Phone surveillance is the act of performing
surveillance on phone conversations,
location tracking
A positioning system is a system for determining the position of an object in space. One of the most well-known and commonly used positioning systems is the Global Positioning System (GPS).
Positioning system technologies exist ranging from worl ...
, and data monitoring of a phone. Before the era of
mobile phone
A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whi ...
s, these used to refer to the tapping of phone lines via a method called
wiretapping
Telephone tapping (also wire tapping or wiretapping in American English) is the monitoring of telephone and Internet-based conversations by a third party, often by covert means. The wire tap received its name because, historically, the monitorin ...
. Wiretapping has now been replaced by
software
Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work.
...
that monitors the cell phones of users.
While mobile phone surveillance has been carried out by large organizations for a long time (e,g, to find clues of illegal activities), more and more of such surveillance is now carried out by individuals for personal reasons. For example, a parent may become a "text spy" to monitor a child's texting activity. This brings in the moral, ethical and legal question of who owns people's
privacy
Prevalence
According to a 2007
American Management Association
The American Management Association (AMA) is an American non-profit educational membership organization for the promotion of management, based in New York City. Besides its headquarters there, it has local head offices throughout the world.
It ...
report, computer monitoring takes form ranges from keyboard(45%), files(43%), blogosphere(12%) to social networking sites(10%). No newer data is available on the number of phone surveillance carried out currently.
Phone surveillance software
Phone surveillance is now more commonly carried out on cell phones. This has become increasingly easy with the availability of cell phone monitoring software. These types of software are easily purchased over the
internet
The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...
and can be quickly installed on phones. There have been questions as to whether this software is illegal; software makers may show a
disclaimer
A disclaimer is generally any statement intended to specify or delimit the scope of rights and obligations that may be exercised and enforced by parties in a legally recognized relationship. In contrast to other terms for legally operative langua ...
that they do not endorse any illegal activities.
Stopping phone surveillance
The law has yet to set a clear boundary on who can or who cannot do phone surveillance. A 2005 federal court ruling denies the
FBI
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, t ...
from tracking cellphone locations of people who have not committed any crimes.
U.S. intelligence
An arm of the U.S. military, the United States
Defense Intelligence Agency
The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) is an intelligence agency and combat support agency of the United States Department of Defense, specializing in defense and military intelligence.
A component of the Department of Defense (DoD) and the ...
(DIA), has been tracking the location of Americans by searching through databases that it purchases from
mobile phone
A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whi ...
companies. The phone companies routinely collect and store their customers' cellular telephone location data when the customers use certain software applications. Additional government agencies that use such tactics to track people and arrest them include the
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is a federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. ICE's stated mission is to protect the United States from the cross-border crime and illegal immigration tha ...
and
United States Customs and Border Protection
United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is the largest federal law enforcement agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security. It is the country's primary border control organization, charged with regulating and facilit ...
.
[New York Times, 22 Jan. 2021]
"Intelligence Analysts Use U.S. Smartphone Location Data Without Warrants, Memo Says"
See also
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Cellphone surveillance
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Mass surveillance
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Surveillance#Telephones
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Telephone tapping
Telephone tapping (also wire tapping or wiretapping in American English) is the monitoring of telephone and Internet-based conversations by a third party, often by covert means. The wire tap received its name because, historically, the monitorin ...
*
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Phone Surveillance
Security
National security
Mass surveillance