FBI Can Eavesdrop Even When Cell Phone is Off
Fox News informs us that the FBI can activate the microphone in your cell phone and listen to your conversations, even when your cell phone is turned off!
We’re carrying our bugging devices around with us. How did we get to a place in which it is OK for the FBI to use your own cell phone to bug your house, but the “right to privacy” invented by the courts is used to support abortion.
HT to Health Knowledge Blog via Digg.
On a side note, the “right to privacy” was not invented by the courts.
The “right to be let alone” is an ancient right long recognized in common law.
As far as my research has uncovered, the first use of the term “right to privacy” was about 117 years ago in The Right to Privacy, Warren and Brandeis, 4 Harvard L.R. 193 (1890)), but, the idea of a right of privacy goes back thousands of years.
Early invasions of privacy were treated as trespass, assault, or eavesdropping. People believed they had a right “to be let alone” long before the phrase “right to privacy” was coined.
As far as I know, the first use of the phrase “right to be let alone” by the USSC was in 1834. The U.S. Supreme Court stated that a “defendant asks nothing — wants nothing, but to be let alone until it can be shown that he has violated the rights of another.” Wheaton v. Peters, 33 U.S. 591, 634 (1834)
The “right to privacy” is an ancient concept, the term is what’s new (well, if you consider 117 years old new).
Not just the FBI…hackers can do it too. They can even use your cell phone camera.
http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/story/98912.html
http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/story/98881.html