David Thomson wrote:
Remember back in the sixties when it was a felony to open your telephone and modify it?
That is preposterous. The 1933 FCC rules forbade attachment to the telephone network of any device "not furnished by the telephone company." They said nothing about opening up telephones. Millions of people opened up telephones in the 1960s, including me.
These rules were overturned in the 1950s and 1960s, in the Hushaphone, Carterphone and MCI rulings.
That is because the circuits have a feature that allows the NSA to dial your number and hear everything going on near your telephone, even without making it ring or be lifted off the receiver.
That's even more preposterous. Hundreds of thousands of highly qualified teleco and interconnect company technicians opened up telephones throughout the 1960s, and in every decade after 1876. I worked in the telephone equipment supply business in the 1970s and I saw dozens of dismantled telephones of every type and description. None of us in the business ever spotted such a circuit, and in those days you couldn't miss seeing such a thing.
- Jed
