Wireless Cell Provider Gave Feds Backdoor Access--Surveillance via Cell Phones

Just another good reason to BOYCOTT VERIZON! This is why Bush wants Telecoms protected instead of free citizens, because of deliberate network of illegal spying on millions of Americans. This was plainly illegal, and probably continues. Congress is being notified and the documentation taken seriously.

A cell phone is a powerful medium for conducting surveillance, even in real time, on any individual.

clipped from blog.wired.com Whistle-Blower: Feds Have a Backdoor Into Wireless Carrier -- Congress Reacts A U.S. government office in Quantico, Virginia, has direct, high-speed access to a major wireless carrier's systems, exposing customers' voice calls, data packets and physical movements to uncontrolled surveillance, according to a computer security consultant who says he worked for the carrier in late 2003. According to his affidavit, Pasdar tumbled to the surveillance superhighway in September 2003, when he led a "Rapid Deployment" team hired to revamp security on the carrier's internal network. He noticed that the carrier's officials got squirrelly when he asked about a mysterious "Quantico Circuit" -- a 45 megabit/second DS-3 line linking its most sensitive network to an unnamed third party. Quantico, Virginia, is home to a Marine base. But perhaps more relevantly, it's also the center of the FBI's electronic surveillance operations. suit names Verizon Wireless as the culprit.

Rutherford Institute on Cell Phones and Increasing Surveillance