not served by two towers calculate more precisely the location and movements of some people.
Why I am saying this is because I have some experience exploring this sort of data plus I know of at least 3 cases where this kind of information lead to an arrest.
For example:
A girl meets a guy on internet. She has 2 mobile phones. She leaves her country without telling anyone and arrives to London, UK to meet the guy. Soon he holds her prisoner, she tried using her phone and told her parents what happened but during this action the captor takes her phone and switches it off. The captor doesn't know she has a second phone on her but her parents know it. The police arrives to the door of this little apartment, apparently they 'found' the exact place of the signal of her second phone. This happened last year and it is a friend of a friend's daughter I am talking about.
The second  case is the one I keep mentioning.. Joanna Yeates case. Her murderer changed towers while crossing a bridge in Bristol. Bristol is a small town but it happens that the two areas were served by different towers. His phone was there and he was not aware of the changing towers fact.
Etc etc
I know the principles of data exploration and analysis,  I know how much they can stretch the info coming from the large amounts of data like the phone data,  I used to work on a similar data for 6 years.. this is why I believe they can explore this data very well and it can give them great clues.

Oh I wish I had it too.. I would work on it day and night 

[VIXTE]

What you are talking about is analysis of small amount of data in back in 2007.  I think the amount the SY worked on during the last year and this year is much much larger and the areas of their new statistics are much wider.

We wait and see.. I am really waiting for the results of the new phone data investigation with keen interest. I've got a feeling it is going to produce a breakthrough..

[pegasus]

@vixte: here is one of the cellphone towers it is up on the big hill zoom out to see location relative to town.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@37.0912412,-8.7168461,40m/data=!3m1!1e3
To understand what the UK top phone expert did in 2007 for Mr Amaral, and what SY can do in 2013 with the same data, you need to know stuff like where towers are, which UK providers roam on which which combinations of portuguese providers, whether passive ping data is available, and whether multiple cell signal strengths data is available for those passive pings.

[slartibartfast]

@vixte: here is one of the cellphone towers it is up on the big hill zoom out to see location relative to town.
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@37.0912412,-8.7168461,40m/data=!3m1!1e3
To understand what the UK top phone expert did in 2007 for Mr Amaral, and what SY can do in 2013 with the same data, you need to know stuff like where towers are, which UK providers roam on which which combinations of portuguese providers, whether passive ping data is available, and whether multiple cell signal strengths data is available for those passive pings.

I agree, and if the data didn't exist in 2007 it won't exist now.

[VIXTE]

Back in 2007 the data wasn't investigated very precisely.. I think the BBC reported on this.. I will try to find the link.

Another thing, which I know by chance is that the mobile phone companies charge a huge amounts for each persons phone calls.  They do have a duty to keep the data but providing it to the police is charged in gold dust so probably back in 2007 not all of the data was acquired.

[VIXTE]

According to Scotland Yard, the phone records had been "looked at" during the initial Portuguese police investigation but not in detail.

"This is not just a general trawl," said Det Ch Insp Redwood.

"It's a targeted attack on that data to see if it assists us to find out what happened to Madeleine McCann at that time."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24386130

[jassi]

Back in 2007 the data wasn't investigated very precisely.. I think the BBC reported on this.. I will try to find the link.

Another thing, which I know by chance is that the mobile phone companies charge a huge amounts for each persons phone calls.  They do have a duty to keep the data but providing it to the police is charged in gold dust so probably back in 2007 not all of the data was acquired.

So that's where all the millions are being spent. I did wonder.

[VIXTE]

So that's where all the millions are being spent. I did wonder.

Probably.. not to mention the translation of files fees the portuguese charge.. they charged the McCanns 100.000 pounds for the translation!

[slartibartfast]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24386130

...see

...a user's location can be identified to within a few hundred metres using triangulation techniques.

This is even less accurate with only 2 towers.

[Eleanor]

...see

This is even less accurate with only 2 towers.

I think you might be right about that.  But this wouldn't explain multiple pings or conversations between people who had no reason to be there in PdL on that night.  Unless they can explain.

[slartibartfast]

I think you might be right about that.  But this wouldn't explain multiple pings or conversations between people who had no reason to be there in PdL on that night.  Unless they can explain.

But how can you discount explanations such as "Went to the pub", "Had a walk on the beach" etc. it is supposed to be a pretty holiday resort?

[jassi]

I think you might be right about that.  But this wouldn't explain multiple pings or conversations between people who had no reason to be there in PdL on that night. Unless they can explain.

Its a free country and people are free to go where they please without explanation.

[Eleanor]

But how can you discount explanations such as "Went to the pub", "Had a walk on the beach" etc. it is supposed to be a pretty holiday resort?

I think, although I could be wrong, that these were local people from villages nearby.  So why would they want to be phoning each other if they were in the same place for innocuous reasons.  Why not meet up for a pint?

[slartibartfast]

Its a free country and people are free to go where they please without explanation.

I agree. If they make them arguidos they can just refuse to answer anyway.