CNET has a very interesting piece up on the recently-reported FBI cell phone taps that the Feds used to take down two members of the Genovese crime family. It turns out that the FBI, after trying and failing to set up effective taps on John Ardito and his lawyer, Peter Peluso managed to put taps into their cell phones that could operate whether the phones were in use or not, turning them into powerful portable microphones.

The only problem with the report (from the standpoint of a curious reader, at least) is that no one knows exactly how the Feds achieved the tap - and the FBI isn't telling. CNET's research eliminated an inserted microphone, taped to a battery, as a possibility because the tap, according to court records, could work anywhere in the United States - whether there was an agent nearby who could pick up the signals from a microphone's radio or not. Instead, it seems likely that the FBI obtained a warrant to hack directly into the phone and use the software to both intercept phone messages and turn the phone's microphone on, even when the phone wasn't in use. True or not, I'm willing to bet we see this idea as the basis for a plot twist for a gangster movie in the next five years.