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RE: The Myth: They can see everything you do!!! Especially if it is digital. [FALSE]
So a network engineer is at an advantage when it comes to knowing how to maintain one's privacy?
How does one become a privacy-conscious network engineer?
Nope. It just means I know of cases where calls and other data never leave our network. I am also involved with setting up CALEA in the future, so I know they currently have no way to tap our network. Thus, those are examples of the statements "if it is digital they can see it", or "they monitor all calls". Those are absolutes and I've seen many cases it is not true. So it must be a myth.
I am sure they DO monitor a lot of the large carriers as they likely have deals. I also wouldn't be surprised that as calls leave our network and go out on our various outbound carriers we work with that there could be monitored nodes somewhere out there. So when a call comes from T-Mobile, Sprint, etc then it goes from those big networks hits one of our partnered providers and then is routed to us. Those calls could be monitored and it wouldn't surprise me if they were. However, if people are making calls to other people on our network and it never has to transit to one of those other locations then currently those cannot be monitored. This will be change. Yet the change will not be in the form of a catch all. It will be in the form of a CALEA request and them being able to tap specific DIDs.
As to how one becomes such a person. Thinking? Introspection? Willingness to question narratives rather than assume they are correct because of some appeal to authority? Not sure.
We do get probed and hammered by hack attempts frequently. It is amazing how fast those probes can come.
It makes sense for the establishment to propagate the narrative that they can see and hear everything. The narrative keeps us well behaved.
Guaranteeing privacy becomes cumbersome and inconvenient, but convenience is becoming a basic need in this era.