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Governments, law enforcement and intelligence services use mobiles to perform surveillance in the UK and the US. They possess technology to remotely activate the microphones in cell phones in order to listen to conversations that take place near to the person who holds the phone.[33][34]
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A previously top secret intelligence-sharing agreement between Britain and America is being released to the public for the first time.
Until a few years ago, even the existence of the agreement was not acknowledged by the two governments.
Signed in 1946, it remains the basis for the sharing of intercepted communications between the countries.
Some of the material shared on the Soviet Union in the 1940s is also being released by the National Archives.
During World War II, Britain and America had co-operated closely on so called "signals intelligence" - intercepted communications.
When the war came to an end, the two sides decided to institutionalise that co-operation and establish it in the new context of the emerging Cold War with the Soviet Union.
'Truly global coverage'
As well as revealing the deal itself, the National Archive files lay bare the negotiations which led to its signing on 6 March 1946, and the follow-up agreements throughout the 1950s that were needed to make it operate in practice.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10409113In the past signals interception was intended to listen in on communist chatter and find communist spies. By agreement the US listened in on the British public while the UK listened in on our citizens. During the Cold War analysts were sought who could speak languages such as Russian or Chinese. During the 90's it appears that the
British analysts were more interested in speakers of the Irish Brogue or the southeastern US dialect when the data mining software linked in after a keyword like "bomb" was mentioned in a conversation. That changed again to languages like Arabic, Persian, and Pashto in 2001.