Author Topic: FBI taps cell phone mic as eavesdropping tool  (Read 3443 times)

Offline rbcp

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FBI taps cell phone mic as eavesdropping tool
« on: December 02, 2006, 02:01:13 PM »
The FBI appears to have begun using a novel form of electronic surveillance in criminal investigations: remotely activating a mobile phone's microphone and using it to eavesdrop on nearby conversations.

The technique is called a "roving bug," and was approved by top U.S. Department of Justice officials for use against members of a New York organized crime family who were wary of conventional surveillance techniques such as tailing a suspect or wiretapping him.

Nextel cell phones owned by two alleged mobsters, John Ardito and his attorney Peter Peluso, were used by the FBI to listen in on nearby conversations. The FBI views Ardito as one of the most powerful men in the Genovese family, a major part of the national Mafia.

The surveillance technique came to light in an opinion published this week by U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan. He ruled that the "roving bug" was legal because federal wiretapping law is broad enough to permit eavesdropping even of conversations that take place near a suspect's cell phone.

Kaplan's opinion said that the eavesdropping technique "functioned whether the phone was powered on or off." Some handsets can't be fully powered down without removing the battery; for instance, some Nokia models will wake up when turned off if an alarm is set.


Here's the rest of the article.  It's long. 

Offline I-baLL

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Re: FBI taps cell phone mic as eavesdropping tool
« Reply #1 on: December 04, 2006, 12:39:18 PM »
I'm a bit skeptic on this whole thing. Wouldn't this greatly affect the battery life of the phone?

Offline rbcp

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Re: FBI taps cell phone mic as eavesdropping tool
« Reply #2 on: December 04, 2006, 01:41:39 PM »
Maybe it doesn't transmit the entire time.  Maybe it just records stuff when it hears sound and once the memory fills up, it "calls" the FBI and dumps the sound file to them.  Ever since cell phones have become popular, I've wondered about this.  Seems like they'd be able to snap pictures from your camera too.

But I'm skeptical as well.  Seems like somebody would have noticed this by now.

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Re: FBI taps cell phone mic as eavesdropping tool
« Reply #3 on: December 04, 2006, 06:06:42 PM »
my moms "blackberry" is on for about 13 hours a day, and she gets 1-2 weeks of battery life out of it. I'm not sure how much juice the "sleep mode" of the phone uses, but I'm guessing its not much. The phone relies on flash memory anyway...
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Offline I-baLL

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Re: FBI taps cell phone mic as eavesdropping tool
« Reply #4 on: December 04, 2006, 09:46:16 PM »
How long can she talk on it though before it dies from battery loss? 4 hours?

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Re: FBI taps cell phone mic as eavesdropping tool
« Reply #5 on: December 05, 2006, 04:00:13 AM »
probably a bit longer, but your right, it would redefined be reduced when in-use for a long duration of time
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Re: FBI taps cell phone mic as eavesdropping tool
« Reply #6 on: December 05, 2006, 04:10:17 AM »
I work with Bluetooth technology sometimes and I remember that a while ago a couple of firmwares from Samsung left the BT channel open all the time causing that the battery of the headsets and the phone were severely reduced; people called like crazy the whole day by then, the average batt life was about 4 1/2 hours; I assume would be the same with this.

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EDIT: the batt life was even shorter on the headset side.