In a report of ACLU published on 11/13, topic "Caught in the backlash", there is such a story.

Charlotte Wu, a 20 years old student of UC Berkley, was visited by 3 policmen of camps about one month after 911 last year. It's about 30 minites after she finished a phone call. In phone call, she instructed her friends how to play an internet game. It's a spy game. Player must put bomb at the foot of wall to break it. Policemen questioned her why she talked about spy and bomb on the phone. At last, she had to go to her friend's place with police to clarify it. Lucky enough, her friend was still playing that spy and bomb game.

Charlotte Wu never talked to policemen for all her 19 years experience. (She was 19 then) She was very scare and wonder how could police know what she said in phone call. Policemen didn't explain.

She may never know her phone is under surveillance if she hadn't talked about spy and bomb.

That's truley frightening. Heil Ashcroft!

Originally posted by igofast
That's truley frightening. Heil Ashcroft!

Oh please. As if she could'nt have been overheard by anyone around her?

Originally posted by DngrMse


Oh please. As if she could'nt have been overheard by anyone around her?


Someone at Berzerkely would report her?:D

a scanner?

Danger, it's much more likely you're wrong there.

Oh, FYI, for those of you who remember "Enemy of the State" with Will Smith and Gene Hackman...all the technology in that movie is real.

Dngr, I admit that I'm hasty in my response, since the original post doesn't even have an official story to back it up (and I knew that when I posted). My post is based on a reality of a phone tap, and I would not be surprised if it was true.

The question i have is it a cell phone she was on. If so then it was most definatly overheard. I know for a fact that in FT Mead they have some very nice computers that scan cell phone conversations for key words that set off a trigger. If it does they review the conversation and either further investigate or ignore it. If it is her home phone then i dont know what happened.

If it was a cell phone, and you don't invest in a reasonable scrambler device, they are ROUTINELY picked up on scanners. The Supreme court ruled a few years back that it's NOT an invasion of privacy, UNLESS you have a scrambler. So, they were probably just listening for buzz words, like bomb, hijack, etc... and picked up on hers. I think it's awesome that they tracked her down so quickly. Cell phones ARE hard to trace for location. They probably picked up her frequency, qnd number, and then did a phone company check to get her name and address. Yet another reason to not like cell phones...

LOL well Qtrhrsmn I think we were thiking along the same lines there..LOL You ever meet the boys from Mead who deal with this stuff?? Thouroughly boring people I must say..LOL they have funny stories to talk about sometimes though.

Originally posted by Shelter
LOL well Qtrhrsmn I think we were thiking along the same lines there..LOL You ever meet the boys from Mead who deal with this stuff?? Thouroughly boring people I must say..LOL they have funny stories to talk about sometimes though. I had to deal with a lot of those guys.... including several gay arabic lingists attached to an intel/jamming aviation unit.... Don't ask, they'll tell....:rolleyes:

I remember when i started my internship at the national lab a couple summers ago, they kept talking about... dOH, i guess i dont remember, but basically they were saying.... we are watching everything you do on the computer, and checking out your fone calls and such.

So i wouldnt be surprised that in a dorm room they'd have access to fone calls, and cells even less so.

[this is gonna drive me crazy, i cant remember what it was called!]

I think its common knowledge that nothing you say over the telephone is private. Nothing at all. You may say its a violation of your right to privacy and you are right but this is true of the world we live in.

Thansk again Kathasung.

I think there are MANY options other than an 'eschlon' type of system...

But...to give a bit more credence...

A friend was once talking to me online and on the phone about synethsizing drugs. (which I told him not to do).

A few days later, a helicopter was hovering over his neighborhood...and he saw a red 'orb' dangling from the chopper and it flew over the neighborhood a few times.

After some investigation, that matches how police search for methlabs...the orb is a heat sensor...

The truth? We may never know.

"YOU ARE A SUSPECT"
By William Safire
New York Times, 14 November 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/14/opinion/14SAFI.html

Washington--If the Homeland Security Act is not
amended before passage, here is what will happen to
you: Every purchase you make with a credit card,
every magazine subscription you buy and medical
prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and
e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you
receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you
book and every event you attend--all these
transactions and communications will go into what
the Defense Department describes as "a virtual,
centralized grand database."

To this computerized dossier on your private life
from commercial sources, add every piece of
information that government has about you--passport
application, driver's license and bridge toll
records, judicial and divorce records, complaints
from nosy neighbors to the F.B.I., your lifetime
paper trail plus the latest hidden camera
surveillance--and you have the supersnoop's dream: a
"Total Information Awareness" about every U.S.
citizen.

This is not some far-out Orwellian scenario. It is
what will happen to your personal freedom in the
next few weeks if John Poindexter gets the
unprecedented power he seeks.

Remember Poindexter? Brilliant man, first in his
class at the Naval Academy, later earned a doctorate
in physics, rose to national security adviser under
President Ronald Reagan. He had this brilliant idea
of secretly selling missiles to Iran to pay ransom
for hostages, and with the illicit proceeds to
illegally support contras in Nicaragua.

A jury convicted Poindexter in 1990 on five felony
counts of misleading Congress and making false
statements, but an appeals court overturned the
verdict because Congress had given him immunity for
his testimony. He famously asserted, "The buck stops
here," arguing that the White House staff, and not
the president, was responsible for fateful decisions
that might prove embarrassing.

This ring-knocking master of deceit is back again
with a plan even more scandalous than Iran-contra.
He heads the "Information Awareness Office" in the
otherwise excellent Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency, which spawned the Internet and
stealth aircraft technology. Poindexter is now
realizing his 20-year dream: getting the
"data-mining" power to snoop on every public and
private act of every American.

Even the hastily passed U.S.A. Patriot Act, which
widened the scope of the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act and weakened 15 privacy laws,
raised requirements for the government to report
secret eavesdropping to Congress and the courts. But
Poindexter's assault on individual privacy rides
roughshod over such oversight.

He is determined to break down the wall between
commercial snooping and secret government intrusion.
The disgraced admiral dismisses such necessary
differentiation as bureaucratic "stovepiping." And
he has been given a $200 million budget to create
computer dossiers on 300 million Americans.

When George W. Bush was running for president, he
stood foursquare in defense of each person's
medical, financial and communications privacy. But
Poindexter, whose contempt for the restraints of
oversight drew the Reagan administration into its
most serious blunder, is still operating on the
presumption that on such a sweeping theft of privacy
rights, the buck ends with him and not with the
president.

This time, however, he has been seizing power in the
open. In the past week John Markoff of The Times,
followed by Robert O'Harrow of The Washington Post
have revealed the extent of Poindexter's operation,
but editorialists have not grasped its undermining
of the Freedom of Information Act.

Political awareness can overcome "Total Information
Awareness," the combined force of commercial and
government snooping. In a similar overreach,
Attorney General Ashcroft tried his Terrorism
Information and Prevention System (TIPS), but public
outrage at the use of gossips and postal workers as
snoops caused the House to shoot it down. The Senate
should now do the same to this other exploitation of
fear.

The Latin motto over Poindexter's new Pentagon
office reads "Scientia Est Potentia" "knowledge is
power." Exactly: the government's infinite
knowledge about you is its power over you. "We're
just as concerned as the next person with protecting
privacy," this brilliant mind blandly assured The
Post. A jury found he spoke falsely before.

We can thank GW Bush for all of this. And he can thank Poindexter and Ashcroft for not opening the file on himself and his sleazy family.

"Thank you" is not exactly what I'd like to say to Dubya for all of this, if you get my drift...*flexes fists*

Pick your own swear word, I'll just call him a thundering buttclap for now.

Originally posted by knave
We can thank GW Bush for all of this. And he can thank Poindexter and Ashcroft for not opening the file on himself and his sleazy family.
But we neednt worry about that. Isnt Security more important than privacy? Privacy goes against the will of the President and is therefore unamerican, right?

Let us all march behind our valient leader and silence those who will try to thwart our cause!

DEATH TO THE MODERATES!

WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGHT

AMERIKA UBER ALLES!!!!!!!

hey guys just out of curiosity for all of the lets keep our privacy above all else people how many of ya have ever been shot at? how many know the intence fear and instant pucker factor that happens when you see your friend die right next to you and ou are just wondering if your next? If you experience a bit of that you might be a bit more security concious and say hey if i am not doing anything illegal i have nothing to hide so ok i can forefit a bit of my privacy for the greater good of our country. There is always the option of moving yourself to some other country if you dont like how ours is run. Or better yet convince enough people to vote for your candidate that you are the person happy with the way the person in charge runs the country. I vote right along with every other self respecting American. If the person I vote for loses the election I have to assume he is the person the majority of my country agrees with. Having said this I think that the majority wins out. So if I personally disagree but the person my peers elected thinks something needs to be done thenI can bite my tounge and deal with it. maybe some people here should trya dn do the same.

"So if I personally disagree but the person my peers elected thinks something needs to be done thenI can bite my tounge and deal with it."

--In other words, you don't think it's right to criticize whoever is in power.

--Thanks for your opinion, but I prefer to live in a democracy.

Originally posted by Shelter
hey guys just out of curiosity for all of the lets keep our privacy above all else people how many of ya have ever been shot at? how many know the intence fear and instant pucker factor that happens when you see your friend die right next to you and ou are just wondering if your next? If you experience a bit of that you might be a bit more security concious and say hey if i am not doing anything illegal i have nothing to hide so ok i can forefit a bit of my privacy for the greater good of our country. There is always the option of moving yourself to some other country if you dont like how ours is run. Or better yet convince enough people to vote for your candidate that you are the person happy with the way the person in charge runs the country. I vote right along with every other self respecting American. If the person I vote for loses the election I have to assume he is the person the majority of my country agrees with. Having said this I think that the majority wins out. So if I personally disagree but the person my peers elected thinks something needs to be done thenI can bite my tounge and deal with it. maybe some people here should trya dn do the same.


I don't remember voting for any of the tyrants who are taking away my privacy?

Basically you are saying that if we don't like our government peering into every aspect of our lives we should move to another country? How American...

Neccessity is the plea of tyrants, sacrificing our freedoms for this veil of security?? Never...

What will be worth protecting if all our freedoms are gone?

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin

Originally posted by knave
We can thank GW Bush for all of this. I'm not sure that is a fair characterization of the situation. The government has been slowly curtailing your personal freedoms for close to two centuries now. This is just the latest installment.

Doesn't the article that Knave posted sound a bit too much like 1984 to you guys? We need to put the common sense factor into play here. If you aren't doing anything to attract attention to yourself (i.e. commiting crimes) there is small chance that you will be watched.

Those who belong to extremist organizations deserve to be watched as they have proven themselves to be unpredictable and dangerous. We can't always wait for someone to commit a crime before we start watching. Remember the hijackers? Aside from being not from the US, they had spotless criminal records. Rarely are well known criminals involved in terrist acts which is what the current bill is supposed to prevent.

If the woman who was on the cell phone had a real privacy concern, she should not have a) used a cell phone b) said anything where other people could overhear it.

The technology is out there folks to listen to whatever you say even while your cell is turned off and there is no way for anyone to tell! Privacy is important, but some times we have a way of taking it waaaay too far.

I feel there is a place for Homeland Security. I have nothing to hide. However, I don't feel that security as invasive as is described in that article to be needed here. As far as the original topic of this thread, I find it highly possible that she was overheard. If I heard some kid in my dorms talking about bombs and what not, I'd want it checked out.

Originally posted by jillianjiggs
I feel there is a place for Homeland Security. I have nothing to hide. However, I don't feel that security as invasive as is described in that article to be needed here. As far as the original topic of this thread, I find it highly possible that she was overheard. If I heard some kid in my dorms talking about bombs and what not, I'd want it checked out.

Ye, government likes to say so. Better demolish all those amendment, it's really an obstacle for the police. What Miranda law, due process..... all are rubbish. If you have nothing to hide, why do you need this? Privacy? Then you must have something illegal to hide. Freedom is a shield used by anti-US enemy.

Don't blame government spying on you. It's for your safty. We must remind you from time to time that"We are at war", "Bombing is inevitable"...... so government can grip more power, of war or of police. Do you know that:

Quote, "An evil exists that threatens every man, woman and child of this great nation," the leader of another country once wrote. "We must take steps to ensure our domestic security and protect our homeland."

That was Adoph Hitler, writing about creation of the Gestapo in Nazi Germany. But please keep this information secret, anyhow we need a little privacy, for the face of president, and of course, to ensure our domestic security and protect our homeland.

http://media40.fastclick.net/w/safepop.cgi?mid=12429&sid=5068&id=408569&geo=409856917&len=668&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.capitolhillblue.com%2Fartman%2F publish%2Farticle_1108.shtml&c=7

"An evil exists that threatens every man, woman and child of this great nation," the leader of another country once wrote. "We must take steps to ensure our domestic security and protect our homeland."

Can you provide the source for this statement?

Originally posted by RedLine99


Can you provide the source for this statement?

I've posted the URL there. I've been to that URL and proved the statement. Now that URL lead people to an ads of "free coupon". A work of FBI cyberspace team? I don't know. But for sure this information is a Government's dislike.

Well yea if it was a cell phone it could have easily been intercepted however there are other circumstances where the authorities are allowed to monitor your communications without your knowledge.

I know in the Patriot act there were provisions to extend the length of time wire taps maybe maintained. Also the police/FBI can apply for tapping warrants in secret courts now and do not have to disclouse when and if they ever tap lines. Also and most disturbing is that the authorities can monitor the email of any persons who have been in contact with the subject of an investigation now and neither part needs to be notified. Thus if say you were exchanging emails with some activist or something who was or latter came under investigation then your email would now be subject to monitoring also.

Check out
http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Surveillance/Terrorism_militias/20011031_eff_usa_patriot_analysis.html

for some info on the new electronic communication guidelines.

Originally posted by kathaksung


I've posted the URL there. I've been to that URL and proved the statement. Now that URL lead people to an ads of "free coupon". A work of FBI cyberspace team? I don't know. But for sure this information is a Government's dislike.


Yeah. I don't need any coupons.:p

I have heard that statement somewhere before (and I believe it was Hitler, as you say). I am just interested in knowing who the "enemy" was then.