clicks on my phone. this is so funny. talking to repug who starting

business in security and knowing people going in iraq, contractors. he knows workers in security in govt in katrina, new orleans. i notice clicks on my phone and i start laughing. i say, bush is listening on your phone, not mine. they dont mess with people like me the loud mouth. bush is messing with you guys, his own people. he tells me trying to hook with fbi to do his security thing for gitmo. the clicks are going. i laugh some more. it is YOU they are listening in on, i say. okay, i tell him. i wont say anything ugly about bush, this is about your business. i am PRO business. laughing all the way thru.

you know. doesnt bother him at all. he doesnt care if he is being tapped. i am just in awe.......neither good nor bad. but a wow.

It's all done electronically now. Those days of a second pickup and a Wollensack tape machine engaging went out with our civil rights and hope for a better future.

You'll never know it when they bug your phone. If you're doing antiwar work, just assume that it is.

dont care. i know they are doing it and i dont like it. but thanks. i really was not thinking one way or another if he is being tapped. or me for that matter. i figure i wont be able to make it thru the airlines, lol lol. that is half humor too.

Thom Hartmann siad on his talk show, he was being wiretap on the telephone and he heard clicks and heavy breathing! He said, this went on for 3 months!

to make a profit from this war,....... the fight to make america fearful. that is his business after all, making sure america is afraid. and.... this is the dude that fully supports what bush is doing in the name of security

like Emma in White Christmas. With modern methods there is no way you will know from your phone service that your line is being tapped. In fact wire tap is kind of a misnomer as there is no tap on any wires. It is all done with software that catches both parties and records time of call, incoming or outgoing and the external party's information.

I like Thom a lot but either someone on his staff or some moran is doing this-not the Government unless they want to misdirect his energy and attention. Now that's something to think about.

make audible line noises if tapping into a phone line. A 600 Ohm transformer or an "active" Skutch Box would be heard if the tap is "made" during off hook phone usage. If the amatuer tap is across the line with a good fast active switch, it would be detectable with an oscilloscope or a detection device available at your local spy gear store. And yes, there are very local spy gear stores here stateside. just an educated guess, of course, no spy experience just electronics knowledge here.

Even old-fashioned 1940's technology wiretaps were "listen only". The tapper couldn't have talked if he had wanted to. Somebody has been watching too many bad movies.

He also stated, more Thom talked about he's phone being wiretaped, heaveier breathing got. Of course, I laughted too.

It's not just government that does taps. I've been tapped by "private security" for a corporation. (That was back in the late 80s.) They don't have the same access to the phone company facilities, and they don't have warrants.

The way most telephone blocks are set up (at least the one's I have played with) you still can do it the old way with two wires attached to "mic in" jack on a tape recorder or other device. They are still handeld with punchblocks before they go into fiber optic wires.

Modern is easier, cheaper, and faster. You can still ride horses too.

That is, the subject is aware he is being followed. It is done to intimidate.

How many people here are actually important enought to be bothered with? But there are lots that would like to think that they are doing damage to W by posting here and that W has to do something about them so they imagine tails and stuff on the line. It reinforces their fantasy.

The gov't simply does not have the resources to pay personal attention to all the posters here.

though you seem to have an appreciation for modern tech you don't seem to understand that EVERYTHING is being sucked in and algorithms are doing the listening on the first pass.

now who were the pentagon spying on recently, VIPs?

peace

Yes, everything gets sucked in, scanned by computers, then the programs refer some items to a human for evaluation. Almost of those will be false alarms, and will be discarded. That human is pretty busy. A very few of those will be refereed up his chain of command and evaluated as requiring follow-up and personal tagging. The alphabet agencies simply do not have the resources to give all the posters at DU that kind of personal attention.

At some point humans have to come into the loop, and they don't have THAT MANY HUMANS. SkyNet hasn't happened yet.

get paid a visit over the past few years so it sure isn't out of the question.

peace

why, look at all the top Al-Qaeda people they've caught with their incredible technology! There's.... ah... that guy.... and... uh, some other guy. Really!

Yes, the alphabet agencies do occasionally screw up, as do all human endeavors. But if you think that they are nothing but a bunch of screw ups and completely incompetent - then you are very greatly mistaken.

When I was in the Army, I worked in a unit that did radio intercepts and wiretaps. Even back then, over 40 years ago, we could "fingerprint" an individual radio transmitter. My unit back then was controlled by the NSA. They were a very closed-mouth group of people. We joked that NSA stood for, "Never Say Anything". Certainly the technology has gotten better in four decades.

As an outsider, you hear only about the screw-ups. You never hear when they do it right. Doing it right also means no publicity. Because of your ideology, you want to think they always get it wrong. Because of the secrecy, you only hear of when they do get it wrong. So you have an easy time thinking that they ALWAYS screw up.

Having once been on the inside, even if so long ago, I know that they were very good at what they did.

Later in life, (Still in the military) I became an investigator for a few years, and worked some with the FBI. They are normally extremely competent, although they sometimes screw up too.

So if you think the alphabet agencies are nothing but a bunch of screwups, you are very badly deluded.

good folk, like most everything in life. i think our military is kick ass too. you being in these org see how it works. i on the other hand have spent the majority of my life in business. the company is only as good as the head dude. get a rotten and corrupt person running the business, and the company will fail, the employees will follow the lead out of pressure if nothing else. he contaminates the good

unfortunately i think the leaders have let down the good honest hardworking folks you defend.

The top does set the climate and the expectations for the alphabet agencies to work in.

and yeah, i'll continue thinking they're a bunch of screwups despite what some guy on the internet says was the case 40 years ago. Maybe decades ago, but not with the career intel guys being shitcanned in favor of bushie loyalists like Porter fuckin' Goss.

I believe that would be the number 3 man you are referring to.:silly:

Of course, to the person that it happens to, for them it is 100%. I am addressing the large number of posts that I have seen of people who think they are under surveillance because of they post here. I am not saying that the alphabet agencies are nice guys. I am saying that they don't have the resources to pay that much attention to very minor people. Of course, occasionally, they may target the wrong person, but even then that does not mean they are following everybody.

they & their computers ARE watching EVERYONE

peace

...specific surveillance. If you think you are being specifically targeted, unless you have really been doing something serious, then it is likely to be egotism and paranoia. Paranoia thinking they are everywhere, egotism thinking that you are important enough to warrant that kind of attention.

I have assumed general surveillance from the very start.

and it is merely a funny story. and the fbi is already doing a background check on this man. he is asking for business at gitmo. for security. i dont think it is too silly to think he MIGHT be the one targeted. hence, the whole funny of it.

they obviously can't, so they fiddlefuck around with "persons of interest," Quakers, and ridiculous dead ends.

if you're accusing some of being a bit self-important, you're also giving the "authorities" far too much credit for their thus far absolutely pathetic spookwork.

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

In California, the law requires that when the police are done tapping someone's phone, they must inform that person. I got a letter from the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s office (homicide division) that they'd been listening in to my phone calls for the last three months, and that the warrant for my phone had now expired. I live in Nevada, however, and I can only assume that it was easier to get a wiretap in California than it is in Nevada, especially for cellular phones. Thanks to laws passed for benefit of the mafia in the 70s, Nevada has some of the strictest anti-wiretapping laws in the nation; virtually nothing is admissible if someone heard it on the phone.

The way it worked was this: A former acquaintance/coworker of mine, I guy I'd known in high school, turned out to be a big-time drug addict. One day he was arrested for possession of methamphetamine and forging a check. Apparently this genius coworker of mine brought his dope with him when he went into the local supermarket and tried to cash a $900 stolen check altered to be made out to himself. He was sentenced to drug court, where, if he managed to complete therapy and stay sober, everything would be forgiven. Sounds fair, and I guess it is, especially since there's a higher rate of sobriety with drug court than otherwise.

A month into the program, however, the US Secret Service kicked in his door and arrested him for a variety of check frauds, including stealing SSI checks from mailboxes, altering those checks, forging checks from scratch, and God only knows what else. Much like Monty Haul, they were willing to make a deal, but only if he narced out everyone he ever knew who did something wrong. The problem was, he'd already ratted out everyone who had ACTUALLY committed a crime the FIRST time he got arrested a few months prior. So he started making shit up. Apparently including a murder that I was alleged to have been involved in (at least, I'm assuming it was a murder, since it was the homicide division doing the wire tapping).

Now, I used to take drugs. A LOT of drugs. Enough drugs to get me locked up for life. I'm not bragging, since I'm certainly not proud of it, but I'm willing to point out and accept my flaws. I've done illegal shit before. But it's been years since I took drugs, and I never hurt anyone or their property, and certainly not physically. To anyone who knows me, the very suggestion would be ludicrous. I am so law-and-order, straight-and-narrow it can seem downright scary at times. But I guess the Secret Service didn't know me very well.

Here's the catch:
At the time I was being wiretapped, I was employed as an assistant probation officer (and general assistant) for both the local District Attorney's office and Probation Department. Take notes, do paperwork, initial intakes, pee in cups, that sort of thing. I was talking about crimes all the time! Constantly! And I only talk to four people on the phone, since I don't know or like anyone else: my mom, my ex-wife, and my two best friends. One of them is a deputy DA, and is as straight-and-narrow as a human being can possibly be (almost disturbingly so), and a civil engineer who discusses burying shit in the desert ad nauseum (his master's thesis has something to do with the reactivity of concrete and desert soils; I don't ever know what the hell he's talking about, but I nod sagely and politely whenever he starts ranting about watching mud dry).

The engineer and I both got letters a couple of years ago from the San Bernardino Sheriff’s office that our cell phones had been tapped, and hinting that our home phones had been as well. It was legitimate; when we called the Sheriff’s office, they would tell us that the letters were indeed genuine, though they refused to share anymore details. The FBI also has a file on at least me (though whether it was from the drug-addict days or the wiretapping days I honestly don't know -- fortunately everything posted on a message board is hearsay), though the FBI has so far declined to share the contents with me (and for good reason).

Thank God I didn't have anything criminal to hide. But the police, on the advice of a snitch, still listened to every private discussion I had. Every heartbreaking argument I had with my ex-wife over our daughter. Every private, intimate insecurity I shared with my mother. Every sensitive conversation about juvenile offenders I had with my DA buddy, conversations which are privacy-protected by state and federal statute as well as court order for the protection of children. Every discussion with my engineer friend about our respective sex lives, which included the most personal details of not only ourselves, but our wives and girlfriends, has been recorded somewhere by some government bureaucrat for posterity..

So if you hear clicking on the phone line, or even breathing, it's probably not someone listening in. It's probably an old phone line that has condensation in the cable somewhere between the phone company and your house, or maybe a nosy office-mate. But it might be the police, or the government.

What do you want them to hear? Do they have a reason to listen in? Do the dirty little details of your life deserve to be known, even to perfect strangers who will never tell anyone else? Is the paranoia at least sometimes justified? In my case, at least, it is. I know that, for the rest of my life, I can never have a moment of privacy again.

Your papers, please.


Long-winded post, especially for Christmas Eve. Thanks for reading.

With modern technology, you will not have any clues. And breathing??? Even the 1940's technology was "listen only". When a line is singled out to be listened to, you don't have an agent doing live monitoring, because most of the time he would be listening to nothing. You don't pay agents to do that. The calls are taped, then reviewed.

The fact that you were wiretapped does not translate to you knowing how the technology worked. Don't take you lessons from movies.

Did you see the movie "Fugitive" with Harrison Ford? Do you remember the scene where he calls the cops and times the call to hang up one second before they can trace the call? Big problem with that scene. Caller ID had already been in use nation wide for over a decade, and caller ID traces instantly. Since all police stations at the time already had caller ID, the scene was silly. Movies are usually a very bad source of information.

So if you hear clicking on the phone line, or even breathing, it's probably not someone listening in. It's probably an old phone line that has condensation in the cable somewhere between the phone company and your house, or maybe a nosy office-mate. But it might be the police, or the government.

Sorry, I thought I made it clear with the rest of the post: No, there were no noises of any kind. I didn't have the slightest clue. That's why I used words like "probably" and italicized "might," and mentioned that I only found out what had happened until after I'd received a letter from the sherrif's department. I'd even like to restate the part that said, "probably an old phone line that has condensation in the cable somewhere between the phone company and your house, or maybe a nosy office-mate." I resent the implication that I get my information from movies. If you did not read the entirety of my post, then shame on you. If you did not understand it, then shame on me. If you did not believe it, well, all I can say is that this is the Internet(s), though if you do the research on the relevant CA laws, you'll discover that the scenario I presented is perfectly reasonable.

The point I was making originally was an "if a bear shits in the woods" point. They really do listen in. They're probably not, but they might be. In my case they certainly were. And though I never knew that "they" were listening to me, or even suspected it, they were still listening in on my most private moments.

Believe me, I'd sleep better if I thought I could tell when someone was listening in. But, unless you're lucky enough to have the tap authorized from a California jurisdiction, you can't.

Yes, I did read the entire post, but that last part about the heavy breathing was what stuck with me strongest. I should have given the post a second read.

it is a myth that wire-trappers are so stupid or clumsy that they put clicks on yr phone to let you know what they are doing

your friend is at home laughing at you as loudly as you are laughing at him, it's a mutual contempt society but what else are wingnut friends for?

and i did not seriously think it was a tap. he is the one assuming he was tapped.........

I get echos a lot on my cable phone, but can cable phones even be tapped?

I was under the assumption in order to tap cable you had to have a direct tap on the cable line.

NONE AT ALL. It doesn't cause echos, or anything.

interesting conversations. they may even get off. lol