PhoneTalk

I've owned plenty of buggy cell phones, but this is different

By David Frame Follow me on Twitter    |   Tuesday, December 19, 2006 (permalink)
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If cell phone-dialing telemarketers and SMS-spamming marketers don't have you worried enough about the sanctity and privacy of your cell phone, this one will.

Federal agents have the ability to remotely activate the microphone on your cell phone, whether you are on a call or not, and listen in on what you and the people around you are saying.

Whoa.

And no, this is not based on one of those urban-myth emails my father sends around from his AOL mail account. This is real. And while the feds are pretty tight-lipped about it, apparently certain popular cell phones like the Motorola A900, the Motorola Razr and most Nextel phones (due to the nature of the TDMA network) are vulnerable.

You know what the worst part of all this is? It's going to put a fatal bullet in so many classic movie scenes! You know, where the cops connive to plant a bug or eavesdrop on some crook. Who can forget:

-- Catherine Zeta Jones bringing iced tea to the surveillance van in Traffic

-- Gene Hackman's character Harry "I don't care what they're talking about, all I want is a nice fat recording" Caul in The Conversation

-- Michael Douglas beating Charlie Sheen to a pulp in Central Park in the movie Wall Street, all the while unknowingly being bugged by "Bud Fox"

-- Cheadle, also in Traffic, forcing his way back into the suspects living room and planting a bug under his desk before getting dragged away

-- Cheney, in a preposterous black comedy, asserting that unwarranted wiretaps are legal... hmm... what was the name of that movie again?

This technical innovation is going to make these classics all of a sudden look just as outdated as Pretty Woman does, when Richard Gere pulls that football-sized cell phone out of his briefcase...that scene ruins it for me every time!

Topics: Observed