By Marty Feuerstein

Imagine a group of criminals embarking on a crime spree throughout a city. Using mobile phones, they coordinate their actions from miles away, sharing information to evade law enforcement agencies (LEA) and map out an escape route. But there's a twist. The LEAs are well-coordinated as well, quickly securing a warrant to tap into the criminals' wireless communications. In addition to listening in on their conversations and data transmissions by intercepting them, the law enforcement agency is able to precisely pinpoint the locations of the handsets sending and receiving the transmissions, letting the agents swoop in and capture the dumbfounded criminals.

It may seem like a plot twist in the latest spy novel or futuristic technology in a science-fiction movie, but Lawful Intercept (LI), a solution that allows law enforcement agencies to track wireless communications, can now pinpoint the locations of handsets to within tens of meters, allowing them to better coordinate a swift response to crisis situations and make it more likely they save lives and bring criminals to justice.

LI’s solutions incorporating accurate location information can help law enforcement agencies track a handset's activity over a set period of time and trace its movement like a virtual "bread-crumb trail"; set up an electronic geo-fence around a geographic area where movements are analyzed in and around the vicinity; and track the accurate location of handsets on a large scale for many subscribers, if permitted by law, on a mobile network.

These lawful intercept applications can collect location information for use in criminal investigations and anti-terrorism measures, depending on local laws. The technology centers around using solutions that were originally intended to locate people who needed help (E911) or were targeting

law enforcement agencies, we can use as an example the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India, where a group of well-armed terrorists carried out a series of highly-coordinated raids on targets across the city. One incident took place at the Taj Mahal Hotel where two gunmen -- using mobile devices to communicate -- were holed up for several days with hundreds of hostages. If Mumbai law enforcement agencies had highly-accurate LI location solutions in place, they could potentially have used the location information to coordinate a swift response that might have saved lives sooner.

Shortly after reports of gunfire and explosions, the authorities could have used an LI location