Contact Detection Project

Guys,
Hope you all are safe and sound.
I am working on a contact detection project. I need to know is there a way outside the network (i.e: for third party, not the network personnel) to detect how many handsets are near to a particular mobile handset?

Apps like Tutela could do that, but probably the don’t since this is a major privacy violation.

Singapour did something using bluetooth.

It’s actually a project to detect if the Corona virus patient is properly isolating himself or not.

From what I understood, each mobile will broadcast an ID (maybe the MAC), then your mobile will record each MAC it detected.

But in COVID times maybe it would be neglectable.

It’s done with the permission of the government.

Then the gov holds the mac of infected users only.

It’s a project funded by the government in order to ensure if patients are properly isolating or not. And if not, who are the potential next patients and carriers.

Then your mobile connected to the db of the gov and will check if any of the mac it detected today are in the list of the gov.
If match is found, it notifies you.

Lots of apps could deploy new modules to allow it.
They already have latitude, longitude, serving, measured and detected cells.
It is all about building the data into real info.

Could you please explain how Tutela could help in this case?

You can pretty much monitor a UE on real time, as long as it is connected to something.

I’m not saying Tutela does that already, but you already have the information available in the database.

Since the distance threshold is only six feet.

You just need to build a new algo to monitor the UE, instead of only showing dots in a map like that.

But we need to know which handsets are near to a given handset?

Then it becomes much more complex. This level of precision you would need combined solutions, like GPS and Bluetooth and NFC.

You can get some info with these apps, maybe even IMSI.

That’s why I am asking, if the handsets transmit something in UL on a regular basis? Which could be detected by some antenna or spectrum analyser.

With the right configuration, you can send heartbeats on DL from the servers into the UE.
It will force an ACK on UL.