Google, Nokia, Ericsson, Samsung clueless on NSA's phone stalking
According to the Washington Post, the US National Security Agency has had the ability to track mobile phones even when they are switched off. It's not new news, with the Post's article published July 22 and its source, troops from the NSA's Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), stating they've been able to do this since 2004. The problem is, almost a decade later, no one knows how it was done.
Concerned with the NSA's capability to use a system dubbed "The Find", Privacy International research officer Dr Richard Tynan reached out to a number of handset manufacturers to determine if it was at all possible to track down a mobile phone, even if it was switched off. Tynan asked Apple, Ericsson, Google, HTC, Microsoft, Nokia, RIM, and Samsung. He received replies from four.
Google's reply was fairly brief, as one might expect considering its mobile operating system Android only began in beta form in November 2007, was only commercially available in September 2008, and didn't even exist in 2004.
