Am I just paranoid, or is this really STUPID?

[badgerpup]

New job entails being awake all night...TV is on for company and to assist with this.
Paid Programming...:hide:

The Magic Jack! Lower your phone bills to $20 a year by using this doohickey to run them through your computer and The Internet!
It's amazing! and then there's all this price info.

All I could do to keep myself from yelling at the screen (there's people sleeping who are supposed to be sleeping)
:wtf: Are you all friggin' STUPID? Does anybody remember that little story about the splitter that runs EVERYTHING IN THE INTERNET overseas and back so that technically it's 'incoming foreigner stuff' and Big Brother the Feds have access to it?
And now, you want to run all your PHONE CONVERSATIONS through this very same compromised circuit?

WHATTHEHELL IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE??? :banghead: :nuke:

[orleans]

1. but it's just $20! n/t

[ContinentalOp]

2. You're kind of paranoid.

I would rather have free phone calls with the feds listening in than pay the phone company anymore. Personally I use Skype though. I don't know what this magic jack thing is.

I take it you don't use email at all?

[JVS]

4. That's what I though until I noticed that a black crown vic with tinted windows follows me...

every time I call my brother and start my walk to meet him at the bar for a few beers.

[Egnever]

5. And where exactly is your significant other while this is going on?

[JVS]

6. Same place as always, right in the crawlspace where I keep her chained.

:silly:

[Egnever]

12. I guess that eliminates her as the driver then

Dang I thought I was Sherlock there for a sec.

[midnight]

30. I love it when Americans resign themselves to giving up rights

because doing without them is cheaper.

[Egnever]

3. Youre paranoid

They work great. You saying something especially interesting on the phone?

Here's a clue for you. The government doesn't have the time nor the manpower for your bullshit. They barely have time for the real bullshit and most of the time they don't even have time for that.

[lapfog_1]

7. Uh, not true.

It doesn't require manpower, and they have plenty of compute power and storage to look at everyone's shit.

Including this posting.

Eventually, if something you type (or possibly say) triggers something, a person would have to make a determination if you are a person of interest. THAT might take enough manpower that they don't bother with the likes of us. But something tells me that if they spend the time to actually place undercover agents into anti death penalty groups, they have probably bothered to look at us here at DU.

I suspect a number of us are on watch lists and no fly lists.

Hopefully this all comes to an end after Jan 20.

[ContinentalOp]

9. Yep, exactly. The technology is there. It's not a manpower issue.

But that's no reason to be paranoid about free or cheap internet phone service. What, you think they're not already listening to your regular phone line as well?

[Egnever]

11. sure the tech is there

but unless you are actually plotting an overthrow of the government the technology isn't going to do jack to help with the manpower problem of running down every single person that says bush is a dimwit.

And as you say they already can do it on your regular phone so what exactly are you saving yourself from ?

[Egnever]

10. you are paranoid as well

one need only look at craigs list where people post stolen merchandise day after day after day to realize that they have absolutely no handle whatsoever on cracking down on anything remotely resembling you or I. While i am sure there are certain things you can say that will get you flagged for personal attention i am also fairly certain that the OP would never repeat those things on the phone or otherwise in his daily life. So worrying about such a scenario is foolish.

Heres a story for you. I recently was helping a friend sell some puppies he had. We got a call from someone through a TDD (I Think its called?) an exchange for deaf people where the operator reads what the deaf person types to you and then types what you say back to the deaf person. Anyway this person said they wanted one of the dogs and that they would send us a check and we could ship the puppy to them after receiving the check.

long story short the check came we took it to the bank and of course it was a fake check. I went first to our local police departments fraud unit with a copy of the check and numerous email correspondences between ourselves and the supposed buyer. They couldn't have cared less didn't even want to look at it gave me a number to call that i left a message with and never got a return call.I also took it to the FBI they took down the details and said someone would get back to me on it also a no go.

Now i had everything on this it couldn't have been easier for them I had phone call times they could have tracked to the TDD that placed the calls that i am sure has to log them. I had the check i had email addresses that could have been traced back through IP addresses. I had the envelope the check came in from FED EX that could have been traced back to its city of origin. plenty of leads to go on but they didn't care. Couldn't be bothered.

This was a federal offense and they couldn't have cared less. They don't have the time. If you think they have time to look at you cause you say you think bush is a fucknut over the phone you are sorely mistaken.

Sure you could hit the lotery and say just the wrong thing at just the wrong time to a person in just the right place and someone might look you over for half a second. Thats going to happen on any phone line though be it magic jack or old fashioned land line.

Paying at&t extra money to avoid it borders on stupidity.

[DUlover2909]

35. Sometimes when I talk to my brother on the cell phone we say things that we hope send up red flags.

"Hi brother, Osama Bin Laden terrorist plot assassination attempt." He says, "Al Queda bombing Bush airline death to America great Satan" I say "Holy war jihad 9-11 Israel chemical weapons nuclear biohazard"

Have fun with that and this too Mr. NSA computer.

I am more afraid of global climate change than Al Queda. I am more afraid of Christian fundies than I am of Islamic fundies. I am more afraid of meteors from space landing on me than terrorists blowing me up. I am more afraid of an economic disaster in America than going to hell after I die because I didn't flatter the right deity.

[lapfog_1]

8. delete - dup - n/t

[Syrinx]

13. there is no difference between phone lines and internet lines

They are the same thing.

[TexasObserver]

15. It's called "expectation of privacy."

On your land line at home (not through the internet), you have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Not true when you call on the internet. It is a significant difference in legal rights between the two methods of making phone calls.

[Syrinx]

17. I wasn't talking about law; I was talking about technology

And while I'm at it, why shouldn't the expectation of privacy be the same for email as for a phone call?

But that hardly matters for an administration that doesn't respect law.

[TexasObserver]

19. In that case, you're absolutely right.

Remember this saying: "The LAW is an ass."

That's the answer to why there's a difference.

We have these fictions in law, such as the doctrine of stare decisis - the standard that we follow the precedent. EXCEPT, when some court doesn't want to follow the precedent. That's when they issue an opinion DISTINGUISHING the case they're ruling on from the precedential case. The distinguishing is where we get these absurd differences in the law. One form of communication is deemed unworthy of an expectation of privacy, and another isn't. But the REAL reason is the judges changed, and the more conservative judges wanted to gut the right that would allow an expectation of privacy (on a cell phone, for example), and this distinction is how they did it.

The law is an ass.

[Egnever]

22. interesting....

However I would have to agree with the judges that cell phones do not allow an expectation of privacy. well at least they didnt used to the tech has gotten better but i am fairly sure that it is still quite easy to tap into their signal.

[TexasObserver]

23. There should be an expectation of privacy for cell phones.

The rationale for treating cell phones as unprotected is based upon the fact that anyone can pick them up with the right equipment, and can do so without violating any law. As a practical matter, in most cases that is not true, however. It would require an illegal act to eavesdrop.

The simple fact is that land lines aren't really land lines at all. Most of such communications travel by microwave or satellite, and could be intercepted in such modes, although not as easily as the cell phone. It's a bullshit distinction, a contrivance to justify what should be illegal eavesdropping, but suits the needs of an intrusive government bent on monitoring all it considers a threat, legal or otherwise.

The problem with the evolved approach to "reasonable expectation of privacy," is that it has focused on justifying government intrusions into private conversation on the tenuous basis that talking on a cell phone deprives one of any reasonable expectation of privacy. It shouldn't. Our rights should be expanded as technology advances, not curtailed with convenient rationales that wipe out rights of privacy.

[Egnever]

24. I like your argument for a right to privacy

But I am not sure that the technology out there actually supports it. I am sure you are right that the government wants the ruling to be what it is for the reasons you profess but the ruling I think is/was easy to make based on the ease with which just about anyone could go get the equipment to tap into the signal. I believe, I am sure you know better than i do that when they first decided this it was back when crosstalk on cell phones was pretty common. Meaning you heard others conversations fairly regularly when using a cell phone.

Not that I don't support the right to privacy I whole heartedly agree that we should have it as you lay it out. I guess it comes from growing up with cell phones from when they first came on the scene and never having any real faith in them being private. Although now I suppose they really are for the most part, Maybe the law should be revisited.

I do think however capturing a single signal out of a microwave is orders of magnitude harder than capturing a signal from a single phone.

[TexasObserver]

26. Oh, I remember those early cell phones and cross talk.

They were glorified walkie-talkies. Remember when Motorola got out in front with that sleeker "flip phone"? Ha! That big ass battery.

The "no expectation" applies to many home phones - the kind that are cordless. If you have a cordless phone, it is transmitting a signal between the phone and the base, and that signal has no expectation of privacy.

The ONLY way to retain any phone expectation of privacy is a phone plugged into a wall, connected by a wire to the phone, and the phone to the wall. If there's any air transmission of the phone, no reasonable expectation of privacy.

I don't like it, because I firmly believe the Bill of Rights should be interpreted expansively for citizens, and not be interpreted restrictively to favor government. The people who gave us the Bill of Rights were the original Democratic Underground, the left fringe of the Founders.

[Egnever]

27. heh one of my customers actually pulled out one of these the other day

Brought back some crazy memories.

[TexasObserver]

29. that phone weighed a pound or two, and cost about $800

Back when $800 was a lot more money than it is now.

[MrSlayer]

14. Look, if they really want you, one way or the other, they are going to get you.

They really don't want you. Seriously. Pretending as if they weren't spying on people before Bush is naive to the extreme. And the same thing with torturing people. It's been going on forever in and out of this country, it's just never been acknowledged from on high and trumpeted the way it has been under Chimp. As long as you are not someone who can really shake the foundations of power, you're pretty much safe to go ahead and live a "normal" life.

[Syrinx]

16. a quibble

I know that electronic spying is old hat. I'm not so sure about torture.

But what makes the Bush administration different, is they didn't really try to hide it. Well, they did. But when it was revealed, they tried to justify it. They made it known that their position was that the administration was beyond the reach of the law. They asserted that they were unbridled by anything the judiciary or congress had to say. We're talking "unitary executive" stuff now. That they would use all their power, without any oversight or restraint to put people in jail, or even execute them. So, it really was new, and dangerous, territory. Hopefully, President Obama will restore at least a patina of trustworthiness to the federal government.

[MrSlayer]

25. We brought in top Nazis to start our CIA.

I'm quite sure about past torture.

And yes, the Chimp administration lorded around as if they were untouchable and that's because they are, they set it up that way. They will never be prosecuted for a single thing. And some Democrats were right in on it as well. The amount of cash that has been passed around over the past 8 years is unprecedented. Politics is just a filthy, filthy business.

[Egnever]

28. I wonder if we will ever have even the slightest idea

of how much was stolen from us over the last 8 years.

[MrSlayer]

34. Probably not.

We'll never know how much or where it went. The way these guys destroy records and "accidentally" delete entire databases of information, they won't leave much of a trail. And no one who can wants to prosecute them anyway, not really. It wasn't just Republicans who were dipping their hands into the blood money soup. Politics to me are the intellectual version of professional wrestling. You know it's mostly fake and everyone is playing for the benefit of the owners, the real owners. The Founding Fathers that these fascist jackasses love to channel so often, would be furious at the behavior of American government following the death of FDR.

[DUlover2909]

36. I say lets bring in Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Gonzalez, and Mukasey and waterboard them.

You know, just to see if they have any information about Osama Bin Laden that they have not disclosed yet. It's not torture after all. It's enhanced interrogation.

[snake in the grass]

18. Aside from the privacy issue...

...here is something more practical to consider if you want to purchase a Magic Jack:

http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/0/320/RipOff0320581.htm

Summary: Don't buy this product.

[Egnever]

20. lol did you read past the rant?

Clearly that person wasn't happy but 80% of the responses to that rant are favorable to magic jack.

I certainly wouldn't recomend it as your sole telephone to anyone but for me it works just great. What do you expect for 40$.

I gave my land line up years ago and have lived just fine off a cell phone. Then I moved into a new house where my cell reception sucks. The magic jack picks up the slack for my cell phone just fine and i can call long distance free anytime I want. 40$ for that is a steal IMHO.

[snake in the grass]

31. Ashes upon my head!

Indeed, I did not read the comments. I personally use Skype and my cell and am more than happy with that solution.

[123infinity]

38. Not sure I want advice from a reviewer who writes "their to young"

:eyes:

[Fumesucker]

21. I've been assuming every phone conversation is listened to for at least a couple of decades now..

IMO, anyone who doesn't is either stunningly naive or an idiot.

[dysfunctional press]

33. what's idiotic is to think that every phone call is being listened to...

unless you think that half of the entire population works for the government, listening in on the phone calls of the other half.

[anigbrowl]

40. Um....doesn't have to be listened to by a human

Computer-based audio recognition is surprisingly good nowadays. It's no thing for an entity the size of the NSA to just record all phone traffic and have a computer listening out for words like 'bomb', 'kaboom', 'acme neutron destabilizer' and so on.

[BlooInBloo]

32. Both can be true.

[badgerpup]

37. Wow...

:wow:

Appreciate all your responses and the discussion! :hi:

This just seemed to me a way to get people to cheerfully fall into line (hey, we're saving $$, right?) and give up even more of their rights to and expectation of privacy...under false pretences.

I've just got this old-fashioned, curmudgeonly (and probably liberal :hippie:) idea that if you're going to voluntarily waive a right, then you should know what right you are waiving, how you are doing so, and why. It shouldn't be buried in the fine print and disguised in legalese and come as an unpleasant surprise that while you're saving the bucks, you're also entertaining quite a few people with whatever trials and tribulations you may be experiencing.

I'm just remembering some threads here a few weeks ago...about how soldier's and servicemen's calls home were 'monitored'...and how some that should have been very private and treated as such were instead passed around like a particularly juicy porn mag ("Hey Larry! Come listen to THIS! WHOOOO-HOOOO!").

This is what bothers me most of all, I think. Not that conversations/email etc., are monitored, but that they are treated with almost as much respect that the subjects on a 'reality TV' show receive.

[anigbrowl]

39. You're kinda paranoid

a) you really think your domestic phone calls are magically immune from surveillance? Try chatting on a domestic line (eg to the speaking clock or someone you won't get in trouble) about how much you admire bin Laden and want to blow things up, I don't think you'll be waiting long for an official visit.

b) do you really think your phone calls are of any great interest to the feds? Assuming you're not a druglord or terrorist, that is.

c) if they are diverting all internet traffic overseas and back again to be able to monitor it legally (which is more than likely) why do you think phone calls don't get the same treatment already?

Reality is that the magic jack is just a cheap device from a company that wants to profit from people's desire to save some money - not unlike Vonage et al, except eh magic jack ads are aimed at people who can't wrap their heads around the concept of using a different kind of telephone (eg a USB handset). Some people are really stupid that way. So you let them keep their antiquated phone and just offer them a way to plug it into the computer instead of a wall socket.

By the way, I guarantee you there'll be some dim customers who buy this and then dial out through their modem on a regular telephone line and later sue because it didn't reduce their bills.

[badgerpup]

41. OK, OK...

I will cop to existential paranoia. :hide::yoiks:

That's when you know they really are out to get you. Not any specific "they", or "you (me)" in particular, or for any special reason...but more like the way a predator is "out to get" whatever it preys upon.

There's nothing personal about it.