Can a Cell Phone Be Tracked if It Is Turned Off
NSA Can Reportedly Track Phones Even When They're Turned Off
Photo by ALEXANDER KLEIN/AFP/Getty Images
The NSA has a diverse range of surveillance capabilities—from monitoring Google Maps use to sifting through millions of phone call records and spying on Web searches. Only information technology doesn't stop at that place. The agency tin also track downwardly the location of a cellphone even if the handset is turned off, according to a new study.
On Monday, the Washington Mail service published a story focusing on how massively the NSA has grown since the ix/xi attacks. Buried within it, there was a small-scale only striking detail: By September 2004, the NSA had developed a technique that was dubbed "The Find" by special operations officers. The technique, the Post reports, was used in Iraq and "enabled the bureau to find cellphones even when they were turned off." This helped identify "thousands of new targets, including members of a burgeoning al-Qaeda-sponsored insurgency in Iraq," according to members of the special operations unit interviewed by the Post.
It is not explained in the report exactly how this technique worked. Just to spy on phones when they are turned off, agencies would usually have to infect the handset with a Trojan that would force information technology to continue emitting a signal if the phone is in standby way, unless the battery is removed. In most cases, when you plow your telephone off—even if you do not remove the bombardment—it will finish communicating with nearby cell towers and can exist traced only to the location it was in when it was powered down.
In 2006, information technology was reported that the FBI had deployed spyware to infect suspects' mobile phones and tape data even when they were turned off. The NSA may accept resorted to a similar method in Republic of iraq, albeit on a much larger scale past infecting thousands of users at ane time. Though hard, the mass targeting of populations with Trojan spyware is possible—and not unheard of. In 2009, for instance, thousands of BlackBerry users in the United Arab Emirates were targeted with spyware that was disguised equally a legitimate update. The update drained users' batteries and was somewhen exposed by researchers, who identified that it had apparently been designed by U.Due south. business firm SS8, which sells "lawful interception" tools to help governments conduct surveillance of communications.
In contempo weeks, the NSA's surveillance programs—both domestic and international—accept been the subject of intense scrutiny following a serial of leaked secret documents. The NSA says that a vast database that it maintains on phone calls made past millions of Americans does not include location data. But the revelation that the agency has developed a technique that evidently enables it to monitor thousands of cellphones—even when turned off—is likely to only inflame civil liberties groups' concerns, prompting farther questions about the full extent of the agency's spying efforts.
Source: https://slate.com/technology/2013/07/nsa-can-reportedly-track-cellphones-even-when-they-re-turned-off.html
0 Response to "Can a Cell Phone Be Tracked if It Is Turned Off"
Post a Comment