Rumors saying that people can verify if their cellphones or landlines are under surveillance by dialing *960*# and *26 are false, telecommunication experts said recently, as the snowballing controversy surrounding the wiretapping of government officials conducted by the Special Investigation Division (SID) of the Supreme Prosecutors’ Office sparked concern among the public that private citizens are also under surveillance.
The SID initially wiretapped Democratic Progressive Party caucus whip Ker Chien-ming’s (柯建銘) telephones to probe allegations that he asked Legislative Speaker Wang Jin-pyng (王金平) to use his influence to ease legal pressure on him.
After receiving a court notice informing him that the wiretaps had been discontinued following his acquittal in a breach of trust case, Ker revealed that one of the numbers listed on the notice as being under surveillance was the Legislative Yuan’s switchboard number.
Prosecutor-General Huang Shih-ming (黃世銘) has since apologized for the incident, saying that the switchboard was bugged only because it had been mistaken for the cellphone of one of Ker’s aides.
According to telecommunication experts, the Communication Security and Surveillance Act (通訊保障及監察法) stipulates that as investigators must conduct phone surveillance directly from a system’s mainframe, individual mobile phones are not tapped, which means that cellphone users are incapable of knowing if they are under surveillance or not.
To place a phone under surveillance, prosecutors have to get a wiretap request approved. Once the request is granted, telecom technicians are required by Article 17 of the act to set up a direct link between the telephone system mainframe and the prosecutor’s surveillance room, the experts said.
After the link is set up, the investigators have full control over the mainframe and can tap into any cellphone connected to the mainframe with just a few clicks on a keyboard, the experts added.
“We [the technicians] can’t know whose conversations are being recorded,” one of the experts said, adding that it is not possible to trace a wiretap even if it is detected.
Yang Hung-shan (楊鴻山), head of the Department of Technology at Bunny TSCM Security, a private anti-surveillance company, said surveillance can be split into two categories: the type conducted by intelligence units and the kind done by private investigators or individuals.
Intelligence agencies tap directly into a phone system’s mainframe and since telecom routing systems have built-in electrical impedance, users cannot call their own mainframes directly, Yang said, adding that “intelligence agencies wouldn’t be that stupid” to tap something that was so easily detectable.
By contrast, private wiretaps are easier to detect, Yang said.
During telephone conversations, the target’s phone is directly linked to the individual who has bugged the device — either by installing spying software or through other means — and would therefore be contributing to the cost of the phone call or the device’s power usage, Yang added.
If a person finds that calls are suddenly draining their phone battery faster, or that their phone bill has risen unexpectedly, then their phone may be bugged, Yang said.
Furthermore, if a phone record contains a lot of SMS messages sent to one number that the user does not recognize, the recipient of the texts could be the person who placed the bug, Yang added.
People who suspect they are under surveillance because their calls drop suddenly should bear in mind that a loss of signal is far more likely to be caused by bad reception than a wiretap, the experts said.
A tropical depression east of the Philippines became a tropical storm early yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, less than a week after a typhoon barreled across the nation. The agency issued an advisory at 3:30am stating that the 22nd tropical storm, named Yinxing, of the Pacific typhoon season formed at 2am. As of 8am, the storm was 1,730km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻), Taiwan’s southernmost point, with a 100km radius. It was moving west-northwest at 32kph, with maximum sustained winds of 83kph and gusts of up to 108kph. Based on its current path, the storm is not expected to hit Taiwan, CWA
Residents have called on the Taipei City Government to reconsider its plan to demolish a four-decades-old pedestrian overpass near Daan Forest Park. The 42-year-old concrete and steel structure that serves as an elevated walkway over the intersection of Heping and Xinsheng roads is to be closed on Tuesday in preparation for demolition slated for completion by the end of the month. However, in recent days some local residents have been protesting the planned destruction of the intersection overpass that is rendered more poetically as “sky bridge” in Chinese. “This bridge carries the community’s collective memory,” said a man surnamed Chuang
FATALITIES: The storm claimed at least two lives — a female passenger in a truck that was struck by a falling tree and a man who was hit by a utility pole Workers cleared fallen trees and shop owners swept up debris yesterday after one of the biggest typhoons to hit the nation in decades claimed at least two lives. Typhoon Kong-rey was packing winds of 184kph when it slammed into eastern Taiwan on Thursday, uprooting trees, triggering floods and landslides, and knocking out power as it swept across the nation. A 56-year-old female foreign national died from her injuries after the small truck she was in was struck by a falling tree on Provincial Highway 14A early on Thursday. The second death was reported at 8pm in Taipei on Thursday after a 48-year-old man
A tropical depression east of the Philippines became a tropical storm earlier today, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. The 22nd tropical storm, named Yinxing, in this year's Pacific typhoon season formed at 2am, the CWA said. As of 8am, the storm was 1,730km southeast of Oluanpi (鵝鑾鼻) with a 100km radius, it said. It was moving west-northwest at 32kph, with maximum sustained winds of 83kph and gusts of up to 108kph. Based on its current path, the storm is not expected to hit Taiwan, CWA meteorologist Huang En-hung (黃恩宏) said. However, a more accurate forecast would be made on Wednesday, when Yinxing is
RSS