I wanted to pass on some information that I obtained yesterday concerning Cricket and their ability to assist during Amber Alerts, or other emergency situations. As you will see their ability to help seems to be at a much lower level that of the other major carriers.
Cricket does not have the ability to provide a real time geolocation for their handsets. The best they can do is advise you of the tower and sector the handset is communicating with. They do not provide any advanced ranging data such a PCMD/Sprint or RTT/Verizon. ( CDR’s cost $65.00 )
Two different analysts advised me that in an exigent situation they would provide one time (maybe twice) location information and that law enforcement would need to call the handset. “This will only work if the handset is on and they claim an SMS message will not generate location information.”Beyond that, even though you may have an exigent situation, Cricket suggests that you go up on a pen register. The pen register will cost $235.00 and that will cover the entire time the Court Order is active.
Seeing how everyone doesn’t have access to the equipment to go up on a pen I would highly suggest you contact a department that does or the U.S. Marshall’s. In an Emergency they can get their ESU guys up and running, but at some point a Court Order will be needed. If you ask you may be able to obtain a boiler plate Court Order from them that you could type up in a hurry and get to a Judge.
Just something to think about before the situation presents itself.