Can we be bugged on the move?
At the moment, I’m reading a book by the American academic Jonathan Zittrain entitled “The Future Of The Internet – And How To Stop It”. Today I reached page 110 which contains this statement:
” Mobile phones can be reprogrammed at a distance , allowing their microphones to be secretly turned on even when the phone is powered down.”
The nearest Zittrain gives to a source is a footnote which refers to this article by Brian Wheeler on the BBC web site in 2004. In fact, the relevant comment here is that:
“Mobiles communicate with their base station on a frequency separate from the one used for talking. If you have details of the frequencies and encryption codes being used you can listen in to what is being said in the immediate vicinity of any phone in the network. “
This would suggest that a mobile does not even need to be “reprogrammed from a distance”.
Is Zittrain correct? Is Wheeler right? Is there any evidence of such surveillance techniques being used?
October 20th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
There’s also the somewhat ambiguous Tomero case, reported by Declan McCullagh and cited in that footnote. Declan’s article points to other sources that discuss the possibility.
October 20th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
I didn’t mention the Tomero case, Jonathan, because in your footnote you write: “The Tomero opinion is ambiguous about whether the bug in question was physically attached to the phone or effected through a remote update”.