22 September 2007

Did I Just Witness NSA Spying in Action?

An interesting thing happened this evening. I was riding in a car with 3 other people, on the way home from dinner (at the Mekong Thai restaurant in Kenwood; the food was delicious and I recommend it).

Mr. V's cell phone rang. He answered it, but it seemed the connection was bad so he said "I can't hear you" and hung up. During this time the caller kept talking as if he couldn't hear Mr. V.

The phone rang a 2nd and 3rd time, and it became clear that the caller was not in fact calling Mr. V at all. He was calling a completely different person, but the conversation was audible on Mr. V's phone and neither the caller nor the "callee" could hear Mr. V or knew that he was on the line. The phone continued to ring a couple more times until Mr. V turned it off.

I asked which provider Mr. V used and he said Cincinnati Bell, which uses the AT&T network. You may recall that AT&T is the company that gave information to the NSA and allowed the NSA to use screen its network.

I remarked that Mr. V's phone was functioning like an eavesdropping device, ringing when a call was made and allowing him to listen without being detected.

Has something like this happened to anyone else?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This just happened to me through a Cincinnati Bell home line yesterday but I could hear the people on the other line and they definitely didn't sound like NSA. I thought it was just a mixed line but who knows?