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Surge in Sale[s] of Disposable
Cell Phones May Have Terror Link
Phones Can Be Difficult or Impossible to Track;
Large Quantities Purchased in California, Texas

Federal agents have launched an investigation into a surge in the purchase of large quantities of disposable cell phones by individuals from the Middle East and Pakistan, ABC News has learned.

The phones -- which do not require purchasers to sign a contract or have a credit card -- have many legitimate uses, and are popular with people who have bad credit or for use as emergency phones tucked away in glove compartments or tackle boxes. But since they can be difficult or impossible to track, law enforcement officials say the phones are widely used by criminal gangs and terrorists.

"There's very little audit trail assigned to this phone. One can walk in, purchase it in cash, you don't have to put down a credit card, buy any amount of minutes to it, and you don't, frankly, know who bought this," said Jack Cloonan, a former FBI official who is now an ABC News consultant.

Law enforcement officials say the phones were used to detonate the bombs terrorists used in the Madrid train attacks in March 2004.

"The application of prepaid phones for nefarious reasons, is really widespread. For example, the terrorists in Madrid used prepaid phones to detonate the bombs in the subway trains that killed more than 200 people," said Roger Entner, a communications consultant.

The FBI is closely monitoring the potentially dangerous development, which came to light following recent large-quantity purchases in California and Texas, officials confirmed.

In one New Year's Eve transaction at a Target store in Hemet, Calif., 150 disposable tracfones were purchased. Suspicious store employees notified police, who called in the FBI, law enforcement sources said.

[Read on here.]

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Michelle Malkin and John Hinderaker have more, as does Sensible Mom, Lastango and A J Strata. 

I'm sure it's just pure coincidence that TracFones got so much more popular right after al-NYT broke the NSA "wiretaps" story. Sure it is.

Nothing I've read on this, by the MSM or by bloggers, seems to reflect any real familiarity with TracFones.  They're disposable, yes, in the sense that they aren't too expensive to replace when a newer model comes out that's smaller, has more features, etc, but they aren't exactly built with the expectation that they'll be "worn once" and tossed. I'm on my third one, having replaced the first with a digital model and the second when I moved from Texas to Illinois. TracFones are made by Nokia and Motorola and differ from models you might get with a contract with one of the major carriers only by having an additional chip installed; externally the only difference is the TracFone logo on the phone.  I'm not at all certain that stocking up on TracFones will do the jihadis as much good as a lot of people are afraid it will, but I'm not going to go into the details of my reasoning here. If you have an email address I recognize or one that ends in .gov write me if you're interested in hearing more on that.

Posted by Bill Faith on January 14, 2006 at 01:32 AM in Surveillance/CIA-NSA-Media Treason | Permalink

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