cellphone identification

Is it possible to identify someone via their cellphone just through the signal?

I'm not talking bluetooth or anything like that. I mean just looking at the normal network traffic of a phone. Or is this encrypted and unreadable?

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the provider could easily tell who it is, but as far as trying to "scan" someones phone to find out you would need a lot of info to begin with like provider phone model be within range with the right kind of equiptment to even hear the phone convoseration.

so to answer your question yes it would be possible but if you have the info to do it you would already know who it is so it would not be very practical

Well no I don't want to listen in to a conversation. I want to identify a user based on their telephone hardware id (which I assume exists ... perhaps not). It would be completely sufficient to require the user to first "create an account" and be identified. Then on recurrent visits I'd know "this cellphone has id xxxxxxx" which is Joe Smith.

The user doesn't ever touch their phone ... I just sniff the radio signal which provides the id.

With google's help it appears Cellphones transmit an electronic serial number (esn) when the phone is turned on. GSM only transmits this 1 time then uses a temporary one, thereby protecting the esn from malicious users.