Each day millions of cellular telephone calls are placed from moving vehicles all across the country, and each day these very same calls are monitored by unwanted third parties.

      Doctors, lawyers, construction contractors, real estate agents, power companies....anyone who uses a cellular phone can be heard conducting business. Information like bank account numbers, credit card numbers, addresses, appointments, and contract bids, are all being tossed into the air. On their way from the car phone antenna to the cell site, these radio signals are picked up by scanner radios and even by television sets fine tuned to the UHF band between channels 80 and 90.

      If you thought your cellular conversations were safe from being overheard then you may have given out information at one time or another that is now in the hands of a stranger.

      Sure it is, with one or two differences. Your home telephone is wire-connected. This means that the handset is connected by cord to the base and the base in turn connects directly into a wall socket. Wire-connected phones are immune from scanner radio monitoring.

      Cellular telephones transmit their signal -- your conversation -- from an antenna mounted on the car body into the air to be received by a cell site computer and thence on into a wire-connected line. It's the time that the signal spends floating from the car antenna on a radio frequency between 800 and 900 megahertz to the cell site that presents the problem. The 800 megahertz band is easily receivable on most scanner radios and on a properly tuned UHF television set.

      There are over 800 channels assigned to the 800 megahertz cellular mobile telephone (CMT) band by the Federal Communications Commission. Nearly half of these channels are overseen by a wireline company which is engaged in telecommunications. The remaining channels belong to a non-wireline company, who is not in the telephone business.

      The computer that runs the CMT show is known as the Mobile Telephone Switching Office (MTSO). Telephone lines link cell sites to the MTSO. The cell sites provide wide area radio coverage and each site houses one of 21 control channel transceivers. The control channel is used for switching and data delivery and has no voice components. Each site also commands up to 40 voice channel transceivers.

      When a cellular user starts his or her vehicle, the mobile terminal is activated and scans all 21 control channels to find the strongest signal. Each time the vehicle moves out of range of a cell site to which the terminal is locked on, transfer to the next strongest signal occurs. During the course of a telephone call, as the vehicle passes from cell site area to cell site area, handoffs result. The CMT user might notice a degradation in signal quality before the handoff, but the actual frequency switch is unnoticeable.

      A scanner monitor can listen in on cellular calls simply by scanning the voice channels from 870.000 Mhz to 896.000 Mhz. Following a call as it is handed off from cell site to cell site is not impossible to do, and there is even a scientific, though complicated method of tracking a call through the frequencies.

      The hit and miss method of cellular monitoring is most often used, in which, as soon as a call is handed off from one frequency, the monitor simply hits the scan button and continues the march through the cellular frequencies until he finds the same conversation again. You'd be surprised, it works ninety percent of the time.

      There is. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 makes it illegal to listen in on cellular telephone calls, let alone divulge what was said. A newer amendment now makes it illegal to manufacture or sell scanners capable of receiving cellular frequencies, but owning such a scanner is still perfectly legal.

      Ninety-five percent of the scanner radios sold in stores today come with the cellular telephone band blocked from the unit's microprocessor. This predicament is remedied in most cases by simple modifications that hobbyists can render to allow reception of the band once again. The modifications are not illegal to perform. All that is outlawed is the physical act of intercepting and listening to an actual cellular call. In the future, scanners will have the cellular band totally deleted from the central processing unit.

      I have yet to hear of anyone being prosecuted for cellular telephone monitoring. The car phone user is really not protected by this law, but it makes the cellular companies feel as if they are. As soon as someone hears sensitive personal information spoken over a cellular phone, it's too late...the damage is done.

      A sampling of information heard by hobbyists who monitored the cellular mobile telephone band:

* Telephone numbers
* Names and Addresses
* Bank account numbers
* Bank balances
* Social Security numbers
* Finance discussions
* Health discussions
* Legal discussions
* Psychiatrists discussing patients by name
* Businesses arranging job bids
* Police officers setting up buys to catch criminals
* Criminals conducting business
* Vacation plans, including times and dates of vacations
* Husband/Wife, Boyfriend/Girlfriend arguments
* 911 calls

      There is no end to the sheer amount of information relayed over mobile phones daily; information that could cause damage in the wrong hands. Unfortunately, car phone owners seem to be blissfully unaware that they are being overheard. The information continues to flow and listeners are having a field day.

      Want to bet? Scanner owners aren't always readily noticeable by the large antennas on their roofs or the scanners clipped to their belts. The optimum 800 megahertz receiving antenna is just 3.7 inches tall. Take a look at the cellular antenna mounted on the body of your vehicle....not very big, is it?

      Noted communications authority Bob Grove of Grove Enterprises said in a recent issue of Monitoring Times magazine that "the odds are better that someone IS listening than NOT listening" to your calls. It can happen to you and it is happening every day.

      There are five important factors to remember when using your cellular phone:

      1) A third party might be listening in.
      2) Your car phone is a radio transmitting your call through the air        before it arrives at a phone line.
      3) Don't reveal any personal information you wouldn't want anyone        else to know about.
      4) Whatever it is, it can wait until you can get to a wire-connected        telephone.
      5) A little information goes a long way.

There are no guarantees that the information heard over your cellular telephone won't be used against you at some time or another. The good guys use scanners, occasionally listen in to car phone calls and enjoy the free entertainment. The bad guys use scanners, listen in to car phone calls and think of what they can do with the information.

      Every cellular user has the right to know that their privacy while conversing is not assured. It's a fact the cellular companies and retailers don't want you to know about. They need you to think that unwanted listeners are few and far between and your car phone is as safe as a wired line. It's not true and if you use a car for any purpose, it's time you realized the impact. The next time you're driving along and pick up your cellular, think twice about what you're going to say, and who else might hear it.

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