If you still have an old Nokia 5190 or 3285 you're safe. OnStar and a few other in-car services have had that capability for some time prior to the October 2004 deadline that ALL cell phones have that "GPS" tracking chip installed because the government told to. We knew this was coming and nobody did nothing. What's next, FBI can now access your PC video camera and microphone without your consent? I wouldn't doubt if it was already there.
ahh - I don't think so. GPS isn't two way satellite communication. I've been working on voice satellite projects for maybe 10 years and it's non trivial, and takes substantially more bandwidth than GPS could provide. On-Star, for sure - that's two way cellular calls. PC's can be hacked by any government group if they want to. Remember when IPSec 56 bit encryption was suddenly "made available to the public after government negotiations" back in the 90's. backdoor access to most everything if they wanted it.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=197000529 "In another market research report, Canalys said 12 million phones with GPS technology were sold in the first nine months of 2006, and the firm predicted that nearly 28 million would sell in the comparable period this year."
"Malicious hackers have followed suit. A report last year said Spanish authorities had detained a man who write a Trojan horse that secretly activated a computer's video camera and forwarded him the recordings." Interesting
First and foremost if you are doing something you are not suposed to be doing or talking about something u are not suposed to be doing then why the **** would you have any electronic device never you? We think that criminal masterminds are retarted? Second yes it is scary that this tech is available but as long as you arent doing anything terribly wrong you have no need to worry. Now if your wife or rival business were to get a hold of this tech then you may have something to worry about. The stuff that the FBI is capable of doing that we DONT know about is a bit scary other then that you really dont have to worry. BTW My cell # changes very often and now that this news is out im going to have even more people asking me if im a criminal LOL!
Not to go political - but with that argument we should give up all of our privacy, and freely transmit our speedometer readouts to the taxman directly with our GPS positioning. "terribly" is open to many interpretations and abuses.
likely - it wouldn't take much for a govt to emulate a cell-phone switch via satellite or surveillance plane/drone. It wouldn't surprise me if Cell phones had "wake from sleep" functions built into them - many corporate PC's can do this now. If you power down the PC at night, and it still has power, it will "wake up" and boot if sent a special instruction set across the network so the IT folks can do their upgrades and patches. The "feature" has been around for a long time. I used to work a switchboard 20 years ago - and even then it was trivial to listen in to a handset that was hung-up. one or two keys, and the local. Not to mention, "barge-in" on an active call between two parties. I was well-behaved back then though If it's got a Microphone, it''s possible to listen. If it's got a videocam, it's possible to watch.
It's Big Brother and a continual loss of civil liberties. If they keep it up(and they will), this will seem mild in comparison. Not my idea of freedom, regardless of whether I'm doing anything wrong.
If they are listening to me... One word. BORING Unless they like hearing about Ferraris and F1. Certainly they've got better things to. We have to keep the world safe for sports cars. PNH
First off, I don't even believe it. I don't know enough about how phones work though, so I'm not positive. Anyways, on to big brother. The FBI/CIA/NSA are all about collecting information, not so great about reviewing it. Everything gets run through computers to pick out the juicy stuff of course, and some of that goes on to an actual person listening to it. I would bet good money an actual person from any of those three Orgs has never actually listened to anything anyone on here has ever said (on intercepted phone calls) They intercept literally hundreds of false threats daily from KNOWN 'bad guys' they are watching. They really could not care less about what movie you are going to watch this weekend. (Smoking aces btw) My .02
The boring stuff is usually what hits the media, imo. As I could listen in to any inactive phone in the building back in the 80's, I certainly believe we can do it with cell phones today. This is an interesting topic for politics & religion - I believe Freedom means not having our calls recorded without a darn good reason.
Ok, well then I will believe that part. As for your second point. Its a fine line. I'm undecided on that subject, but it certainly is a slippery slope. How long until will end up with a country with tracking like "minority report"? However, I believe if the NSA wanted to listen to your phone calls for whatever reason, they will and noones going to stop them. But you have to be involved in some serious **** for that to happen.