FBI taps turned-off cellphones (aka "roving bug").

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ManedWolf,

Wake-On-LAN is, by necessity, a hardware function. It's not as if Windows is running when the signal is received. And yes, there is WOL functionality for the Mac.
 
If all this technology makes this possible you have to remember:

1. They have to get a warrant to effect the communication. These aren't handed out as easily as some people think.
2. They have to provide probable cause to get the warrant.
3. To have probable cause you have to be doing something wrong.
4. Even if they get the warrant, they can't just sit and monitor your all your conversation. They must minimize non-pertinent intercepts. Thye can only monitor when you are talking about a crime.

I see no 4A issues with this
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1. No warrant simply means it can not be used taken this way in a criminal proceeding by certain named official agencies within jurisdiction.

This and the remaining 2., 3. and 4. are of no concern to a foreign intelligence or police agency - or other group or individual - who may do what they please. And pass it on to whom they please.

Information is power. This kind of thing can be collected by a foreign agency or individual (crook, corporate, both or otherwise), which could then be passed onto a police agency. Such as the FBI, as a "tip"; those wonderful "confidential informants", often known criminals - who make a living that way at public expense. Other things come to mind like simple blackmail and extortion.

And their is nothing stopping our own NSA and CIA from collecting it and filing it away.

Welcome to corporate gov - that has a way to do anything it pleases. One way or the other.

------------------------------------------

http://ussliberty.org
http://ssunitedstates.org
 
I think I would be more surprised if they did not have this capability. Remember that congress passed a law some time ago forcing the phone companies to make it easier for the feds to tap your phones. No reason that would not have been extended to cell phones.

I would suggest that no conversations are ever secure unless you take extreme precautions to make them so. For instance, it is known that the authorities wiretap conversations between criminal defendants and their lawyers.

If you do not want them knowing what you are up to, don't talk to anyone about anything. Of course, that makes it very hard to accomplish anything.

By the way, they have had the capability to use your home telephone to bug you for many decades in much the same way. This is not much different.

I suggest if it worries you that the best thing you can do is disconnect your land line phone lines physically and unplug your cell phone battery.

It is also likely that they can use your computer against you even easier. Any hacker worth his hacking license could easily create a short program that turns on your PC microphone or camera and broadcasts it out to the Internet. The feds have some of the best hackers working for them.

I would not be all that sure that even highly encrypted messages such as PGP are secure, especially on Windows machines. Microsoft has way too cushy of a relationship with the feds in that area.

OTOH, I am far more worried about garden variety hackers than I am about them.
 
Of course, the real question is, where are the man hours to implement any kind of effective survalence over the entire country? How many cell phones are in country? Add that to regular phones, faxes, and other transmitted conversations such as CB's or radios and you get so much raw data that the entire employed staff at every state, local, and federal agency, including janitors would not be able to keep tab on it all. Already, the NSA cannot reasonably keep track of foreign signals, most of it is stored but without any chance of ever being listened to. And for all the teenie boper incoherent texting and jabbering, there is no way to search all communications in a broad net, nor is it even time/labor/cost effective. Frankly, it isn't worth "their" time. The ability to do a thing does not make it reasonably realistic. Some other kind of sorting to focus on certain signes must be made.

If "they" have decided to focus on you, then you are worth their time. Now, I am very pro 4th Ammendment. And, without a warrant, any info they hear cannot be used against you. In any case, you have been doing something to draw their attention (and filling out the white "yellow" form isn't one of them).

But then, I spend my life with a death sentance on my head. You see, I am a member of the Lions Club, specifically targed by Hamas for death. As I am on the black list, I might expect Yusef to rig my Jeep for a nasty exothermic reaction any time now. Of course, I am but one of several million Lion's in the world, so I'm probably okay.

Don't get me wrong. I am ardently against cameras on street corners, I do have some private-transfer firearms (fully legal) that are "off paper" to my address just because "they" don't get to know about all of my transactions. But I don't lose sleep that "they" might be listening in on converstations with my cell phone. If "they" want to hear what I say at the gunshop (heh, one of the dealers I use refuses to use Social Security numbers on his white "yellow" sheets because it is illegal to use SSN's for ID) then fine by me.

But, I got news for you, anything you post here is much easier to gather than a conversation on a cell phone. How hard is it, do you figure, for them to determine the names of those on this board who post anonymous screen names here? That I post my opinions so freely here indicates the level of my concern.

Ash
 
Ash, every phone-call e-mail and conversation through electronic media is monitored and screened. No humans could do that? That's why they use computers. They program them with advanced advanced algorithms, so that even if you are only talking about a 'birthday cake' the computer will key thay you really mean something else.

Now put microphones and transmitters EVERYWHERE, what kind of life for a human being is that, always living in fear of saying the wrong thing, or saying nothing wrong but being arrested by mistake?
 
Warrants? Have you read the news any time in the last three years?

The Federal government doesn't have to get warrants for surveillance or wiretapping any more according to the President and Vice President. They have said that FISA doesn't apply to them and that they don't even have to go to a judge afterwards as long as they say it's for national security.
 
Windows with default settings, yes, it can wake-on-network. Inherent flaws.

It's why I have a Mac. Again, caveat emptor. Be an educated consumer and know the flaws of what you do your private business with, or be a victim.
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Wake on Lan isn't a flaw it's a feature built into many network cards, it's not a Windows thing either.

I can make your Mac wake on lan also...
And Linux. And Unix. And just about every other operating system under today's sun.
 
So PGP encryption actually will hinder the Gov't from getting information that you email or transmit?

Also....when will phone companies start selling phones without GPS and also phones that stay off when turned off? There may be a market.

ETA: If you don't want your computer to "wake up" just unplug it.
 
Also....when will phone companies start selling phones without GPS and also phones that stay off when turned off? There may be a market.
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Buy a cellphone made before 2002. Actually...most cellphones made in 2006 don't have GPS if I remember correctly. Also, phones that reactivate is a convenience feature. Cell phone manufacturers don't have this "eavesdropping" in mind when they built the phone. The FBI needs to get the target phone to download some software for it remotely activate like that. Be careful what you download on the internet, computer or cell phone.
 
Buy a cellphone made before 2002. Actually...most cellphones made in 2006 don't have GPS if I remember correctly.
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Dosnt matter, you can still track one within 5 feet by the signal
 
The Federal government doesn't have to get warrants for surveillance or wiretapping any more according to the President and Vice President. They have said that FISA doesn't apply to them and that they don't even have to go to a judge afterwards as long as they say it's for national security.

Warrants are required for normal criminal procedure. You do have to worry about warrantless intercepts if you are calling your Taliban buddies.
 
Forgive me for being a technical idiot, but isn't there a mylar type material sleeve you can put a cellphone into to block signals? The type that you would put your toll-tag into when you are not using? Would that work? maybe there's a market here....

Dan
 
Also many of the newer cell phones have a GPS option as in. Always on. On when 911 is called. Never On.

Personally i dont realy care if they can track me. You cant stop them. Just as poeple who have old receivers can to this day legally listen to all cell phone convertations. They were banned but only for new receivers. Look on the back of a new scanner and it says altering this scanner in any way to listen to cell phones is illegal.
 
Quote:
Buy a cellphone made before 2002. Actually...most cellphones made in 2006 don't have GPS if I remember correctly.

Dosnt matter, you can still track one within 5 feet by the signal.

The phone companies will not activate a phone that does not have the GPS feature. I found that out about 6 months ago.
 
The phone companies will not activate a phone that does not have the GPS feature. I found that out about 6 months ago.
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That situation may have applied to YOUR SPECIFIC CARRIER, but in general, cellphone companies DO NOT require cellphones to have GPS. Older analog phones (which can still work on the 800MHz bands) NEVER had GPS, and still work on those networks.
 
You don't need GPS to locate a cellphone that's on. You can triangulate from the various cellsites in range. Used to be moderately accurate, but is probably as good (or better) than GPS in cities, what with the proliferation of cellsites (vs GPS satellites).

The "listen on diagnostic mode" was very manufacturer-specific. On one of my early Nokias, putting the phone on diagnostic could not be done remotely, but we heard that various agencies were asking manufacturers to change that.

Presumably this is why the disposible phone is so popular in the spy novels these days.
 
Lucky, see the above post. The Infinity machines have been around forever. I remember reading about them in the 1980s.
 
a brief note

"Knowledge is power".
+1

Who is that man that he can listen in on my call, why can't I listen in on his? It is power. And he may listen away for all I care, maybe he'll hear me say, "To H*** with you phone listeners". But here's what I wanted to add;

They don't need the manpower/hours to listen in on all calls. The Echelon system has been working for over a decade and flags/records/catalogs speakers of various dialiects and languages who use certain 'key' words in conversation. It is a computer and can handle massive amounts of communication, and anything in and out of the country. True, I am not doing anything bad now, I shouldn't care what they hear, they can list me all day long, but remember...times change. Politics are fickle, people are gullible.

Imagine a day where gun owners are criminals, and terrorists. Imagine a day when your religion of choice was evil and deserving of a purge from the system, imagine a day when free thinking men disappeared because of their thoughts. Imagine on that day that every word you said had to be carefully guarded in fear of reprisal. Imagine every public place wired in to a supercomputer that flags 'suspects' and potential dissidents, imagine an internet forum serving as a birdcage for all such freaks and weirdos!!!
:neener:

It may not be so far in the distant future, and it is we who give them that power NOW!
 
This is nothing new. Way back in the analog AMPS days (advanced mobile phone service, late 80s early 90s cell phones, before digital phones) phones would be modified to auto-answer. You remove the speaker, and just call it and listen.

Cell phones aren't just radios, they're radios and computers. Some of the stuff that young hackers did with the AMPS phones was impressive (reference CTEK and Oki 900), this sort of thing would be trivial for an entity with the resources of the federal government, particularly since the telecoms are under their regulation.
 
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