Phone hacking and bugging

Some years ago I went to a talk given by Wolf Bierman, the former East German dissident poet whose citizenship was rescinded while he was on tour abroad.  Bierman actually chose to move to East Germany, aka the German Democratic Republic, from the West in the belief that he would be living the true Communist life in that people’s paradise. Needless to say he quickly became disillusioned and his work started to reflect his true feelings about life in East Germany.  This of course brought him to the attention of the Stasi and he was spied upon and his flat was bugged.  After the fall of the Wall he requested access to the Stasi files on him and he read out various bits to the audience.   It was so mind-bogglingly detailed. Someone was sitting transcribing the tape of what was happening in Bierman’s flat. It was like this:

“Door opens. WB enters with female companion.  He asks if she would like a drink.  She asks for coffee. WB makes coffee.  Both move to bedroom. They indulge in sexual intercourse. (At this point Bierman giggled and assured us it was true!)   WB asks his companion if she would like another drink.  She refuses.  They decide to go out to eat. Door closes.”

Of course the sad thing is that some people  Bierman considered as friends were also passing information on him to the Stasi.  But it was the utterly trivial details that were so painstakingly recorded that amazed us.

I have always hoped that if anyone hacked into my phone calls or e-mails I would hear the crash as the hacker hit the floor, dead of boredom!  The scumbag would deserve it.

 

17 thoughts on “Phone hacking and bugging”

  1. sheona,

    From the end of the war and until the ‘Wall’ came down, the East Berliners were obliged to live in a a state of fear. Everyone encourage to inform on their neighbor. How depressing, to just look over the wall and see the progress in the West.

    P.S. They could hack my phone as well and die of boredom. 🙂

  2. Hack mine as well, what a waste of time but Andy Hayman ex-of the Yard said if they hacked his they would get a shopping list and his tee off times for golf….what a wise policeman, I expect he would have secret meetings, the third tree on the left in Hyde Park and I will be wering one black and one brown, that’s how the Russian spies used to communicate.

  3. I see today that Foot-in-mouth Gordon Brown has done it again. Yesterday he jumped on the hacking bandwagon, claiming the Sun had hacked into his family’s medical records. Today it emerges it was another family that spilled the beans after all.

  5. Er …. all phone calls are recorded by a machine … everyone of them.

    Authorities are allowed to call for the recordings only with permission from a Judge but… every single call is recorded 😦

    That’s what Pine Gap and Our Nth Sydney installations are all about .. that’s why they are called “listening” stations …. they record everything ..

    There are two more in Europe .. a couple in America and so on.

  7. I noticed yesterday that Gordon Brown was not getting a lot of sympathy from the public. I think it was Rosie who pointed out that the Browns knew they risked having a baby with CF, because they both carry the recessive gene, but they went ahead and inflicted that on the poor little lad anyway.

  8. Sheona – Ah, but it was politically expedient for Brown a) to get married and b) to produce issue. No wonder he is jumping on the bandwagon now after months of mega-sulk.

    OZ

  9. Yes, OZ, I think everyone recognises that what Brown did was for political expediency and that is why he is not getting much sympathy. I also read somewhere that you have to know the phone number before you can hack it. So Brown presumably gave it to someone!

    Is tonight the full moon?

  11. Sheona, I did discuss CF yesterday or the day before on MyT, both partners have to have the gene,it’s a recessive gene….in my day they hadn’t detected the gene in humans, the powers that be gave the illness a name (Cystic Fibrosis) when the gene was discovered, it’s real name should have been Mucovisidosis, which is more descriptive of the illness.

    As for Gordon Brown, after having a baby prematurely they would have had genetic tests so is a good chance that they might have known what the risks were. As for the press getting to know, there are many people involved in looking after a child with CF that it was bound to leak out, Doctors, Nurses and Physiotherapists and all the path lab; plus family and friends.

  14. Love the last para sheona.

    Very simple really, buy a pay as you go phone and don’t register it. Give a false name and address and don’t use it for too long.

  16. I think it’s my e-mails that would cause the demise, christina. Most of them tend to be to family – elder son dislocated little finger playing cricket last week – or old friends. In the latter case it’s often a question of: “Met A last week. She told me B and C have split up. None of us thought it would last. D and E are with B. Have you had any more news from X, Y or Z?” I don’t use my phone much at all, though my texts are almost as riveting as my e-mails. Daughter and I gave each other the same cookery book last Christmas, which makes organising the food for family get-togethers much easier, eg “Fancy trying page 123?” or “Prefer page 456.” Ennui must have set in by now!

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