Friday, November 06, 2015

By Any Other Name...

This is all visual but a little explanation is necessary. This is a magnified screen grab of the drop down menu for the Wi-Fi icon on my Mac. Mac users and addicts will recognize it immediately. If you are lost already in the explanation you probably won't see the humor anyway. But here goes:

This is a list of all the Wi-Fi networks my wireless devices can potentially connect to, and conversely the list of networks that can access my Monkey network with their devices.
As you can see my name is on the top.  It is dated Mon. September 21, 2015 6:42, but the last time I looked, the list was almost the same. The red arrow is my addition to the picture. For those listening on the radio, the eighth network listed, two above Mary's Wi-fi, is labeled FBI Van.
I walk the dog almost every day and I am not aware of an FBI Van operating in my neighborhood, but there are alway vans around.  You never know.
Although I think it is the clever name given to the network of a neighbor, it does make me think; what a perfect name to give a covert eavesdropping network.  Who would believe it's for real?  Would we think the government could be so stupid?  Then again the words "government" and "stupid" are not that far apart anymore.
As you were,
Jay

1 comment:

P. Grecian said...

Back in the '70's, I was college friends with a guy who was very big in the war resistance movement. He'd fled to Canada, and made television appearances from there. He was well-spoken, so the networks tended to use him quite a bit.

One day he decided to try to sneak across the border to see his parents in Illinois. The Feds grabbed him. They then released him (I suspect his parents paid for that) and took his word that he'd show up in Chicago for his trial.

He immediately took it on the lam with his girlfriend.

They came through my city. Visited with me for a couple of days, then dropped by Lawrence Kansas to visit with the head of the theatre department where we had both spent considerable time...
...and then he was back across the border.

But for two years afterward, the FBI tapped my phone and opened my mail...and did it so badly that even I, a kid in his twenties, knew they were doing it.
The telephone made funny clicking noises and my mail was often reglued with what appeared to be mucilage.

After awhile, they gave up.

A couple of years later I was at a KU Theatre reunion and the department head, spotting me across the room, came over and said, quietly, "Say, I hear they tapped your phone and opened your mail, too."

So yeah...the government...the FBI...can be particularly inept and, I'm sorry to say, stupid.

I wanted them to be more as they are in the movies.

And, as the man said, so it goes.