Do you own a cell phone? Do you think that it is private and secure? You might want to think again. The truth is that there is virtually no privacy when it comes to cell phones. In fact, the amount of cell phone surveillance that goes on is absolutely staggering. For example, one German politician named Malte Spitz recently went to court to force Deutsche Telekom to reveal how often his cell phone was being tracked. What he found out was absolutely amazing. It turns out that in just one 6 month period, Deutsche Telekom recorded the longitude and latitude coordinates of his cell phone 35,000 times. Not only that, in the United States cell phone companies are actually required by law to be able to pinpoint the locations of their customers to within 100 meters. Most cell phone carriers are able to track their customers far more accurately than that. The truth is that your location will never again be truly “private” as long as you are carrying a cell phone.
And your conversations will not be private either. A whole host of people could be listening in on your cell phone calls. In fact, your cell phone can be used to spy on you even when you don’t have it on. For example, as one CNET News article noted, if law enforcement authorities are investigating you they can remotely activate the microphone on your cell phone and listen in on your conversations….
The FBI appears to have begun using a novel form of electronic surveillance in criminal investigations: remotely activating a mobile phone’s microphone and using it to eavesdrop on nearby conversations.
The technique is called a “roving bug,” and was approved by top U.S. Department of Justice officials for use against members of a New York organized crime family who were wary of conventional surveillance techniques such as tailing a suspect or wiretapping him.
Not only that, but all phone calls (whether made with a cell phone or not) are monitored by the U.S. government in the name of national security. For years this was kind of an open secret, but now even mainstream news outlets such as USA Today have reported on the NSA’s goal “to create a database of every call ever made”….
The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.
However, perhaps even more frightening is the rapidly rising number of stalkers and criminals that are exploiting the advanced capabilities of cell phone surveillance software.
If a stalker or a criminal is able to get spy software on to your cell phone, that person will be able to listen to all of your calls, read all of your text messages and track your movements 24 hours a day and you might not ever find out.
In addition, there is even cell phone spy software out there that will allow someone to use your cell phone microphone to listen to what is going on around you even when your cell phone is turned off.
Do you doubt any of this? Just check out the mind blowing video news report posted below. If you have never seen this before, it will absolutely blow your mind….
Are you frightened yet?
Kevin Bankston, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, recently told The New York Times that it has basically gotten to the point where “you have to hand over your personal privacy to be part of the 21st century”.
Sadly, part of the reason why cell phones can track us so well is because the U.S. government requires it.
The FCC’s E911 initiative actually mandates that all cell phone companies must be able to pinpoint the locations of all of their customers to within 100 meters.
The rationale for this requirement is so that emergency responders will be able to find you if something happens.
But this is just another example of how all of our privacy is being systematically stripped away in the name of security.
Today most Americans seem to have bought into the notion that life is better and more secure when the U.S. government tracks, traces and watches virtually everything that we do.
The following are just a few examples of how we are giving up privacy in the name of security….
*If you want to get on an airplane in America today, you must either go through one of the incredibly intrusive full body scanners that are going into all U.S. airports and let airport security goons gawk at your exposed body, or you must allow airport security goons to feel you up using the new “enhanced pat down” techniques they are being instructed to employ.
*The Obama administration is developing a “universal Internet ID” program that would watch, track, monitor and potentially control all of your activity on the Internet.
*Thanks to the Patriot Act, if you are identified as a “terrorist”, you suddenly lose all of your constitutional rights. We are told that detaining American citizens indefinitely and subjecting them to “enhanced interrogation” techniques will keep us all safer.
But is this really how we all want to live?
Does anyone actually really believe that if the government watches and tracks everything that our neighbors do that we will be safer and that our lives will be better?
Our founding fathers greatly prized freedom, liberty and privacy, but today most of the population seems to be paralyzed by fear.
The media pounds it into our heads over and over and over that we are supposed to be afraid, so most of us are. In fact, many Americans are far more likely to report their neighbors to the authorities than to actually go over and have a real conversation with them.
When George Orwell’s “1984” was written, most people believed that nothing like that could ever happen to the United States of America.
Well, it is happening to us. Every single day our nation moves a little bit more in the direction of becoming a Big Brother police state control grid.
So what do all of you think about these issues? Please feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts below….