Mobile Spyware: Finally criminal?

Commercial Mobile Spyware apps have been around for over a decade. They've been on every platform with the best(if one can call it that) support on the most popular Operating Systems. They're usually sold as tools to help one monitor their children or keep track of a spouse or significant other. Tracking the latter groups lean toward a gray or even a black/illegal area.

The FBI has come along to the idea that folks selling spyware(or at least mobile spyware) are committing a crime. Specifically since your phone is a telecommunications device, installing spyware on it is the same as wiretapping.  Also the CEO of Invocode(producers of StealthGenie spyware) and his employees are members of a "criminal conspiracy responsible for StealthGenie".  Fortunately, the FBI arrested the CEO in Los Angeles over the weekend.

StealthGenie is a spyware app that supports iOS, Android and Blackberry OS. Blackberry support only applies to pre Blackberry 10 devices so newer devices would not be vulnerable. The capabilities of the spyware is not breaking any new ground, we've seen all of this before and in software from their competitors.

StealthGenie's hompage - The World's Most Powerful Mobile Phone Spy Software"

Intriguingly from the Government's complaint, Invocode expected that the majority of their sales of the StealthGenie mobile spyware would be to "[s]pousal cheat: Husband/Wife of boyfriend/girlfriend suspecting their other half of cheating or any other suspicious behaviour or if they just want to monitor them.".  So mainly to monitor someone else's phone without their permission.  The FBI agents purchased a copy of StealthGenie and were able to immediately monitor the calls and text messages from another of their phones.  While investigating monitoring software from competitors of Invocode, I've also seen that they perform similarly or perform additional functions.

Speaking of Invocode's competitors, they don't seem to think highly of StealthGenie:

"...simply isn't worth the money!" - advice from other criminals?

This screenshot above is from a competitor that recommends two other mobile spyware packages in addition to itself that they prefer to StealthGenie. This implies that these are three other, possibly more powerful, mobile spyware and "wiretapping"/interception tools that are still available on the app markets. I applaud the US government going after Invocode in the "first-ever criminal case concerning the advertisement and sale of a mobile device spyware app".

Due to the gray-area uses of mobile spyware, Anti-malware and Anti-Spyware companies have had to come up with classifications to keep us from stepping on possibly legal  developers of spyware. This is mainly to avoid being sued for being anti-competitive or harming the business of legitimate monitoring software developers. It would certainly ease matters now that governments are starting to criminally prosecute producers of tools that can be used to intercept users calls and texts.

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If you're curious about the legality of selling mobile spyware, the US Government cites the following sections of law:

Title 18, United States Code,
Section 2512(l)(b) (sale of an interception device)
Section 2512(l)(c)(i) (advertisement of a known interception device)
Section 2512(l)(c)(ii) (advertising a device as an interception device)

One can read the details themselves in the Federal complaint.