Posted on 02/11/2010 11:08:16 AM PST by Free ThinkerNY
The Justice Department is poised this week to publicly defend a little-known law-enforcement practice that critics say may be the "sleeper" privacy issue of the 21st century: the collection of cell-phone "tracking" records that identify the physical locations where the phones have been.
It may come as a surprise to most of the owners of the country's 277 million cell phones, but their cell-phone company retains records of where their device has been at all timeseither because the phones have tiny GPS devices embedded inside or because each phone call is routed through towers that can be used to pinpoint the phones' location to within areas as small as a few hundred feet.
Such location "logs" never show up on your monthly cell-phone bill. But federal court records filed over the past year indicate that federal prosecutors and the FBI have increasingly been obtaining such records in the course of criminal investigationswithout any notice to the cell-phone customer or any showing of "probable cause" that tracking the physical location of the phone will turn up evidence of an actual crime.
"Most people don't understand they are carrying a tracking device in their pockets," says Kevin Bankston, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy group that has been trying to monitor the Justice Department's practice.
Much about the practiceincluding how many "tracking" records have been collected by the governmentremains shrouded in secrecy. But in one court case in which the use of such records arose, a Philadelphia FBI agent named William Shute testified that he had obtained such records 150 times in recent years in order to track the location of federal fugitives.
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.newsweek.com ...
No, but I used it for many years. The thing is, no firewall would have protected me. The MS firewall that came with vista did it's job and blocked the port. A game I was playing some weeks earlier asked for the port to be opened, which I did, but I failed to close it after the game. It was the only port I had open. I usually close them all except for my private network which is protected and the internet, so they got through from the game port. They likely scan for it, and I had my e-mail open on the desktop. It's been about 6 months or so. I am not getting anything from my credit monitor, and I closed my bank and investment accounts and changed the numbers. I think they were not quick enough.
That makes sense. Still the logs could be de-identified. No need to keep track of WHO is there, just how many, when and what traffic.
As I said, perhaps its a business opportunity.
Re-formatting clear your firmware.
They could probably find you, just using a metal detector...
Sorry, I meant to say re-formatting won’t clear your firmware.
Most phones won't allow you to do this which is why I like the Storm.
I would not touch a I-phone. I despise AT&T anyway.
OK, then you probably got nothing to worry about.
A year ago my son had his debit card info stolen and they tried to empty his account. They picked the wrong person because he had already spent it and had 2 bucks left.....LOL.
I am trying to develop protocols for myself that will stop any attempts to get my data. I assumed like most people that if you do shredding and keep your AV's up to date that nothing can happen, but I was wrong....so I am now very cautious.
Not doing any banking over the internet helps greatly, but that’s not a popular solution.
“so I am now very cautious”
How did they get in?
Did you have a login password for windows? This sounds like stories I’ve heard from people who had older windows systems, like Win 98.
This whole regime is a criminal enterprise..
One day I looked at my e-mail and two of some thirty folders were missing. One was labeled "personal" and the other Investments". They were gone, the folder and all content as if someone dragged and dropped them.
The only other way, other than a hack, would have been to insert a stick into the machine directly and take the data.
One thing that might have helped me is that the data was encrypted by windows live mail. It's possible that it was unusable, but I changed all my banking and investment account numbers and passwords anyway as soon as I saw the stuff was gone. And it is gone. Multiple searches have come up with nothing, nothing at all.
Right now I have it so buttoned up, my own wireless network can't find my computer. It sees a unknown device...LOL BTW, I use Windows VISTA on that machine and it's fully updated. It's been a very secure setup for a couple years now with no bugs. I think it must have been a hack and I have no idea how but game ports are easy to scan for and I'll bet it happened while I was online and right under my nose. The e-mail client was already running so there would be no way for any firewall to stop it. IMO
As to logins, I have a login but I was already logged in. What these bozos can do, is find you while you are connected to the internet. Once they find you they do a port scan. They find a port they can use and somehow they can get in without tripping the defenses and VISTA has a crapload of them.
I decided that perhaps they used the e-mail client so I disabled windows live, and went back to windows mail. It is less functional and has a lousy interface but I never lost anything with it and have used it for many years. Windows live has a complicate interface with connections to MS Office, MS chat and messaging and more. It seems to me that the more a e-mail client does the riskier it becomes so I quit using it just as a precaution. I miss some of the features but like I said, I am cautious now. If they can hack google, they can get anyone.
Thanks for the detailed info.
That’s really scary that they could get in like that. I wouldn’t have thought it possible like you described but obviously there is more to this than I understand.
I’ve read about some schemes like putting up a simple linux box as an interface between the computers and the router and I’ve seen a few other suggestions for security but I don’t know enough to implement anything out of the ordinary.
I’ll keep in mind the stuff about open ports. Maybe it’s time to go to a Mac since they are not as prone to getting hacked.
The NSA has had the capability for years.
These hacks only require a internet connection and like i said, if the user opens a port for whatever reason, then there is no firewall on the planet that can keep these bozos out.
On the same topic, I just got a letter from TD Ameritrade today stating that my e-mail addy was bouncing back their attempts to contact me. This is one of the accounts that were involved in the data loss last year and I withdrew all the funds I had in it as a precaution. I checked the profile data and the e-mail addy has not been changed. Now I am wondering if someone else has control of it. The e-mail client I am now using will not do a bounceback.
I dunno............Just watch your firewall and only open ports that you need. The machine must communicate to update your programs like the anti virus and OS. You can't close everything, and I have no idea how you can make a computer totally secure if it is connected to the net. I am beginning to figure out that nobody can do that.
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