Why Is It Assumed The E-Spying Was Phone and E-Mail?

Bush said there were two types of surveillance, and what he was doing is 'monitoring'. To me that sounds a lot more like a bug than a tap. You may recall from monday's morning briefing that he as mighty picky about his words too. That has been lingering in my mind ever since.

. . . and bugging would certainly be easier to do than even a few years ago . . .

what about those broadband connections to computers with microphones and cams....

What about the location chip in cell phones? Do the microphones on cell phones 'really' turn off?

I'm trying to prove I was in a certain place at a certain time on a certain date, and I did receive a call at that time. But T-mobile can't pinpoint which tower it was that sent the signal, so I guess in terms of location chipping, it's not something to really worry about. Much.

I bought a new phone last month. I had a good old phone and I asked if I could just use it. Because it did not have the GPS chip in it they told me Federal Law prohibited them from reloading a number into it. So I'd have to get a new phone.

So basically what they told me was that all new phones have the chip and as fast as the old ones die they are replaced with GPS equiped phones.

As a long time every-day GPS user who has been well aware of its capabilities for over a decade I can not convey to you how chilling that thought was. Cell phone numbers are becomming as much of a person's identity as they Social Security number and to be able to track the travels of those phones to easily coalated personal information is way past Orwell all by itself.

But we were just trying to get the tower location - if the carrier doesn't track the tower location, then the GPS chip is kind of useless.

Even if they do not have access to that bit of data, it doesn't follow that GPS data from your phone isn't received by the tower itself, nor does it follow that your phone isn't transmitting location data tied to another bit of data such as phone or hardware serial number.

I was once involved in an car accident on a bridge with surveillance cameras. Try as I might, I was unable to get any video of the accident, but no one denied that video existed. It simply wasn't available to toll-paying bridge customers.

It's sitting in the driveway. But they already know that.

In the On-Star system. I have seen instructions to partically disable the system (I think it can listen in on your conversations at all times as well) or the whole thing. I have a friend who has it in his pickup. I told him I'd find out how and rip it out for him if he wanted me to.

$30K truck and you got to rip the god damned thing apart to drive it like a free man. How the hell is that?

monitoring, or "detecting", or whatever the word was. That seems even worse to me. That suggests open-ended spying without any specific cause whatsoever. It's much more worrisome than directed surveillance.

It was as if he had tripped up and wanted to be sure he got it right, said the right thing. I got the feeling there was some cover-your-ass going on but I couldn't figure out what sort of subterfuge he was pulling. Overall thought I got the impression they were monitoring absolutely everything and sorting out the shit that interested them later.

Think about this, it is quite likely that their means of surveillance, no matter what it is, probably allows them to constantly review earlier interceptions for new information. It can be like going back in time to the same event but being able to see or hear it from different angles as many times as you like and looking for as many different things if you want. Basically broadband recording of the communications satellites and a couple of big communications centers. Now apply that principal to every communications by everyone for a period of say 1 day per disk, and you say you got disks going back 5 years.

Once you've got such a system it allows you to build your case backward in time using wiretaps from conversations you may have recorded days, weeks, months or even years earlier before any connection seemed to exist. Sort of like dots that can self-connect backward in time.

Its all very easy to imagine.

But for different reasons.

It actually sounds pretty logical. I think through no choice of his the facts will come out though :)