IP: ... but, of course, it could never happen here

[Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

From: jwarren () well com (Jim Warren)


For reasons that will become obvious, I've blanked the user id info in this
forward -- though the *currently operational* thought police probably
already have a copy if the author transmitted from their current location.


Notice how nicely the 1994 Democrats' half-billion-dollar national wiretap
system facilitates the 1995 Republicans' zealous "decency" mandate.


--jim
Jim Warren, GovAccess list-owner/editor (jwarren () well com)
Advocate & columnist, MicroTimes, Government Technology, BoardWatch, etc.






From: xxx () xxx com
Date: Thu, 15 Feb 1996 05:09:32 -0500
To: jwarren () well com


Jim,


This is delayed in getting back to you, but I just wanted to tell you that
your discussion of making all U.S. phone lines wire-tap ready reminds me of
my present life. I live in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Everything is tapped here
and most people know it. Faxes are also "grabbed" and if they find a reason
to suspect immoral activity, they can then go back and actually open up
every transmitted fax from a certain line.


The government acquiesces to the religious police and allows the tapping
(besides the obvious reasons of snooping around for subversion) to be done
for the purpose of routing our expatriates' prohibited activities (church,
parties with men & women mixed, music and theatrical performances, etc).


There is a list of "key words" plugged into the tapping computers (for
instance, the choral society I am in makes everyone avoid "choir, chorus,
rehearsal, conductor, concert" and we're not making this up -- we have a
manager (expat, of course) from the Ministry of Postal, Telegraph and
Telephone in our bass section that provides us with the hot list every few
months or so.


As pertains to church, it's really a mess. My spouse and I worship in the
Diplomatic Quarter with an Anglican community, but we live in a U.S. Army
facility (the one that had the terrorist bombing on Nov. 13 that killed 7
-- my spouse was in the building and got bad glass cuts) that houses
worship services on Fridays.


We learned that the General did not know about the phone tapping, but
certain civilian staff were briefing everyone new upon arrival about
avoiding "sunday school, preacher, etc") on the phone so as to not endanger
our services. After the bombing, dear friends and family would sometimes
want to pray with our families over the phone, or offer scripture for
comfort, and we had to tell them "you can't do that", so we asked the
General if our phones were STILL being tapped at a public meeting and he
told everyone that he'd never heard of that before (I heard his secretary
tell him it was a "story" that did surface every few months or so) and that
it was ridiculous -- the Ambassador would love to see the Muttawa
(religious police) try and get us thrown out of the kingdom for holding
religious services.


Anyhow, I just thought you'd be interested to see a slice of official U.S.
military life, residing here on Diplomatic Passports, outside the confines
of the American border.


Best wishes,


xxx, Information Systems Mgmt.
xxx, European Division