> Furthermore, depending on how willing the firmware of your modem is, the signal used to transfer GPS coordinates to the carrier for emergency response situations can also be triggered remotely by carrier hardware.
It should be feasible for an operator to issue a command to the (e)UICC (SIM) in the phone to fetch the current location from the modem and send it back via SMS. At least this was the case for a relatively long time.
Not that it _really_ matters because most people willfully give away their location information to Google anyways. There's a reason why Google has the best Wi-Fi AP -> Location database that they provide commercially. Send them a list of Wi-Fi BSSID's and their associated RSSI's and you'll get a fairly accurate location.
In comparison, using Cell ID's for geolocationing is finicky. In dense urban environments, you're likely looking at ~500 m radius of accuracy - at least based on the commercially available options.
The reason Google has the best Wi-Fi AP location database is because they knowingly violated wiretapping laws, when they rolled out Streetview, and they were only fined a cool 13 million for it.
They were ordered to destroy any data related to the collection from Streetview, and they did it seems, but they may not have deleted any of the data that had already been copied/integrated to other separate services like GiS, where they may have simply just moved that wiretapping to the edge devices to facilitate geo-location similar to how Apple uses Wi-Fi points as landmarks as a plausible (we aren't wiretapping), while still physically mapping based on radio signal, and also indirectly on calls through AI.
The only learned lesson they had seemed to be that you don't make a public-facing API that allows searches of locations based on BSSID, or MAC address to the general public (which is what they had for Streetview).
They have a geolocation API that allows searches of locations based on BSSID's and RSSI's and cell towers. It is "public" but you need to pay <y> $ per <x> requests.
It should be feasible for an operator to issue a command to the (e)UICC (SIM) in the phone to fetch the current location from the modem and send it back via SMS. At least this was the case for a relatively long time.
Not that it _really_ matters because most people willfully give away their location information to Google anyways. There's a reason why Google has the best Wi-Fi AP -> Location database that they provide commercially. Send them a list of Wi-Fi BSSID's and their associated RSSI's and you'll get a fairly accurate location.
In comparison, using Cell ID's for geolocationing is finicky. In dense urban environments, you're likely looking at ~500 m radius of accuracy - at least based on the commercially available options.