Next week I will attend a speech by Bobby R. Inman the previous Director of the National Security Agency. The NSA has been collecting domestic communications since the attack on 9-11. President Bush instructed the NSA to access voice and internet traffic passing through AT&T, Verizon and Bell South's pipes. This smacks of the Richard Nixon 1970 era of surveillance of journalist and political enemies except this time it is being carried out on the general public. Both Presidents were republicans who passed the courts and relied on the cooperation of the US telecommunications companies. Now the US Senate is in a tizzy, attacking AT&T for giving the phone records of everyday law abiding citizens to the NSA.
During my childhood years and even during the Cuban missile crises of the early 60's when the US was sure the Russians were going to fire a missile from Cuba and turn Florida into vapor, did we have to worry about the government listening in on our conversations. Our neighbors were another matter. The wire tap of my childhood was called a party line and lots of people had them because the cost could be spread out over several connections, making telephone communication affordable for working class and farm families. My family spent summers in a small cabin in the country and the cabin had a telephone connected to a party line that was shared by many other families. Each family was assigned a distinctive ring, like two longs and one short or three shorts and one long. When any household on the line received a call, it's ring sounded in every house on the line. I can just hear my mom say "don't answer that phone, that's for Mrs So&So". How did she know that one short and three longs was for the So&SO house? Sometimes the same one short and three longs would ring several times a day. Oftentimes I wondered what Mrs So&SO had so much to talk about and wanted to easedrop on the conversation. You could always tell when someone was listening to the conversation because you would hear a click when they picked up the phone. When you heard that click you automatilly stoped talking or at least stopped talking about family secretes. Even worse than a party line was an extension line. This was the case for the phone in our house in the small Central Texas town I lived in. Small is putting it mildly, our phone number only consisted of three numbers. When someone called those three numbers not only did the phone ring at our house but it rang at several other houses and also rang three phones at my Dad's business. Unlike a party line there were no distinctive rings so when the extension line rang at least half a dozen people picked their phones up and listened to the conversation. Today we call that a conference call and make a big deal out of it, back then it was just an ever day thing. One of those extensions was in the garage at my Dad's business and I listened in on conversations from that extension many times. There is just something about the listening to someone's conversation when they do not know you are listening to them. Do you think I might be a little bit of a snoop? Yes I am, we all are!
The party line and extension line of my childhood are all but extinct. Today easedropping has become more sophisticated allowing the government to listen in on the masses. There is no need for one long and three shorts anymore nor is there a need for court ordered wire taps before AT&T, Verizon and Bell South lets the NSA listen to our telecommunications.
If only we could turn back the hands of time! All you used to have to do when you caught someone listening to your conversation was say "Hang the phone up, it's not for you" and you would hear a click letting you know the person that had been listening was off the line and could not hear your secrets anymore. Today if you were to say "Hang the phone up, it's not for you" the only thing your likely to hear is laughter coming from a government agent somewhere on the line.
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