to "Some Americans" the tapping of Cell Phones can mean Life or Death!

[KoKo]

"Now, before you write this off as just another sad story, let me explain to you just how serious the situation really is - not just to your own personal privacy, but to law enforcement, every politician in DC and around the country, and to national security.

1. Are you an FBI agent with confidential sources?

Again, I quote the Sun-Times:

To test the service, the FBI paid Locatecell.com $160 to buy the records for an agent's cell phone and received the list within three hours, the police bulletin said.

2. Are you a police officer with confidential sources?

The Chicago Sun-Times paid $110 to Locatecell.com to purchase a one-month record of calls for this reporter's company cell phone. It was as simple as e-mailing the telephone number to the service along with a credit card number. The request was made Friday after the service was closed for the New Year's holiday.

On Tuesday, when it reopened, Locatecell.com e-mailed a list of 78 telephone numbers this reporter called on his cell phone between Nov. 19 and Dec. 17. The list included calls to law enforcement sources, story subjects and other Sun-Times reporters and editors.

3. Are you a journalist with confidential sources?

Do you think anyone in Washington, DC would like to know who James Risen of the New York Times, the reporter who broke Bush's domestic spying scandal, has been talking to over the last year? Well, just plop down a few hundred bucks and buy his phone records. Kiss his sources goodbye. Or how about Bob Novak? Be fun to find out who he was talking to, oh, around the spring of 2003... Or the phone records of any US reporters - imagine the fun the Bush administration could have LEGALLY getting a record of every single phone call you've ever received or made. Spying on Christiane Amanpour? Who needs to! Her phone records are available for $110 and the click of a button.

4. Are you a Democratic or Republican member of Congress?

Imagine the fun should some rich Democratic or Republican donor plop down $1 million to get the phone records of every single member of Congress from the other party. Who have they been talking to? George Soros? Pat Robertson? Their mistress? Did any of them talk to any reporters on or around the day that any big leak came out of Congress? Did you ever have a phone conversation with Jack Abramoff? I do oppo research for a living - I would give my right thumb to have a list of every phone call made or received by a member of Congress from the other party on their cell phone. Go ahead, make my day.

5. Are you a Bush administration official?

Imagine the fun should someone get Karl Rove's phone records, or Dick Cheney's, or President Bush's.

6. Are you a special prosecutor by the name of Patrick Fitzgerald?

Love to see who HE's been talking to?

7. Are you an Al Qaeda terrorist?

Don't you think they'd love to pull up the phone records of FBI, CIA, and Homeland Security officials to find out if any other Al Qaeda "affiliates" are snitches, or at least to see who they're talking to. Or pull up the records of their own people to see if they've been talking to reporters or FBI agents?

8. Are you a regular old American criminal, a member of the Mafia for example?

Think they'd find it useful to check who among their associates has been talking to reporters, politicians, or law enforcement?

9. Are you someone who's being abused by your spouse?

Wouldn't it be great to have your partner find out you're talking to an abused women shelter or to the police?

10. Got AIDS, cancer or any other disease you might want to keep private?

Imagine the fun should your employer find out you call the AIDS hotline every week, or the women's breast cancer clinic.

My point here is that this is incredibly dangerous, our government has known about it for a good half year or longer, and no one has done a damn thing about it.

11. Are you a woman who ever has, may, or will get an abortion?

Do you want everyone knowing you made a few too many phone calls to the Planned Parenthood clinic?

more at...........
http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/01/anyone-can-buy-list-of-your-incoming.html

[bbinacan]

1. Very scary stuff.

[Richard Steele]

2. Recommended. no comment necessary.

[TomInTib]

Got my vote. Recommended

[mike_c]

3. then don't use a CELL PHONE and the PUBLIC AIRWAYS.....

Sheesh. What is so hard to understand about that? The broadcast spectrum is a commons. YOU HAVE NO INHERENT RIGHT TO PRIVACY THERE.

[TomInTib]

5. I am having a hard time finding reliable carrier pigeons.

They would probably shoot 'em down, anyway.

[mike_c]

7. nonetheless, cell phones are broadcast devices...

...that use the public airways. It's really foolish to expect privacy under those circumstances. Nor should we, IMO-- would you be comfortable knowing that I could use a common resource in ways that you could never check up on? I hope not. The broadcast spectrum is a public resource- the equivalent of a crowded room or a meeting hall. You can have priviledged communications there, but your presence can be noted by anyone else with access to that place, meaning all other members of the public.

[northofdenali]

30. Some folks have NO "land line" service available.

What then?

[mike_c]

36. they've made their bargain with the devil....

Right now, people call both this:



and this:

"phones"

because they use them for the same purpose, and since they use the same name, folks assume that they are just different forms of the same thing. But what many apparently don't understand is that they are

fundamentally different devices.

They are governed by very different rules, and can be abused in very different ways. So although you might be able to call someone using either, you should not assume that you are protected in equivalent ways. Don't let the colloquilism of calling them both "phones" make you think that they are the same. THEY'RE NOT!

on edit-- BTW, I'm one of those folks without traditional land line service. I use VOIP exclusively (not a cell phone).

[lvx35]

6. People have a right to privacy there

Because they are not open radio broadcasts, they are encrypted. Americans have an expectation of reasonable encryption from cell companies, meaning private communications.

[mike_c]

10. the CONTENTS of the communication are private....

That's what the encryption is for-- but there is no inherent right to PRIVATE OR HIDDEN USE of the public broadcast spectrum. I'm sorry if this offends you, but that is simply the way it is. If you want to hide the fact that you communicated with Joe, don't use a broadcast device to call him.

[lvx35]

11. That's so offensive mike C

;) kidding. I think the deeper issue is that there is no way to HAVE a hidden or secret use of the broadcast spectrum! Which yes, people should know. But I do expect my cell company to keep my phone calls un-evesdroppable.

[KoKo]

8. Excuse me....that's what the whole FISA battle is about...and don't you

know that your local police need a "court order" to get your phone records?

Whoa...what country are you from? You keep posting this stuff on every post of mine about how Phones are Fair Game and seem to have no understanding of the law.

Have you heard the big flap about FISA? Do you remember when the "Mob" had to have Prosecutors get "court orders" to get "phone records?"

Patriot Act gave away alot of our freedoms but not the right to ALL our Privacy... What's with you? :shrug:

[mike_c]

12. Koko-- you're not reading what I'm saying....

I never said that "Phones are Fair Game." I said that CELL PHONES use the public broadcast spectrum and there is no inherent right to private, hidden use of that spectrum. The contents of your cell communications are protected (although they CAN be monitored by anyone with a receiver tuned to the correct frequency-- but that's another matter), but not the fact that you placed the call. This does not apply to land line phones. Only to broadcast devices like cell phones. It is not against the law for cell companies to sell records of the use of a public resource. It's a shame that they do so-- the info should be free, IMO.

on edit-- just to be clear, this has NOTHING to do with FISA or spying. It is NOT wiretapping. The CONTENTS of your calls are privileged.

[lvx35]

15. A footnote

Its also quite possible to do the same with wireless intenet traffic. There is piece of free software called ethereal that will listen and record to all the wireless traffic around you, if you are on Linux. Again, stuff that is encrypted, (sites that start with https://) can't be gotten at, but the fact that you went there and when can be.

[mike_c]

17. exactly correct....

eom

[KoKo]

18. Do you feel there need to be new laws governing what can be spied

upon, then. I was picking up from your posts that you thought spying was fair game on Americans just because they use public airwaves.

Actually phone lines were "public airwaves" until our Government gave them to the "Private Companies" in huge auctions under Clinton..and then Bush finished it off. So, I don't see a difference in Cell and "in house wire" but doing some independent research after reading your posts...I found that what you say may be correct in Bush America. So much privacy has been given away that we weren't aware of that it's kind of mind boggling.

But, where do you stand on this? You keep posting on my threads saying that we don't have a right to privacy with cellphones...but I don't get what your personal opinion is. :shrug: (I thought you were a troll)

[mike_c]

21. again, I think you misunderstand the nature of "phones..."

...and communications. Cell phones and land line phones are very different devices, both from a regulatory and a functional standpoint. Land line phones are fundamentally point-to-point communication devices-- they do not use the public airwaves as you suggest, and they never have. They do not rely on broadcast technology (I'm deliberately ignoring microwave transmission portions of long distance calls because they're different in other ways-- we can discuss that if you want). Cell phones, on the other hand, are fundamentally broadcast devices-- they send out a signal over the public broadcast spectrum and it's up to the receiving device to recognize that it's the intended recipient. They are inherently public and shared, whether you realize that or not when you actually use them, which is to say, when you broadcast your conversation out into the public commons. It's a mistake to think they work like a "regular" phone in any way-- they don't.

I've used the analogy of cell phone calls being like shouting encrypted messages in a crowded room (and not even very strongly encrypted, often). Land line point-to-point communications are like putting a letter in a private box using a private system of hallways-- the ACT OF DOING SO is inherently hidden from other users of the system because of the point-to-point nature of the device. That's one reason that an entirely different system of rules has always applied to telephone privacy issues for land line phones. Another is that the traditional phone technology grew out of even more restrictive point-to-point technology (telegraph systems).

Finally, none of this has anything to do with wiretapping. I can easily find out that you used your cell phone to call Joe-- the system LENDS itself to revealing that information because of the public broadcast nature of the system-- but I cannot legally listen in to your conversation with Joe. That's an entirely different matter. The moral is that if you don't want your call to Joe to be a matter of public record, don't use a cell phone to make the call.

Last question-- what is my personal stance? I think that the broadcast spectrum SHOULD be a public resource, and that no one should have an inherent right to secret use of that resource. I think information about how OUR broadcast spectrum is used should be freely available to all. Not the content of privileged communications, but yes, the metadata about the resource use should be available. There ARE alternatives if you want more privacy-- use a point-to-point system instead of the public commons. That's my personal opinion on the matter.

[KoKo]

22. Do you feel that "private companies" should be "selling" that info?

That's the question I was asking. You say the "airwaves" that aren't land line based should be free. Yet companies are making a profit out of information gotten from providers who are not informing the users.

:shrug:

[mike_c]

25. no I do not-- I think it should be freely available....

I really dislike the fact that someone is making a profit selling matters of public record. The only justification I can see for SELLING the information is that cell companies incur some cost in maintaining and transfering the records, but I think that ought to be one of their responsibilities under their FCC licensing agreements (it probably is, for that matter), and the information should be made freely available to everyone.

on edit-- this opinion applies ONLY to cell communications and similar broadcast devices, NOT to land line phone communications.

[NMMNG]

32. They can do it with cell phones *and* land lines

From the article: In a nutshell, the Chicago Sun-Times ran a story two days ago about a Web site that sells phone records, for cells and land-lines, for $110 a pop. The company boasts on its own Web site:

This is obscene.

[mike_c]

35. hmmm, could you include the link to the web site....

I'm suspicious-- I think either the article is mistaken, or there is some limitation on the actual records that are available. I'd like to find out more about this.

[hootinholler]

13. Right, this isn't interception of the call, it's

The ability to recall the meta data after the fact.

-Hoot

[KoKo]

19. So, these "private companies" pay our cell phone providers for info but

the service providers only give them "numbers" so you are saying "technically" it isn't an invasion of privacy? Because they don't provide the "transcripts?"

How about some stalker or criminal who wants to know who I call and when. What if they call the people listed on my "call list" and ask private info about me? What if they see a pattern to my calls telling them what time of day I come and go? What if they have an interest in finding out if I have an elderly relative who might live in a nice part of town who might have some great stuff for pawning if they rob his or her house?

What if I'm involved in a legal case and the lawyers for the other side want to track all my phone numbers to contact those I've talked to.

The possibilities for abuse are endless and frightening given how much folks use cell phones these days. And what about the phone numbers for folks you call who have private phones and not cells...their numbers are out there too for anyone who wants to use them for whatever purpose.

[mike_c]

23. that's why you should be very careful about how you use cell phones....

They're a bit of a bargain with the devil, and it seems most people aren't aware of that. The cost of convenience is that cell phones fall under an entirely different regulatory environment than point-to-point land lines.

[KoKo]

24. The thing is...most average Americans weren't aware of that, I would bet.

At least not from what I see from folks who seem to be very computer literate around me who are never without their cells for international calls and our sales folks who need to use them to stay in touch.

You seem to feel that everyone should have been aware of this...because it's a given. I'm saying that it really is NEW INFO to folks out there.

I appreciate all your comments on this, though. Your perspective is interesting.

[hootinholler]

29. Not Quite...

I didn't say it's not an invasion of privacy. I was trying to point out it's a different sort of invasion than a wiretap.

If the police need a warrant for phone records then how can these companies legally obtain the records?

It might be legal to listen in if your phone isn't encrypted.

You're absolutely correct about the potential for abuse.

-Hoot

[Straight Shooter]

4. Excellent points.

Nominated.

[Selteri]

9. To give them the ability to search my records...

Gee... that could kill my business, endanger my friends and really screw people who call my number wrong all the damn time because I have three 0s in my phone number in a row.

[KoKo]

14. Wasn't Gore using his Blackberry constantly in Election Recoun/2000?

How many Dem Campaign Managers were using their cell phone lines in 2004?

What about American business? How many folks are talking to companies today about "marketing strategies, etc." over cell phones when they can be monitored by BIG WIG BUSH Contributors who could "Cut them OUT of deals" because they know what they have?

Think of the implications of this? Poedophiles and Rapists tracking down the next victim? People who are "STALKERS" going after you and buying your phone info?

It's ENORMOUS. Yet, many here seem to think: "It's no Big Deal."

:shrug: HOW CAN ANYONE NOT FEEL VIOLATED??

[mike_c]

16. people can't just "buy your phone info"...

...unless it's a cell phone. I think that what you don't understand is that while a cell phone might look like a regular old fashioned land line phone, and you might use it for the same purpose, they are very different devices-- as different as night and day in some respects. Cell phones are much more like walkie-talkies and CB radios from a regulatory standpoint, although there is recognition that privacy rights apply to the contents of encrypted cell transmissions. But anyone can monitor the airwaves-- they're a public commons-- and it's not difficult to determine the origin and end point of cell calls-- the information is encoded in the signal.

Land line phones are a completely different animal. Again, they might look similar, but a whole different set of rules applies to even the basic use of the system, and for good reason. To begin with, they are not a public commons like the broadcast spectrum.

Finally, this is NOT wiretapping. If I see you talking to Joe, and I can see you because you and Joe are speaking in plain sight in a public place, that's not eavesdropping. Finding out who you called on your cell phone is exactly analogous to seeing you talking with someone in a public place, because the broadcast spectrum is a public resource. Land lines are not.

[KoKo]

20. mike-c....see my post #18 for reply & query..........n/t

[KoKo]

26. I'm talking about Cell Phones because that's what my OP is about and

the phone numbers one dials are purchased by PRIVATE COMPANIES. I'm not going to parse the difference between purchasing a "phone number" and "information" but wouldn't you agree that a company is buying information for a purchaser that lists the phone numbers the person has called and that would amount in most folks minds to "information" being purchased by persons wanting "information?" The information being the phone numbers the person has called on their cell phone and probably the numbers of the folks using cell phones to call the original "target" of the cell phone user.

[mike_c]

27. think about it this way....

If you put up a sign that says:

Dear Joe:

woicf dloif sslyc mfgpx larvg qppif dkcxj

everyone walking by has the right to know that you have communicated with Joe, because you posted your sign in a public manner. The actual content of the communication is encrypted and secret, that is private, but in order for Joe to recognize that the message is for him, you have to identify him (the message might just as easily say "Dear 536-223-1234", i.e. Joe's phone number).

Cell phone calls are exactly like that sign. They're posted to the public broadcast spectrum. Suggesting that you have a right to privacy for publicly posted communications is like saying that everyone who isn't Joe needs to blind themselves when they walk past your sign, and they need to do it without even knowing that they're not Joe because otherwise they'd STILL know who you were communicating with. You see, that level of "privacy" just doesn't make any sense when applied to a public commons.

It makes no difference whether you hang your sign for Joe or whether you hire someone else to do it-- you can't expect THEM to keep it any more private than you could yourself.

[mike_c]

28. interesting side note....

Cingular has evidently obtained a restraining order against two companies selling cell records, evidently arguing that the records themselves are proprietary customer service info. The plot thickens. Cingular was made to look bad.

[snot]

31. let's hurry up and buy key repuke cel records. nt

[IronLionZion]

33. Simple but expensive solution:

Buy cell phone records of the people who make and influence the laws. It doesn't have to be partisan but it would be fun.

Hit them personally, and they will do something about it. Sometimes you have to kick them in the ass to get them moving.

But what Mike C said is true. It is public airwaves, it is legal, and there are legal ways to get your cell phone records without paying anything to some private company. That's the nature of wireless anything, even internet. It's easy access. Wired is still vulnerable, but not as easy.

If you want the legality to change, the laws must change. Even then, just because it's illegal doesn't mean it won't happen.

[roseBudd]

34. I just walked to the payphone to make a call n/t

[greiner3]

37. You have my attention;

But couldn't you do most of that stuff already via computer; IF you knew what the hell you were doing? I agree that that list was a bit scarey but I for one don't have a cell. But I am on-line and am current to this forum. The whole idea of being part of the big picture does bother my paranoia. What can I do though? Move to another country? Turn into a repug and not let it bother me? Write my congressman? With the last one, they're two repugs in the senate and prye is my per. So basically I'm screwed. Better luck next life? See ya!