'Sunday Times' article on GSM changes

[Murdering Thug]

According to what I read it seems that the whole issue of cellular radio
signal encryption is really a non-issue.  They could have the most secure
standard for radio signal encryption and it wouldn't matter.  The FBI
already uses tie lines and REMOBs (remote observation units) at the telephone
switching centers to access the conversation on any particular local loop
(phone number) that they want.  I know, because in my younger days as a phone
phreak my friends and I used to play with REMOBs and BLV all the time, so 
I personally know that they exist.  

What makes you think they don't have the same kind of REMOB/BLV capability
to the cellular telephone switches?  I mean, if a conversation is scrambled
from the mobile phone to the switch over the radio, it must be unscrambled
at the switch before it can be transmitted over the trunk lines into the
PSTN network, and that's where the FBI places their tie-lines and REMOB
units.

Like someone else in this thread already mentioned, high-level end-to-end
encryption is the only way to protect your privacy.

Thug