FBI Activates Cell Phones Remotely for Wiretapping

[Hairbautt]

They can see us, read our emails, watch our IM conversations, and now even hear us whether we want them to or not

It seems as though George Orwell hit it the bullseye again when he wrote about Big Brother and the government's way of keeping track of the general public. It has been recently revealed that the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation has a way of tapping a cell phone and using the microphone to listen in on nearby conversations.

The method used for listening in on conversations held by alleged members of Cosa Nostra is called a "roving bug" and was ruled to be a legal method of wiretapping by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan. The bug was alledgedly used on two Nextel phones. It looks like all cellular phones are vulnerable to this sort of wiretapping according to CNet's findings:

The U.S. Commerce Department's security office warns that "a cellular telephone can be turned into a microphone and transmitter for the purpose of listening to conversations in the vicinity of the phone." An article in the Financial Times last year said mobile providers can "remotely install a piece of software on to any handset, without the owner's knowledge, which will activate the microphone even when its owner is not making a call."

Kaplan further added that the functionality of the roving bug was in place even when the phone was powered off -- or at least when the phone looked to be powered off. One possible method that the FBI used to tap into the two Nextel phones is by getting the network to install a rogue firmware update which gave the agency access to such features.

Such capability has long been rumored to exist in Motorola phones after it was discovered how the 9/11 terrorists used cellular phones to coordinate most of their activities.

Still there are some skeptics who believe that this method does not exist and that the FBI had to have physically planted a bug into the cellular phone to monitor conversations. But with the recent boom of PDA phones and devices that support custom software it was only a matter of time before hackers, or the government found a way to exploit similar features.

Source: http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=5184
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Future abuse of power, anyone? It's just scarey what they can do...

[tesco]

I always knew they could or would be able to do this some day...

[Virtualbody1234]

I don't believe it.

I can remember there was a similar hoax about regular home phones. They were saying that they could hear everything you said even when the receiver was "on the hook". It was shown to be untrue because the microphone gets disconnected when you hang up the phone.

[peat moss]

Who gives a rats ass , I've nothing to hide anyway .

[Hairbautt]

Who gives a rats ass , I've nothing to hide anyway .

Really, I doubt they'd listen to me too unless they really cared about some of the dirt on my family, schoolin', or my inability to remember to wear a condom at times, but look at the bigger picture at what they can do...

Example: Elections for political office. Care to grab the dirt off Congressmen John Doe to discredit him?

[Melvinmeow]

Anyone can hear what your saying on the phone anyways. Hook a simple ant. up to your laptop and go sit out on a bridge with a special peice of software. You punch in their special digits into your phone that you retreive through the laptop and you can even make calls on YOUR phone using their celullar provider and minutes.

[gamer4eva]

Bending the rules to their own advantage. The stupid f**ks!!!!!

Although if they listen in on my conversations it will most likely be about school work which their puny minds could not comprehend.

[frizshizzle]

It's not really democracy if they have this much power?

[straightjacket]

To modify a quote from former US President Gerald Ford: "Technology big enough to give you everything you want is technology big enough to take from you everything you have."

[ram82082]

if they're releasin this info..... and statin they used it on the mob, then its old tech(4 them). since 9/11, i think there are only like 100 feds left in the organized crimes unit. it doesnt surprise me that can turn a celly into a bug wit sum hackin/software i mean they can c ur face wit a satt.

dont really care though, but its a good point about the politicians