phone hacking members ofSan Antonio Fatherhood Campaign don't care if it is a felony

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.

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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.” 

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“The courts have given law enforcement a blank check for surveillance,” Richard Rehbock, attorney for defendant John Ardito, told ABC News.

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“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.

Fox News covered the story as well: U.S. Commerce Department’s security office warns that “a cellular telephone can be turned into a microphone and transmitter for the purpose of listening to conversations in the vicinity of the phone”

Because modern handsets are miniature computers, downloaded software could modify the usual interface that always displays when a call is in progress. The spyware could then place a call to the FBI and activate the microphone–all without the owner knowing it happened.

A BBC article from 2004 reported that intelligence agencies routinely employ the remote-activiation method. “A mobile sitting on the desk of a politician or businessman can act as a powerful, undetectable bug,” the article said, “enabling them to be activated at a later date to pick up sounds even when the receiver is down.”

The FBI develops some hacking tools internally and purchases others from the private sector. With such technology, the bureau can remotely activate the microphones in phones running Google Inc.’s  Android software to record conversations, one former U.S. official said.

Indeed, even private hackers might be listening in. Specifically, private parties without security clearance may be activating your microphone or camera without your knowledge (and see this).

Indeed, commercially-available, off-the-shelf software allows people to spy on you:

If Officer A. Flores of SAPD was willing to and guilty of having police reports deleted in my case, following myself all over the city of San Antonio taking pictures of me and calling a detective and asking him to make sure no investigation be conducted into the crimes committed against me by my ex-husband It only stands to reason that it was in fact Officer A. Flores who instructed Gregory Marshall of the San Antonio Fatherhood Campaign how to hack my computers and cell phones. When I explained what he was doing to a San Antonio FBI agent he made the statement, “That is owned technologies he is using and it is a felony to blatantly use them”, I had no idea what the agent was talking about and after much reading and research I still only have a vague concept of what he was trying to tell me.