Australian mobile law question

can cops read past sms messages or myspace messages easily?
who can

Short answer Yes and Yes. Federal police will ask to dsclose information to assist them. Hushmail was even infiltrated, but they're not going bother uless youre a suspected rapist, international drug trafficker, murderer etc.. or if doing so can assist them in finding out info on how someone died. But police don't just enforce these special powers for nothing. The most likely trap if you were actually big time, is getting the ISP to catch all your data, which they have filtering scripts and software set up to find all MSN messages, e-mails sent with regular POP3 (Outlook etc).

Phone taps are common but mostly if they think its gang related. I heard theyre going a bit crazy with them at the moment if you deal with bikies or associates. SMS are kept on the SMS gateway server for years, but they don't want to keep maintaining and employing extra people to maintain these outdated SMS's so its around 6 months, unless police say otherwise.

No one you can speak to over the phone at Telstra or Optus will even know if your phone is tapped, only you can ask them to tap it for abuse or prank calls. When they said they dont know, they really do not know. It doesn't show up in the Customer Service application a comment like :TAPPED BY FEDS!

I do not know however if it is possible to restore old SMS's once deleted, Google may know and probably even have some experimental app you can download to your phone

If you are paranoid get a phone from ebay and go buy a Telstra starter kit (funnily enough you can buy them, but not Vodaphone, Optus, 3 etc. without ID and filling out an AFP form -- you may be able to find others at a 11 or something late at night when the storeperson is tired or just can't be bothered with getting out the paperwork - try busy hours for this....) and use white pages for the address and last name only. Yes they do match it and if its wrong it says this person does not live at this address, and to ring them up and give License number, however due to WA laziness use a WA driver license random number, theyre not checked

When i got arrested once the cops got my call list from vodafone and checked all the numbers. They cant look into sms's at all unless its in ur or someone elses phone. I received that call list and everything after my court case was over back in EU. It just stated my outgoing and incoming calls and the sms's i wrote at what time and date but i didnt say what i wrote.

Its best to always delete anything incriminating and never ever carry drugs on u other than for personal use. They can tap ur fone anytime if they think illegal activity is going on. Its funny because once i was speakin with my mate and the line was pretty bad a few times and makin weird noise and he got tapped and busted bit later on.

Its like ISP's You could be going to a web page that sells illicit chemicals in China, but the only info they will keep unless police have suspicion first, as that your computer sent information to that computer at this time and date, and what port and transfer protocol it used, same with what Sustanon says, except messages are saved in Australia by law, but even longer, for billing purposes the time and date of all calls and SMS are saved for around 7 years, just not the content. Think of all those MMS's being sent around, they don't want to hold onto them for too long it creates extra work load on servers or makes them god forbid employ another person or maintain older hardware.

Remember not to enable MSN logs and use SIMPLite or Pidgin with otr (off the record) plugin. pidgeon is multiplatform Police will not be cracking these encryptions unless they hack your computer and somehow upload altered binaries.

hrm interesting.
is there a way to test to see if the phone is bugged like calling your phone up with a friends one and listening for random noises?

^ I don't think so, I think that worked back in the '60s but not now.

use a voip hard or softphone...make things a little harder for them!

i'm guessing though if you are only looking for a few pills for the weekend they wouldn't go to all this hassle on you but rather the guy that sells to all your friends right?

Mr Blonde said:

^ I don't think so, I think that worked back in the '60s but not now.

Click to expand...

Im pretty sure thats how it works in EU at the current time. I dont know bout OZ.

Sustanon said:

When i got arrested once the cops got my call list from vodafone and checked all the numbers. They cant look into sms's at all unless its in ur or someone elses phone. I received that call list and everything after my court case was over back in EU. It just stated my outgoing and incoming calls and the sms's i wrote at what time and date but i didnt say what i wrote.

Click to expand...

A dealer I know had his messages and calls used in court after he was caught with 1 pound of weed.

I am a witness and have to go to court and I asked the prosecutor cant you check these peoples phones or the phone company so you can read what sms messages were sent at the time as to use that as evidence.

he said nope .... only if the sms are still stored on phone or the persons phone is being monitored.

I asked about the sms being stored for a few months on phone companies servers and he said nope.

i used to work for optus, and they dont keep records of SMS as is popularly believed, idiots would call us all the time and ask us to print up old sms for them because they 'need' it, usually suspicious wives looking for their hubbies stuff. It cant be done, nothing other than time and date/number sent to is recorded, as is printed on the bills.

perthboy said:

hrm interesting.
is there a way to test to see if the phone is bugged like calling your phone up with a friends one and listening for random noises?

Click to expand...

CLI tracing

Yeah phone crackles and dont forget the echoing which still does happen now.

a phone tap on a land line is very different from a mobile one...

landline taps are very noticeable if you know what to listen for

mobile phones a bit harder to notice because you always get echoing.

basically a trace works like this ... you call a number and as soon as person at other end answers theres a voltage increase which enables recording and also what number you are calling to and if your calling someones phone that's being listened to same thing both numbers show up.Remember many many years ago you could call 199 on a payphone and hang up then phone would ring back well if your phone was tapped and you dialed 199 your phone would not ring back & this is why you cant use the ring back feature on phones anymore.

Anyone who has a mobile phone and its registered in your name and your a drug dealer then you have no brains.If you go to a vodafone store they may ask to see some i.d. if so tell them to fuck off, go to a newsagent they sell them for like $2 , go online and add all fake details but also writing down what you entered just incase you ever need to call vodafone to enquire about something and they sk for your full details.Another thing as well is if your big time and move alot of weight then switching your phone off before going anywhere near your home is good idea because them mobile towers are used to locate you within 5-10 metres & police can also track all your movements so they can see where your going and this is how alot of people get busted these days with the random police stops for rbt or similar.

I used to do a little blue boxing back in my amiga days and I called a number once and could not get through , the dudes phone was tapped I called him using a fony number redirected through a trunk so I could tell him ya phones tapped matey ... 3 days later feds at his door wanting to know who the fuck I was hahahahahahahah.... and my mate got rid of all his computer gear and other things he should not have had and police could do nothing ....good times ...

drug deals via technology...safe?
Police Bugs?
NEWS: Email, SMS bugging for crime fight

Some old threads you might want to have a browse through.

echoing is a common thing for leased lines (phone cards) and mobiles or anything satellite. It won't always happen and sometimes even happens on Telstras network. I think its just a glitched, same as crackling.

SMS's can be recalled because I got a fuckin sicko ranomly sending illegal pornopgraphy to my phone and I rang the police and they asked me for the time and date, from what number and my number when I rang the child porn crime stoppers line. Ofcourse someone sitting at a computer has no access to it. Maybe its different state to state?

^^^

What is actually contained in the sms message can only be viewed once they put a tap on that number so any further sms you recieve they can see it then thats evidence. What they would do is monitor that number and only then they can see what is contained inside.

Im sure when you called police about this they wanted you to bring phone in as to show them and only then they would act.

as I said I am a witness and I asked the police this and they said nope we cant get access to what was actually contained in the sms only if your phone is being monitored already.They can get a log of phone numbers from the sms but thats it.

All SMS is recorded for at least 2 years by the carriers nowadays. If subpeonaed by a court they will hand over this information to be used as evidence against you. There is no 'tapping' necessary. With SMS the contents and subjects of EVERY users' messages are all semi-permanently archived for law enforcement use.

It would cost a lot of money to sort through backlogged SMS's and gain real evidence, most people who deal tell their clients to use code anyway. So it would just prolong the case and probably isnt needed half the time since most people plead guilty anyway. They wouldnt bother unless its someone thats been dealing for years and in big amounts and showing off.