A friend of mine recently started making comments that my phone was tapped. I thought he was being silly, but today he was pretty serious. It if becoming quite frequent that my calls are taking longer to dial, slight clicking noises are occuring, more static than when I use other people's cell phones, and echoing (like i can hear something I said or they say). He seems to be convinced that my phone is tapped.

I will admit that I am a liberal activist, been arrested for civil disobedience (resulting in federal probation), and know some people who perhaps aren't "good" :-) (as the government may see it). Is there a way I can confirm my phone is tapped? If so, is there anyway to stop it from happening? The strange part is my phone is a cell phone. I thought cell phones couldnt be tapped?

A person I know used to make his living via illegal activities and would often discuss his plans on his mobile phone.

Well when the police finally nabbed him, he they produced a pile of CD's with hours of taped mobile-phone conversations to the court.

I don't know how they "tapped" his phone, but they did manage to record his conversations somehow.

Maybe your phone is just playing up?

Its obvious that cell phones can be tapped.

When you make a call to other person, your call goes through at least one telephone central, where the call is sent to the right phone.

In that central they can do anything to your call.

Also, as cell phones are basically radios, the communication can be intercepted, but that is much more difficult than just go to the central and listen.

Your phone is probably malfunctioning, the fact that someone may be listening or tapping your conversations does not interfere with the functioning of your phone.

If you get a older scanner like a Bearcat, you would be surprised at what people say on their cell phones. My God like a soap opera. Anything you transmit can be intercepted.

I will admit that I am a liberal activist, been arrested for civil disobedience (resulting in federal probation), and know some people who perhaps aren't "good" :-) (as the government may see it). Is there a way I can confirm my phone is tapped? If so, is there anyway to stop it from happening? The strange part is my phone is a cell phone. I thought cell phones couldnt be tapped?

believe me they tap mobile phones,without risk of going into too much detail (mainly because its a boring,longwinded story) I was stopped and interviewed and then had both myself and my car searched by police.
They informed of the reason why and then asked me why i had made certain statements-i had made those statements about 1 hr previous down a mobile phone to a good friend and no one else,they definatley had my phone tapped as my friend spoke to no one about are conversation,this i guarantee.
I had done nothing wrong and commited no crime (honest your honour!) but was in the habbit of hanging around people that did (the foolishness of youth im afraid) im not suprised they tapped my phone.

Regards.

Its easier to tap a cell phone or wireless phone then any other type of phones. With those phones you are just sending your signals through the air and anyone that knows what they are doing can snatch them up.

I dont know if tapped is a good way to describe it though intercepting the signal is a better way to think of it. I think you dont even need a search warrant to do this because the signal is out there for anyone.

The goverment has ECHELON which can intercept pretty much every signal in the air and does just that

Im sorry to burst anyones bubble and delusions but a cell phone can only be traced as "GPS" because of its pings from cell site to cell site.

An Analog transmission as "Nextel 2 way" cannot. Even though it is transmitting over the airways it is only capable of speaking to whoever is programmed on its System, fleet and ID. without that information nothing will broadcast... used to be a programmer for motorolla & Nextel Analog Services before it became Nextel Communications.

Oh and yes the program can be cloned... but this does not mean it can be tapped, it is just a way of clearing the physical phones memory and adding a new serial# with an exsisting system, fleet and ID.

Oh yeah and an old bearcat is pulling actual signals from CB's. not cell phones.

Ask that question to OBL and he will tell you, yes cell phones can be tapped and traced.

The US military was hot on his trail in the WOT until he figured out that we were using his satellite phone to track him down.

Now he has to communicate using hand to hand or face to face messages or face capture or death, if he uses a phone we will track his butt down to meters or with in feet using GPS tracking and then kill him with a guided weapon.

Hum, funny, when I was a teenager a friend of mine’s father worked for Verison. He had a device in his car mounted like the police have PC’s mounted on the dashboard. Anyway it was a radio for checking cell phone frequencies at the cell sites. He could listen in on any conversation he wished to. I was with him in the car a few times when he was testing lines, so I can attest to this. Justmytype, are you saying that the police or the government cannot do the same thing?

Also many cordless phones can be listened in to from a regular scanner, but their range is very limited.

Older model scanners can be modified to close the gaps and receive all frequencies up to a certain Mghz. Newer models, since 1995 I believe, have a cell lock chip in it. I used to have fun listening to cell calls. I wonder where my old scanner is now? it was simple though, all you had to do was clip a diode here, add a resistor there.

I am not sure if you can tap calls or not but I know I have been talking on my cell phone and all of the sudden get to talking with someone that I was not even talking to or did not know. One time I was talking and got to talking to some woman and she thought I was her husband. It was kinda funny she was tlaking to me. And I was like lady ... Blah blah ... but anyways ... if that can happen I am sure people can tap into your lines.

using his satellite phone to track him down.

You said it, I dont have too.... Satellite phones are diffrent then cellular or Analog and can easily be traced by GPS.


Defcon5...... Actually the local police here in NJ do not have the capabilities of tracking a cell phone. There was a recent "Post" and on the local news here about a month ago about a little girl in Paterson, New Jersey who called into 911 about her mother being hurt, she hung up the phone and the local authorities could not pin point where the call was coming from and that is fact.


I am not sure also what your friends father had in his car to intercept cell calls . I do know from the base of a tower site, you will find a keyboard which will allow you to set each system , fleet, id and run random upgrades to add multiple channels. other than that, I would be much intrested too know of what the device is called.


also please read your material thouroughly before posting a link...

Found in your link on how to eavesdrop on a cell phone:

4 Possible Interception Attacks
The interesting question about the GSM security model is whether a call can be eavesdropped, now that at least one of the algorithms it depends on has been proven faulty.

Scientist around the world seem to be unanimous that the over-the-air interception and real time decoding of a call is still impossible regardless of the reduced key space [2]. But there seem to be other ways of attacking the system that are feasible and seem to be very real threats. There are also many attacks that are realistic, yet do not abuse any of the faults in the security algorithms


[edit on 3-11-2004 by Justmytype]

This would have been back in the late 80’s, I am not even sure the company was called Veriozon back then, but it was when he retired. The device looked like a big ten-key calculator, or more like two put side-by-side, with the keyboard joining the two. It had a digital display like a ten key. I believe it was tan on top, and dark brown on the bottom. I will have to call the guys son later after he gets home to see if he knew what it was called. His fathers job back at the time was to test cell towers, but the device worked when the car was driving down the road, it did not have to be next to a tower. Of course I don’t think that you had all the digital network stuff back then, but still unless it’s encrypted somehow, radio waves are still radio waves, and can be intercepted.

Justmytype ... AND I STARTED BELIEVING THEM ... Hey Justmy ... How do you think that my call got switch with someone elses call one day in the middle of me trying to talk to someone else??

OK he had a mobile base station so he could check Analog channels. That makes sense. The only transmissions he was hearing though were the ones programmed through his base "In this case mobile base" from site to site.

Back then analog phones were set up like this:

Say you had a mobile base your range would be From point (A) which is you "Mobile base" to each Analog tower you have assigned in each unit "analog phone". Meaning :

If your phone was programmed for more than one analog tower say:
System 1206 was Paterson NJ
System 1324 was West Milford NJ
System 2213 was Wayne, NJ

your Analog phone would work on these towers only.

The easiest way to explain analog phones is each phone has certain components which are recorded,

Serial# Model # when programming
Then
A System, Tower site usually four numeric numbers
A Fleet, which is basically your individual channel that others can reach you at.
Then your ID, which you can put multiple id's on certain fleets, in a nutshell, the tower recognizes, your system, fleet and Id which in turn will recognize anyone else who is part of your fleet which will allow you to conversate..

hope this helps most understand the basics of GSM or Analog.

Ah, I think I am beginning to understand where this discrepancy is coming from. I never meant that he could just type in a phone number and listen to ANY cell phone anywhere in the world, only stuff that was local to his location. Like intercepting it between the tower and the phone.

Now I am not sure what you are pointing out in your post, but are you saying that the old analog phones had to be programmed to each tower they where going to be received at? So you could only use the phone when you where in range of those towers?

I must be missing something here, because that would really limit the use of the phone.

Also you still did not comment on the fact that a radio frequency can be intercepted with the right equipment, and listened in on unless its encrypted. So this fleet id and so on is that part of an encryption? These simply sound like the data that turns the phone on to the digital network, so the tower knows what frequency goes to what phone.

Anyway that is what I am getting from your post, feel free to further explain, its interesting, I just don’t get all the lingo yet.

This isn't conspiracy, this is fact.
Your phone can be turned on from satalite.
Your phone can run on no battery (not function, but record)
also, its very easy to tap them, they run off of frequencies
each phone has a unique freq, when you sign up for most phones
your name and general location of usage is recorded ...etc....
Now-a-days instead of having officers or "humans" sort out all of the information, they have PROMIS. A collection of various programs when used together can track your every move and every keystroke and every conversation. The more involved in banking, bill paying, talking on a cell phone, having social security, health care, every time you input any secure information into a computer system it is tracked and recorded.

But the miracle about the program is, its able to run on its own, without having anyone to input anything (except initially) and it runs off of keywords
and various strings entered in search engines (to track "terrorists")
when it finds something of importance its flagged and is dumped into a file that is finally sorted and examined by a team of "experts"

its not a question of is it possible, cell phones are just one way they check up on you innocent before proven guilty people.

Cell phones nowadays (correct me if I'm wrong) switch service towers depending on how close you are to the tower...
only towers running the same systems though.
Each system would have its own encryption correct?
each type of encryption would have been created by a human
anything manmade can be man-unmade.
Much like the internet it all runs together, although together seperate.
What I'm getting at is, could they not first use the GPS to locate which tower your nearest, after that, pinpoint your location by checking the serial number (the phones identity) (which is associated with your name at purchase) then from there, any encryption can be decrypted with the right equipment, which exists and is used when it serves their benefit.
Just because some little girl called the authorities for help because her mommy was hurt and they couldn't locate her doesn't mean the technologies aren't there, it just means its used for alternate purposes.

[edit on 3/11/04 by dnero6911]

defcon5

Yes you are understanding me correctly, If you remeber correctly certain Motorola, GE and Coventional phones aka "Analog" only worked in certain areas because of this. We created Direct Connect by adding unlimted fleets and ID's onto cell sites that are shared with analog. This way you now have more coverage using 2 way. Remeber cellular and analog are two diffrent things.

What I gave you above is the basics of Analog, cellular or should I say digital works diffrently.