Spying Technology

Spying Technology, Part 2: Your Cell Phone

 

The previous post focused on police and the government spying on your internet use. This post will focus on them too because they are the ultimate, uber, covert, master-ninja spies with infinite money to invest in the latest technology.

For international calls, cell phones use communication satellites to send data between each other. The downlink from the satellites is forwarded through ground stations nearest your cell phone (where local calls forward through). Yup, there are huge supercomputer headquarters collecting and monitoring all your cell phone usage on cellular ground stations. This action is called “Signals intelligence”, or SIGINT. The US government, and 4 other allied nations worldwide, collectively uses a program called ECHELON to do all its spying work.

ECHELON, operated by the NSA, is the king of all spying activity. It is essentially operated the same as NarusInsight, but with more capabilities in wireless cell phone use. They can and do listen to any wireless signal. This secretive program is just now being recognized by businesses and entities worldwide. They use it for military, for political, and for any use they deem worthy, and they’re pretty secretive about it too. I won’t even begin to explain what they can do with this technology (Read this article). Just Google it. Keep reading:

Now knowing this information, say you wanted more privacy and you don’t want anyone else listening to your cell phone conversations and text messages… So you say “let’s meet up and not talk on the phone”.  Yes, the FBI can listen to your conversation in real life, without you knowing, whenever they want. Quoted from a news article on ZDNet:

“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.”” (Read the whole article here)

This spy technology is called a “roving bug” and will function EVEN IF YOUR CELL PHONE IS OFF.