Here’s one for the paranoiacs in the audience. It’s come to light that the FBI has successfully used cell phones to eavesdrop on their owners, even when their owners thought that the phones were turned off. It’s not even necessary to have physical access to the phone to turn it into a “roving bug”. It’s done by downloading software to the phone with the help of the cellular service provider.
Privacy’s shaping up to be a strange issue in the 21st century. On one hand we have technological invasion like the technique described above. On the other hand we have people loudly carrying on cell phone conversations in public and voluntarily posting vast amounts of personal information online in the form of blogs, Facebook pages, etc. We even have people agreeing to install spyware to collect and report all manner of information about their online habits in exchange for a mere ten bucks.
