FBI Can Listen to All Your Voice Calls!

There were rumors about this state of facts since the beginning of last year's December and until now, I haven't thought they could contain even a little bit of truth. Why? Mainly because FBI is a state agency that should act under the limits imposed by the US Constitution but now it seems they can do pretty much what they want. Of course, if they have the necessary court order that entitles them to do it.

I want to be clear here because you shouldn't get all excited about it and instantly turn off your cellphone so they couldn't listen to your voice calls. In the first place, you shouldn't even worry about such a thing if you haven't broken any law. Secondly, the rumor says that only recently sold cellphones contain some type of built-in tracker device which if activated remotely, can turn the power on the handset's microphone even if the device itself is turned off.

Therefore, if you are one of those guys that like their old and trusted brick-like mobile phone, you're in no danger!

How have I changed my opinion about this old rumor? Well, it seems that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has used this type of device in the Genovese crime family trial to collect evidence related to the case. Once again, you should know they were able to do that only after a court order had entitled them to pursue such an action, known as a "roving bug".

There still is though a lot more behind such a thing. What if they begin listening to random people's cellphones and even without any kind of court order? Who verifies and who knows in the first place they are conducting this type of research in the first place? What if some enterprising hacker can find a way to tap in their cellphone listening system? What then?

Even if this is a lot more serious, scary and with a lot more consequences than the majority of us can even think of for the moment, I still think this is pretty much a way of mass misleading. But if this is the case, I guess you can expect even worse things to come up behind the scenes because every time we hear something ludicrous like this and one discovers it was covering something else, the thing behind the rumor is usually much worse.

Then again, if we were to believe what James Atkinson, a counter intelligence security consultant working for ABC News, has said, that being "the FBI can access cell phones and modify them remotely without ever having to physically handle them. 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", this thing could end up as being the truth.

Not a very counseling thought for anyone so if you really want to be safe against such measures, the only way to do it is to remove the handset's battery to render the device practically useless.

Does anyone with a little more electronics know-how want to put us at ease by dissecting some of the latest released handsets in the US and give us the real truth behind this story?

I'm waiting here people! Anyone?