[HACKED] Is Someone Listening to Your Calls? - Comments Page 2

To Mark Miller: Even if your phone is off, your phone location can be tracked via the internal GPS. You actually have to take out the battery to avoid that.

Bob, sounds like this vulnerability would enable foreign agents to track movements of any key gov't personnel who carry cell phones. Hard to imagine they haven't been using it.

Bob, I always read your emails and at least half the time I read your full article---many times I am afraid to make changes you might suggest. I am chicken to mess with the computer. But your articles are usually well-written, timely, understandable, and most helpful, even to neophytes like me.

I have never in my life done anything like this blog posting, nor do I even know how to spell t-w-i-t-t-e-r, let alone try to do it. No, I do not carry a cell phone, unless in my auto counsel for emergencies. So maybe that is one reason I am not too sympathetic to those who feel soooooo wounded when they learn our government has access to their conversations. One thing you did not point out, is that unlike the general vacuum NSA programs, this kind of spying cannot be done unless they first show probable cause and obtain judicial approval.

WHY do people like 60 minutes have to always expose what is a useful tool for our security? Anyone who has read Dan Brown's DIGITAL FORTRESS -- now already 18 years old -- knows that this stuff is essential to our national security, and that it has forever been going on. And 60 minutes (—and even you, Bob) was irresponsible for failing to point out that any eavesdropping on a specific phone must first be authorized by a judge.

Yet 60 minutes and the snowden traitor crowd insist on breathlessly bringing out into the open and thereby ruining some of our most useful tools. Around the world the bad guys are giving thanks to the snowden/60 minutes crowd.

There is NOTHING whatsoever to "fix" here—so if I were to write to my congressional group, I would tell them to sanction 60 minutes for undermining our ops. Indeed, the ONLY thing to “fix” is their attitude that gaining notoriety by exposing and thereby ruining our country's MOST USEFUL tools trumps what is needed to fight the bad guys.

Someday it would be poetic justice to see the 60 minutes producer/executive crowd--and others like them who think it is their duty to ruin our national security just to put on a TV show--suffer a crime that could not be avoided and cannot be solved because authorities lost their spy hole into a phone, and now the messages of the perps were so encrypted we could not read them. That would be justice delivered!

Doofus, I would not worry about the Govt. half as much as I would about all the slease bags that could hack all your info. and do severe damage to you, and your family.

Doofus Dandy: Did you really read Bob Rankin's article? Nowhere did Bob mention anything about the NSA or CIA hacking into cell phone. The hacking Bob is writing about is from so-called "Black Hat Hackers," the antisocial bad guys who, will try to learn your Social Security number, various credit and bank account numbers, etc., to do you personal financial harm.

These guys have cracked cell phones' GPS systems and, if one is targeted, can tell if and when one is at home, or away from home, leading to the possibility of a burglary or other domestic mayhem. These guys are akin to the scumbags who try to infect a computer with viruses and other malware, or spam one's computer with bogus letters they want you to believe are from businesses and banks, to get personal information that will be used to hurt you.

By not patching these flaws in the leaves everyone open to potential harm. It is the equivalent of leaving one's windows and doors open and unlocked in the house, when one leaves for a two-week vacation.

Would similar vulnerabilities apply to calls made on landlines using VOIP?

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The tracking ability has saved quite a few lives in the last few years. For instance the CAP's cell phone tracking team has "assisted" in the rescue of numerous lost persons and folks involved in survivable aircraft crashes by directing rescue teams to the close location of the victims. They primarily use the triangulation method but if the GPS transponder is working that's an even better "locator" of one who needs help.