Can someone tap a cell phone from a telephone pole?
No. The cell service does not use the copper line at all. All the phone tapping nowadays happens at the phone company, not the local copper. There is little reason to physically tap into the analog circuit. The phone company’s switching equipment allows for perfect copies of the signal to be sent anywhere else. In fact, there is a news item where, under the Bush administration, the FBI has failed to pay the phone companies for wire tapping charges and they have stopped providing some tapped lines. With a cell phone, along with tapping at the company, if you have the SIM card # and the mobile phone ID# you can listen in on the conversation via the radio link. Cutting into copper is just so old school. * edit * About the scanner – that might work with cordless phones or old style analog cell phones, but not with the modern CDMA and GSM protocols. They could put a cell jammer, but it wouldn’t necessarily have to be on the pole. They could be putting a camera or just about anything else up
