[e-privacy] [nospam at inhouse.com: FBI Activates Cell Phones Remotely For

[Nomen Nescio]

----- Forwarded message from J Coffey <nospam at inhouse.com> -----

From: J Coffey <nospam at inhouse.com>
Subject: FBI Activates Cell Phones Remotely For Wiretapping
Date: Fri, 08 Dec 2006 00:22:31 -0600
Reply-To: nospam at inhouse.com
X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 2.0/32.652

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. 

http://dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=5184

----- End forwarded message -----