FBI Cell Phone Spying
If you own a cell phone, The FBI can listen to everything you say, even when your cell phone is turned off.
Take a minute and let the paranoid side of your brain run wild with that…
Imagine it’s late Tuesday night, you toss your cell phone on the nightstand, meet your spouse in bed, and all your intimate actions, discussions, conversations of past sins and future dreams — they’re all performed on a potential open-mic stage in front of the world.
Cell Phones as Bugging Devices
Most cell phone users find it hard to believe they’re carrying around a potential bugging device. But it’s true, and it’s been very public knowledge for several years.
Just as people fail to comprehend or acknowledge the existence of the Echelon spy system that is currently using voice recognition capabilities to filter billions of electronic communications around the world, people also tend to bury their heads in the sand when it comes to cell phone spying.
John Ardito, high-ranking member of the Genovese crime family, knows what that ignorance can get you…
FBI Cell Phone Bugs Used Against the Mob
After the Genovese crime family discovered they were being monitored by conventional bugs, they conducted business elsewhere.
But, as court testimony revealed, the FBI simply turned on John Ardito’s cell phone from a remote location. Without his knowledge, the FBI used Ardito’s cell phone microphone as a listening device, even when his phone was turned off.
ABC News reported the story about FBI cell phone spying:
“The FBI can access cell phones and modify them remotely without ever having to physically handle them,” James Atkinson, a counterintelligence security consultant, told ABC News. “Any recently manufactured cell phone has a built-in tracking device, which can allow eavesdroppers to pinpoint someone’s location to within just a few feet,” he added.
According to the recent court ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Lewis Kaplan, “The device functioned whether the phone was powered on or off, intercepting conversations within its range wherever it happened to be.”
Now, bear in mind: if an FBI agent can do this, there’s almost certainly a mischievous kid down the street who can do it better…
Fircrest Cell Phone Terrorism
Three families in Fircrest, Washington, have recently validated that truth. For four months, they’ve been harassed and threatened by cell phone stalkers who seem to know their every move and leave menacing voice-mails.
What’s more, some of the messages contain recorded snippets of private conversations that occurred when all cell phones in the area were turned off. The pranksters even sent messages that appeared to originate from cell phones that weren’t in use at the time of the message.
Cell Phones as Tracking Devices
Even if somebody in incapable of hijacking your cell phone microphone, it’s easy to track your cell phone’s whereabouts to within 50 meters.
Just enter the cell phone number at a site like World Tracker. The first time you try to track a phone, a reply from the phone is necessary to enable the tracking, but this is easily hacked around…especially if you supplied the phone to your spouse, child, or employee.
Laser Microphones
If cell phone bugging hasn’t tickled your paranoid neural networks yet, maybe laser microphones will.
Unlike a cell phone, a laser microphone is a very expensive and highly technical piece of equipment to operate.
In simple terms, a laser beam is bounced off a window (or any other object that sound waves will cause to vibrate, however minutely…a picture on a wall, for example…) Electronics are used to convert the minute variances in the laser beam back into sound waves, thus reproducing the sound, voices, and conversations taking place nearby.
As demonstrated by the Apollo 11 Lunar Laser experiment, lasers can be used from a point hundreds of thousands of miles away, so if you really need to talk in private, turn up the AC/DC, draw the curtains, and whisper.
Read More: cell phones, fbi, spying, eavesdropping, Echelon, laser microphones, Genovese, Fircrest
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I remember when the Soviets were reading the vibrations from the glass windows in the Whitehouse to learn what we were up to. I believe this was in Nixon’s time, but could have been earlier.
I’m sorry to say, if anyone is tapping my cell phone, I’m putting them to sleep.
But I think the FBI HAS planted a “sleep switch” in my butt, since everytime I sit down…to eat or watch TV, I fall asleep.
I hope there is a revolution happening somewhere…
Hahaha…I think the FBI has put a sleep switch in a lot of people’s butts. The spooks seem to go trigger happy with the technology right after lunchtime down here. A couple cups of coffee seems to disarm it, though ;-)
Is our life improving or going backwards as every week a new gadget comes out that we can’t live without? For the pleasure of instant gratification we leave ourselves wide open to all the predators that are out there.
Life was so much more pleasant when we weren’t connected to all of these electronic toys.
When I watched all those science fiction movies way back when, I never realized that big brother could really come into our lives as it has. A sad commentary on our times.
Pelmo: Some self-help book I read waaaay back when said something that has stuck with me: every possession takes energy to maintain. If you have an extra car, you have another vehicle to wash, and have to spend more time to make more money to pay the insurance and change the oil. Same thing with all the gadgets…every cell phone, computer, camera, DVD player…needs more space to store the stuff, and requires time to maintain it or to make money to pay for the space to maintain it. Of course some of this stuff saves you time and it’s fun to use, but it’s interesting looking at all your “stuff,” even the little stuff, in this light and figuring up exactly how much of your time and money goes into maintaining it.
Very well put. All those add on contraptions do cost a lot and take a lot of our time. But the worse thing is after you bought one, you begin to ask yourself why did I just buy it?
But that story of the family being stalked thru their cell phones is pretty scarey in how technology can be turned to evil.
Welcome to my nightmare. Welcome to the machine. Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends. Our lives are now on permanent display. I agree: run interference with loud music. Provide some entertainment to those poor government lackeys whose job it is to listen in on all our boring banter.
Hi Joe!
Thank you for the great article!
I love your blog and have added it to my blogroll and hope that you will reciprocate. :)
Punditman: I think that’s the answer, to provide whoever’s listening with as much disinformation as the machine swamps us with ;-) Need to start carrying one of those pocket random number generators around to make minor decisions with, take different routes home everyday, make lots of “wrong number” phone calls, visit Neocon websites (ouch! that may be too tough to do…)
Suzie-Q: Added your link to my blogroll, too. Looking forward to dropping by!
Thank you JoeC! :)
The summer before I was drafted, I worked in the vineyards laying irrigation pipe for new vineyards. We’d see the light green immigration vans cruising around looking for illegals. Then we noticed there was also a immigration plane that flew overhead. Once we saw that, everytime we saw the plane. we’d run like mad and dive into a ditch and pretend we were hiding. Wasn’t long before immigration guys would show us and ask us if we’d seen any illegals around. Of course we sent them on wild goose chases….and waited for the plane to fly over again.
Just saying, there are probably new ways to gum up the works and slow things down, in the hope things will get a closer look.
I’ll stop there this morning since I feel kind of on edge this morning. You know…could tip either way. Madness or genius.
Buttswitches is a bridge too far.
Time for a revolution.
Don’t you know that you can count me out…In…