How To Tell If Your Cell Phone Is Bugged 338
Lauren Weinstein writes to point us to his essay on the realities of using an idle cell phone as a bug, as a recent story indicated the FBI may have done in a Mafia case. From the essay: "There is no magic in cell phones. From a transmitting standpoint, they are either on or off... It is also true that some phones can be remotely programmed by the carrier to mask or otherwise change their display and other behaviors in ways that could be used to fool the unwary user. However, this level of remote programmability is another feature that is not universal... But remember — no magic! When cell phones are transmitting — even as bugs — certain things are going to happen every time that the alert phone user can often notice."
Re:Easy way to detect a bugged phone (Score:3, Informative)
TFA isn't about hardware bugs, but software that hijacks your phone to send signals clandestinely.
Only one call? Not true (Score:1, Informative)
This is often not true in the case of GSM phones - particularly those models targetted at business.
GSM is capable of making two calls at once:- the other typically goes on hold and you switch between them, but hosting of conference calls is also possible.
This is true of every Nokia I've owned over the the last 8 years and also the high-end Motorola I owned for a month before it was stolen.
Re:er, tin-foil hat (Score:4, Informative)
Secondly, those bars are more a qualitative information than a quantitative one, at 4 or 5 bars, the signal is clear with low power, with less bars, it means that there are transmition errors or that the radio needs a boost, either way, it is an indication to the phone it might be a good idea to look for another base station, but only a "no signal" notification will prove (if you can trust your phone display) that it is incapable of communication. If you shield your phone, it won't see any good base station and will lose a lot of energy scanning the frequencies looking for one.
You can try to shield your phone, but then, you need to test its effciency. I once tried to put a phone in a tin box and I still could call it. Of course, grounding that box terminated the call.
So I would say shielding is a lot of effort for what you want, if you are only slightly paraniod, shut the bugger down, if you are a real paranoid, leave it at your place with the TV on (during a movie you already saw, in case they will check your alibi) then use the bus to meet whoever you need in a parking lot.
Re:First Privacy, Then Those Other Freedoms... (Score:3, Informative)
I know that Imperial Japan is widely interpreted as being a fascist state, but Westerners really don't seem to understand that fascism and proto-fascism were ideologies based around European historical constructs (like German Romanticism) that don't apply to a country like Japan. I do understand that the term will frequently be thrown around because of the unique historical status of Japan as the only non-Western modern colonial power. While there were groups close to the power of the Japanese Imperium, to characterize the Dai-TeiKoku as fascist is wholly inappropriate.
Fascism is essentially the aestheticization of the socio-political sphere . You'll notice here that Imperial Japan is described as being authoritarian in nature. Why people refer to imperial Japan as authoritarian is also puzzling, because Japan was dominated by an authoritarian ruling clique essentially since its inception. If we want to refer to Japan only since the time of Hideyoshi and the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate, Japan has been under seriously repressive rule since circa 1600 up until its defeat by the United States.
Many often will point to the promotion of the Showa emperor as a living God and the discourse of the Yamato race as examples of Japanese fascism; however, such constructions were built from the blocks of the European-inspired Enlightenment-era notions of a global racial hierarchy as a way to sidestep the Western racist gaze on Japan as being a member of the Asiatic "Yellow Race." They had nothing to do with European Fascism. While the Japanese may have viewed Westernization (ideological Westernization - as distinct from Rangaku, or Western Learning) as ultimately corrupting, the Imperial Japanese viewed themselves as equals of the "White Races" of the West - not as superiors.
Furthermore, Fascism as understood in Germany and Italy were essentially mass-based movements. Imperial Japan was constructed by the social elite of the country, and in many ways is more similar to the British Empire than to Nazi Germany or Fascist Italy. Britain, on the other hand, had the benefit of conquering India a) before the genie of nationalism escaped its bottle, b) as the preponderant hegemon during Pax Britannica period of the 19th century, and c) as a European country conquering a non-European country.
Japan, on the other hand, faced Chinese nationalism, other European powers that wanted a piece of the China pie, and a reinvigorated Soviet Union. Combined with no natural resources, an expansionist drive for autarky seemed reasonable at the time to the Japanese leaders. It allied itself with the Axis powers not because of any ideological affinity (indeed, most of the Imperium regretted deeply the abrogation of the bilateral treaty with Britain in the early 1920s - the Japanese saw themselves as the Britain of the East), but because Italy and Germany had no colonies in East Asia (whereas the Americans held the Philippines; the British Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and India; the Dutch the East Indies; The French Indochina).
Japan had the misfortune (and China and Korea the luck) of attempting to build an empire as the sun was set to dawn on 19th century style imperialism. Americans like to call Japan fascist because it makes American war crimes seem justified.
Anyway, to link back to the topic, while Fascism is Authoritarianism, Authoritarianism IS NOT Fascism. Throwing around the F-word devalues its true meaning, and allows authoritarians to undercut such critics by labeling them leftys, pinkos, etc. No regular citizens in the West today actually believe that their government will become Fascist (especially because so many people misunderstand the term, and think of it in relation only to the Axis power governments), so using such terms will just cause you to isolate yourself in an argument. Most people may buy, however, that their government is making (or has made) a power grab and is on the track to becoming authoritarian.
Re:That doesn't work, here's why (Score:3, Informative)
"Hello?"
"Hi, this is $name from O2. We're calling to tell you about $promotion"
"Ok, if it'll save me money"
"First, for security can we confirm your full name?"
"You don't know my name"
"I can accept that as an answer. Now can you tell me your address and postcode?"
"I never registered this phone, you don't have that to confirm"
"I can accept that as an answer. What's your date of birth"
"*Sigh* Can we just accept that you don't know who I am and it's staying that way?"
"OK sir, would you like to hear about our new promotion? If you'd been using it already, you'd have saved 1 pound this month"
"I don't think I'll bother"
Re:Easy way (Score:3, Informative)
*boggle* (Score:4, Informative)
A cell phone is nothing more than a fancy radio with an omnidirectional antenna. That antenna, per its name, is going to radiate a certian amount of RF energy in all directions. RF that is radiated in the direction of the cell tower will be recieved by the antennas on the tower. RF that is radiated in any other direction will gradually be absorbed by the surrounding environment to no practical effect. So if your LED RF detector happens to be in the close vicinity of your cell phone when the phone is transmitting, it's going to be hit with RF that wouldn't have hit the cell tower anyway!
The only possibly conceivable way that the LED RF detector could have any impact on the signal strength between the cell phone and the cell tower is if it was exactly in the path between the cell phone antenna and the cell tower antenna. The probability that this would occur is so small as to be trivial, and with the wide angle of radiation on most cell phone tower antennas, and the fact that there is usually more than one antenna for any direction, reduces the probability effectively to zero.
Inaccuracy (Score:2, Informative)
Re:*boggle* (Score:5, Informative)
The GSM radio wavelength is about 30cm which means that in effect all objects which affect the radio path, including the transmitter and LED receiver, are "blurry" in space to the scale of 30cm (this is an order of magnitude, not an exact value). The phone itself, and the distance from the LEDs, are much smaller than that. So the directionality of the radiation is nearly irrelevant to calculating how much is absorbed and transmitted.
In other words, contrary to the parent post, the LEDs attached to the phone will be effectively on the radio path to the base station, no matter where they are attached on the phone.
It's counterintuitive that you can have a radio signal between two small antennae at A and B, and something that's nearly in between but off by say 10cm affecting the signal between A and B, is though attracting the energy towards it (even bending the beam is possible). But that is exactly what happens. Waves are like that.
It's more complicated than that, however, because the LEDs are also in the "near field" - the region where there may be a non-radiating component to the oscillating EM field around the phone transmitter. In this region, the LEDs could, if they are constructed to do so, absorb energy from the near field, and, depending very much on the phone design, potentially do it without affecting the radiated signal.
Also, it is possible that they absorb some of the radiated energy but if they use very little power, not affect it very much.
So we can't easily say what effect the LEDs will have on the transmitted signal, but the parent's argument about having to be "exactly on the path" to the transmitter, as in a straight line, is not correct.
-- Jamie
Re:The real answer to 'who are they'- Bill Collect (Score:2, Informative)
You can probibly tell the bill collectors that you are not that person and ask them to stop calling you and they will. Another route is to tell them that you are not that person and that the phone they are calling is a business phone, that might work better.
Another route is to tell them that you are a government worker and that the phone they are calling is your government issued cell phone. I did this with the intention of telling them that if they called again I would refer the matter to the State Attorney General's office but it never came to that as they quite ready to take my number off the list at once.
Re:Bug Detector (Score:2, Informative)
American GSM handsets transmit up to 1.6W output, Euro GSM at 2.0W output. Nextel handsets following the GSM spec to some degree on the backend but still requiring FCC licensed power output for user safety transmit somewhere in the range of 1.6 watts.
American CDMA handsets at 850MHz transmit at 200mW max, while 1900MHz transmit at 150mW max. (Verizon, Alltel, Sprint, etc.)
You can only pick up a CDMA handset's transceiver if you have cheap speakers, turned up very loud, in a very very weak signal area and the handset is screaming at maximum output power - otherwise they are ghostly silent.
Also, when you live or make most of your calls right next to a cell site, even a GSM handset's transceiver is so quiet that you can't easily pick it up without some work.
Not exactly the most foolproof method to detect if your handset is transmitting.