4. Court Says FBI Can Use Your Cell Phone To Spy... On You
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http://www.ktre.com/Global/story.asp?S=5777429&nav=2FH5
12/06/06
Court Says FBI Can Use Your Cell Phone To Spy... On You
by Vic Walter and Krista Kjellman, 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."
The court ruling denied motions by 10 defendants to suppress the
conversations obtained by "roving bugs" on the phones of John Ardito,
a high-ranking member of the family, and Peter Peluso, an attorney and
close associate of Ardito, who later cooperated with the government.
The "roving bugs" were approved by a judge after the more conventional
bugs planted at specified locations were discovered by members of the
crime family, who then started to conduct their business dealings in
several additional locations, including more restaurants, cars, a
doctor's office and public streets.
"The courts have given law enforcement a blank check for
surveillance," Richard Rehbock, attorney for defendant John Ardito,
told ABC News.
Judge Kaplan's ruling said otherwise. "While a mobile device makes
interception easier and less costly to accomplish than a stationary
one, this does not mean that it implicated new or different privacy
concerns." He continued, "It simply dispenses with the need for
repeated installations and surreptitious entries into buildings. It
does not invade zones of privacy that the government could not reach
by more conventional means."
But Rehbock disagrees. "Big Brother is upon us...1984 happened a long
time ago," he said, referring to the George Orwell futuristic novel
"1984," which described a society whose members were closely watched
by those in power and was published in 1949.
The FBI maintains the methods used in its investigation of the
Genovese family are within the law. "The FBI does not discuss
sensitive surveillance techniques other than to emphasize that any
electronic surveillance isdone pursuant to a court order and ongoing
judicial scrutiny," Agent Jim Margolin told ABC News.