Cell phone calls recorded ?

Edwards Finance > Phones

Q. Someone told me that they saw on a TV news show (60 Min, 20/20 or one like that) that ALL cell phone calls are being recorded and archived in a LARGE warehouse somewhere in the northeast, to be used to trace the calls to capture lawbreakers. Anyone ever hear about such a thing?

A. I am certain that I have heard that the Patriot Act allows "them" to record cell phone calls and store them without a warrant. Not by a lawyer. Of course, anyone who would believe such a thing would pobably also believe that "they" can hold someone without trial and without letting them see a lawyer just by claiming that their a terrorist. It IS possible to trace the whereabouts of a cell phone user, a recent cite would be the case of a local home burglar/rapist stupid enough to use a stolen cell phone. The call and location information is available after the fact. As for recording all calls, have absolutely no idea whether it is being done. Rather sceptical that speaker independent voice recognition software is good enough yet to search thru it for keyword detection. Multi-lingual speaker independent voice recognition software is even a bit harder to accomplish. This would leave using unemployed dot.com workers to listen to all of same, with the difficulty that few speak ordinary english much less are multilingual. Well, let's see how plausible this is. Are cell phone calls archiveable? Yes, fairly easily - especially those made on digital networks. Could all of them be stored for some duration? Yes, fairly easily - the bandwidth of a cellphone isn't all that high; a device capable of recording live video can handle a large number of phone calls. The most unlikely detail is the 'LARGE warehouse'. It wouldn't need to be particularly large; a multi-petabyte disk farm fits in only a few standard 19" racks. But a warehouse would be just about the worst possible environment. Computers need lots of clean power, air conditioning, and some level of protection from dirt and moisture. The best possible location would be in an office block, especially one that has convenient access to cell towers. To take the cell-is-not-my-friend thing further, theoretically (as in "I'm not worried about it, even if it happens"): don't cell phones that aren't in use (not engaged in a call) but are still active do the cell phone equivalent of a ping, now and then, for the sake of staying "net-aware"? *If* so, while these cell-pings aren't voice comm, might they still be on record, as far as phone/date/time/cell is concerned? Note that I realize that that is, if even possible, simply a *phone* locator, not a person tracker.

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