Does anyone really believe that "wires are tapped"?

[OneMoreThyme]

"Wiretapping" is a misnomer to make you feel secure.

Do you really think Bush ordered some guys to go out and put alligator clips on copper wires?

I don't think so.

My guess is that NSA records ALL digital communications at all times. So when they say "Wiretap" they really mean that they just ordered up the audio to be retrieved from the data warehouse for a particular phone account.

[leftstreet]

1. The media were quick to use it to start "framing" the talking points.

Ass clowns

:eyes:

[smartvoter]

2. It's not aligator clips, but it requires tapping from the central office

at the switch level.

[LiberalPartisan]

4. Your phone line

is a virtual circuit which can be monitored.

I am not sure if the same is true for VOIP.

[NNN0LHI]

3. Its like a huge TIVO system where data can be retrieved from past decades

I remember reading about it either in Popular Mechanics or Popular Electronics a long time ago.

Don

[OneMoreThyme]

6. That's what I think, too

there was a show about NSA on a DC news program several years ago that showed the building and even inside it. It looked like the world's biggest data center. And the tag line was "most people have never even heard of the agency."

[GemMom]

11. We were talking about Echelon and the NSA

and its potential abuses during the 1990's but nobody was paying attention.

http://www.thing.net/~rdom/ecd/jam.html

http://www.motherjones.com/news/mustreads/1999/10/101199.html

[BrotherBuzz]

5. Hey, I still call asphalt compactors steamrollers

Wiretapping connotes just the right image for me - I'm old fashion that way.

[madeline_con]

7. It's a figure of speech.

No one actually puts alligator clips on wire. :eyes:

[OneMoreThyme]

8. Right

they just use them to clip feathers on to little paper jets to help them fly ...

[madeline_con]

9. No, they hold roaches with them. n/t

:smoke:

[baby_bear]

10. excellent, madeline_con

touche!

b_b

[soothsayer]

12. I thought bechtel owns all our switching equipment and taps us

all the time, and that's how they blackmail politicians (that's the way the conspiracy theory goes, anyway)

: )

[papau]

13. On hitting a key word or phrase the audio 30 sec before and after is

saved by the computer - or at least that is what I was told.

So the data warehouse only has 60 second key phrase communications with ID info.

The 60 sec review by a low level military fellow is followed - if the review suggests anything to him - by a review by his supervisor - and then on to the FISA path in the old days -

what they do now is anyones guess.

The end result can be a tap on all your communications and a multi-week new neighbor and new cars and drivers being in your life across from the house, on the road, and waiting at a parking garage - but only for a limited period of time.

If the tap is done correctly it is no big deal - dome poorly and it is the famous noise on the line (which can have many other causes besides a tap) - the nice thing is that when it is removed getting back full DSL speed is rather nice.

Also billing problems may occur during the observation period as codes on your file screw up normal maintenance of your account. But that too goes away.