Fox News: FBI can listen in on conversations via cell phone -- even when it's turned off.

[Dark]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNLeJP9EskM

[TheWraith]

1. Fox News doesn't know what the fuck they're talking about. nt

[Dark]

2. That's why I listed the source in the title. But still, after the patriot act, Gitmo, etc,

I could believe this.

[anigbrowl]

6. Yeah, I wanna see proof

And it better involve a demonstration. It wouldn't be hard to do with a multimeter.

[merh]

25. you mean like how the cell phones make popcorn pops

[anigbrowl]

27. XD

[Syrinx]

3. I remember reading about a Mafia case like that

It's absolutely true.

[LeftyMom]

33. That was a car equipped with OnStar.

It doesn't shut off really, since it's wired into the car. Totally different thing than a handheld cell phone.

A handheld cell phone does not send out a signal when it is turned off- doing so requires the use of the battery power.

[Syrinx]

35. not according to the ABC article I quoted in reply #20

Obviously, I can't vouch for ABC news, but they wrote that the only way to make a cell phone really "safe" is to remove the battery.

[L. Coyote]

4. They can listen to every cell in a room at once, to overhear those w/o cells.

[Mythsaje]

5. Ah, but can they sort all the information? n/t

[anigbrowl]

7. Yeah, and they can turn invisible and read your dreams and have lasers in their heads too

...since we're making wild assertions with no evidence whatsoever, I thought I'd join in.

[wildflower]

22. But do they have sharks with laser beams attached to their heads?

[Frank Cannon]

38. And Batman can actually see everything happening in a room via cell phone

This thread serves as a reminder to me not to get my science information from Fox News.

[rosesaylavee]

8. Same YouTube user has another interesting

vid - "ILLUMINATI MESSAGES IN THE SIMPSONS MOVIE"

Nice source!

:rofl:

[Dark]

10. That video is stupid. I watched it for the hell of it. But this wasn't his opinion.

It was a (semi) legitimate news source.

[rosesaylavee]

15. Ooooooh yeah?

Well, my friend. Enjoy your stay. If I could, I would show you my super secret masonic hand signal as I sign off.

[alphafemale]

9. And they can make popcorn with them too,

I think they can tell the location of a cell phone when it's turned off, but I sincerely doubt they could use a turned off phone as a listening device.

[Canuckistanian]

16. I once cooked an entire roast using only my iPhone

And I even used it to power my clothes dryer when the power went out one day.

:eyes:

[NoPasaran]

43. That's nothing

The Knights of Malta were sending transmissions to my washing machine to "disappear" random socks. That's why I wash all my clothes on the rocks down by the river now. You can't be too careful.

[Canuckistanian]

11. With the power off? Not hardly

With the power on, but not being used.... maybe.

Depends on the phone and the software IN the phone.

[ThirdWorldJohn]

12. Ordinary people can also do the same and more.........

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW1o3dlFkAw&feature=related

[JohnnyRingo]

13. It's called a "roving wire tap"

They used it to get info on mob heads in the '90s.
When a freedom of information act threatened to uncover the technique, Mayor Rudy fought to keep it secret.

With help from the cell company, if the phone has power, they can turn it into a hidden microphone and listen in. Even today, boardrooms at major corporations disallow cells at meetings, supposedly for fear of espionage.

As Anthony Napolitano explaianed it last year:

“I’m going to scare you a little bit. This is my Blackberry. It’s off. There are two ways for it to go on. I can press the top of it and it goes on, or I can wait for the NSA to turn it on when it’s in my pocket if they want to hear what I’m saying in a private conversation.”

Oddly enough, I can't find that video now:
http://www.alan.com/2007/12/31/

[Doremus]

14. There is a way to install malware on cell phones to do this.

I was reading something here at DU the other day about it.

Whether the FBI uses it I have no idea. As I recall, the article spoke of a woman who was being tracked by a stalker or something. He could see where she was located on an online map and hear conversations in her vicinity (or her phone's vicinity) even when she wasn't on the phone.

[anigbrowl]

28. 'not on the phone' is very different from 'when the phone is off'

like, we're talking some basic things to do with physics and electricity here. As I said above, this is eminently testable with basic electronic equipment. I think claims like demand proof, and competent electrical engineer (or even an incompetent one like me) should be able to wander round the circuit board and tell whether current is flowing or not.

[EFerrari]

17. The FBI can't find its own @ss with both hands.

lol

[Arctic Dave]

18. They can't, they get approval to have it done.

[MaxPlancker]

19. Ummm, define "turned off".

There are levels of "off" in a cell phone. You can turn off a feature like position location. Portions of a cell phone's circuitry turn off when not in actual use in order to conserve the battery life. You can turn off a cell phone by removing its battery. And you can turn off a cell phone by holding down the power key. In order for a cell phone to do anything first it has to be in contact with a base station. It can only do that if it is made active by holding down the power key if the phone is not already on.

I work in the cellular phone design industry. I know of no piece of software, no diagnostic tool, no circuitry, and no feature set that would put a cell phone in a call when it is not powered up. This included custom in-house hacks to make engineer's lives easier.

I'm sorry, but I think you have been "out FOXed".

Max

[Canuckistanian]

21. Yup

After you've turned the phone "off", all circuits are removed from power.

Unless there's a phone with a mysterious "sleep mode", it's dead.

Engineers work months to design phones that have longer battery life. It's highly unlikely that they'd make a phone that saps your battery while it's TURNED OFF.

[backscatter712]

31. I can see a phone with FBI malware that pretends to be off.

You'd have to be programming on a pretty low level - in other words, not in Java like you would if writing a Sudoku game for cell phones - you'd be hacking down to the bare metal.

But I can see the phone being put in a mode where it pretends to be off - the screen's turned off, the keypad doesn't respond unless you hit the power button, then the phone pretends to power up, the speaker & earpiece are off, but the phone's electronics are still on, the microphone is listening, and the phone's transmitting everything the mike's picking up to the feds. Yeah, it'd take resources of a federal agency, likely consulting with the phone companies as well, in order to make this happen.

Of course, that will only last as long as the battery lasts - a few hours. And the phone's owner will be wondering why the phone's battery keeps draining on him.

If you want the phone really off, you remove the battery. Phone no worky without power.

Actually, if you want to conserve power, you just have the phone record, but not transmit while it's sitting in the user's pocket all day - the battery will last a lot longer if the mike's on and listening, but the radio's off. Store the recordings in a hidden file on the phone or its memory card - many phones have a significant amount of memory that can be used for this sort of thing, and can record for hours. When the phone's plugged into the charger, then fire up the radio, get on a 3G or whatever data network is available and phone home to send the recordings. Another advantage is that if you have a radio that can only do one conversation or task at once, the radio can be listening for calls instead of being kept busy talking to the feds, so the user can make and receive calls like normal.

[Dark]

36. According to the video, you have to remove the battery to keep this from happening.

n/t

[Syrinx]

20. ABC News

Cell phone users, beware. The FBI can listen to everything you say, even when the cell phone is turned off.

A recent court ruling in a case against the Genovese crime family revealed that the FBI has the ability from a remote location to activate a cell phone and turn its microphone into a listening device that transmits to an FBI listening post, a method known as a "roving bug." Experts say the only way to defeat it is to remove the cell phone battery.

"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."

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/12/can_you_hear_me.html

[Seldona]

24. I thought this was rather well known for a while now.

Look at the date on the article you cited. December 2006.

From what I've read, the only way to disable the 'feature' is to remove the battery. It's not like they aren't GPS equipped, for the most part. The technology is there.

[bananas]

26. What's amazing is how many here don't believe it. nt

[anigbrowl]

30. That's because some of us are engineers

What most people mean by 'off' is that it's on but it's sleeping because you haven't used it. This is a constant irritation for me as an audio engineer (because some audio equipment picks up the radio signals from cellphones), so when I tell people to turn their phone off before I start recording, I mean take it out and actually switch it off. When cellphones are in sleep mode, they generally ping the nearest base station every few minutes to see if there's voicemail or keep their GPS current.

[bananas]

32. A lot of us are engineers.

http://news.cnet.com/FBI-taps-cell-phone-mic-as-eavesdropping-tool/2100-1029_3-6140191.html

Nextel and Samsung handsets and the Motorola Razr are especially vulnerable to software downloads that activate their microphones, said James Atkinson, a counter-surveillance consultant who has worked closely with government agencies. "They can be remotely accessed and made to transmit room audio all the time," he said. "You can do that without having physical access to the phone."

Because modern handsets are miniature computers, downloaded software could modify the usual interface that always displays when a call is in progress. The spyware could then place a call to the FBI and activate the microphone--all without the owner knowing it happened. (The FBI declined to comment on Friday.)

"If a phone has in fact been modified to act as a bug, the only way to counteract that is to either have a bugsweeper follow you around 24-7, which is not practical, or to peel the battery off the phone," Atkinson said. Security-conscious corporate executives routinely remove the batteries from their cell phones, he added.

[MaxPlancker]

34. This engineer is not sweating it

This mode of operation means a complete rewrite of the operating system without compromising standard functions. The system memory in cell phones is maxed out and sequestered from user memory so over the air download of a "modified" OS is impossible. To download that amount of code requires physical access to the phone, and specialized equipment to do it. Additionally the physical power distribution network, (there are at least five separate supplies), would have to be extensively modified. Ever notice that your cell phone gets warm when you use it? Wouldn't an "off" cell phone getting warm be suspicous?

Remote stealth audio ain't happening with any off the shelf cell phone.

Now, a custom built phone could be made to do of what you speak, but who is gonna buy a one off phone from the FBI?

[wuvuj]

40. Usually backdoors...

...are REQUIRED for FCC regulated equipment? Home based phones have had this feature for a good while...why wouldn't cells? My guess is that the capability is built in.

Remember....a high % of what "cops" do is covert...they do it and they don't talk about it. The uniformed cops you see are just what they WANT you to see.

[Canuckistanian]

42. Like I said before, the OFF button should suffice

Phone designers try to squeeze every last microamp out of a battery. If a phone could put itself into a sleep mode even when it was OFF, that battery wouldn't last long. And there would probably be consumer complaints.

Also, most airlines require that you turn your phone off during takeoffs and landings. If that phone was still emitting RF even when OFF, then they'd be banning cell phones on planes.

And, like you said, modifying the code on cell phones is not trivial. I doubt whether it could be done "in five minutes" like I saw in one video.

[Tesha]

45. Actually, it's entirely technically feasible.

Many modern cell phones support "FOTA", Firmware Over The Air.
And a stealthy update could probably be pushed to a targeted user
quite easily, even if it needed a bit if social engineering to get them
to accept the download.

Plus, as someone pointed out above, designing the firmware to record
days of audio and only "burst it out" occasionally would make this
mode of operation quite power-efficient.

But it's still defeatable by trivial means: 1) take out the battery; 2) stuff
the phone inside a pillow; 3) leave the phone in the car while you
conduct your "business" meetings; 4) doubtless other methods.

Tesha

[anigbrowl]

46. Which has absolutely nothing to do with my point about the phone being off

I have never questioned the possibility that it could be used to spy on you in the ordinary course of things (where the phone is not switched off), although doing so would run down the battery (which most people would notice) and observing the fact would be trivially easy (it may not be obvious which phone number is being stealth called, but it is easy to detect that a call is in progress).

[Tesha]

44. Don'tcha just love getting blasts of "GSM Buzz" in the middle of your recordings? (NT)

[anigbrowl]

47. I've actually been thinking of making a little tune based around it :-)

[earthworship]

23. thank you GWB

[MrScorpio]

29. There's a good reason why cell phones aren't allowed in SCIFs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitive_Compartmented_Information_Facility

This is old news to me, baby

[H2O Man]

37. The very thought

of the communications industry coordinating efforts with intelligence agencies to spy on citizens is shocking. At least to those who weren't paying attention to events in the past 50 years.

[ThomWV]

39. And GM actually advertises that you can be listened to in your car - for a fee.

Gives your location in real time too.

[zbdent]

41. Gingrich better be careful of whom he has dealings with ...

or else you're going to get the Repukes into another battle pointing out how HE can't be wiretapped illegally ... again ...

[librechik]

48. and remember, if they accuse you of a crime after listening, they always tell the truth

so don't bother to get a lawyer. You're going to Gitmo West.