> Secondly, as the civilian infrastructure overtook the military
> > infrastructure, it left the military operations vulnerable when
> > inevitably civilian assets were used for military tasks. If you've
> > ever used military radio gear, you know you have a big problem when
> > every soldier carries a much more powerful device in his pocket, albeit
> > one deliberately weakened by government intervention.

You could also assume the phone signal, regardless of content (ie owner) you could direct attacks, well any signals could be detected and assumed to be enemy until you prove other wise.

In history in high school one of the things they taught us about trench wars in in Europe and turkey was if they heard anything they'd fire at it if they didn't think someone was supposed to be digging where they were, some times it wasn't the enemy, some times it would be. Substitute sound for RF leaks.

> The FBI has drafted sweeping legislation that would require Internet
> > service providers to create wiretapping hubs for police surveillance
> > and force makers of networking gear to build in backdoors for
> > eavesdropping, CNET News.com has learned.

This is going to make MS holes seem like a walk in the park once these holes are exploited...

As early as in 1996 (wow, that was already 10 years ago...), the Russian military assasinated chechen president Dzhokhar Dudayev by using a guided missile that was homing in on his satellite phone.

The same can now be pulled off using cellphones.

In other, more recent, news from Russia, during the G8 summit in St. Petersburg, GSM encryption was turned off in the whole city. During that time, anybody (with the right equipment) could listen in to anybody else's phonecalls. Most phones display a broken key icon in that mode of operation (i.e. encryption switched off by provider), as many people found out.