Is Your Cell Phone Giving Away All Your Secrets?

Privacy?  That's a thing of the past.   The Surveillance State is the new reality and, barring massive government intervention, it's here to stay.

How are you liking that fancy Android cell phone?   Don't bother answering that, we already know.

Taxpayer-funded programs have created malware for Android smartphones that can remotely take over your phone's camera and use it to spy on you, according to reports in the Washington Times and PCWorld.

 ...Researchers from the U.S. Naval Surface Warfare Center developed the software along with researchers from the school of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University in Bloomington, thanks to a grant from the National Science Foundation. (You can read their full paper here [PDF].)

The study was designed to see what kind of information hackers might be able to steal using malware disguised as an app on a smartphone; other forms of malware already include programs that can listen in on calls and steal credit card numbers or PIN numbers that users might say while calling their bank, or use the phone to “feel” keystrokes typed on a computer keyboard near the phone.

...Perhaps the concern should be, not that individual “bad guys” might hack your phone to steal your credit card number, but that the government itself might be collecting your information. As Kade Ellis of Privacy SOS and the ACLU reported, a security expert says that everyone who was at Occupy Wall Street had their cell phone surveyed by the NYPD. “[T]he identity of that cell phone has been logged, and everybody who was at that demonstration, whether they were arrested, not arrested, whether their photos were ID'd, whether an informant pointed them out, it's known they were there anyway. This is routine,” private investigator Steven Rambam says in a video talk.

He continued, "[C]ell phones are now the little snitch in your pocket. Cell phones tell me where you are, what you do, who you talk to, everybody you associate with." 


And if the NYPD or other government agencies spying on you through your cell phone doesn't make you nervous, perhaps Rambam's last comment will: he says that the government is “amateur” compared to big business.

“Your privacy today isn't being invaded by big brother -- it's being invaded by big marketer."

There is no privacy any more.   The little we haven't foolishly surrendered through social networking, the internet and countless other activities has been taken from us without our knowledge or consent.   Your home may still be your castle but, henceforth, what goes on behind your portcullis may be less secure than you imagined.