Beatmag’s regular technical columnist James Spectrum (AKA Jari Salo of Pepe Deluxe) draws the elusive link between baby monitors and the demons of the Pentagon.
Back in 1763 Sir William Pitt, while addressing the British House of Commons, summed up the heart of privacy by declaring the following:
“The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail – its roof may shake – the wind may blow through it – the storm may enter – the rain may enter – but the King of England cannot enter; all his forces dare not cross the threshold of that ruined tenement.”
However, what Sir William did forget was addressing the issue of what goes not in but out of the cottage. Modern technology has done wonders for the ever-common hobby of eavesdropping.
While shared phone lines and telephone exchanges with nosy operators are unfortunately things of the past (unless you’re in the business of heavy crime) you don’t really need the Cadillac of scanner radios to hear what’s going on in the neighbourhood – a simple baby monitor will suffice.
While baby monitors are a relatively new invention, the common audio rule “analog beats digital” applies to them too. This is mainly because digital units have a bad habit of scrambling the signal, thus seriously limiting the free spread of information.
Things move up to another level of excitement when eavesdropping is unintentional. My friends living near a busy road often enjoy brief but eloquent truck driver conversations. None of their neighbors seem to have wireless phones, which is a bit of shame as phones and baby monitors commonly use the same transmitting frequencies.
People living next door can live very interesting lives: one woman’s monitor picked up a call where her neighbour confessed stealing beer by hiding it in her son’s stroller and smoking crack among other things. Sometimes you don’t need anything but the right timing and a dose of imagination, like the woman who was woken up by a strange and haunting voice calling repeatedly, “wake up, wake up, wake up…”
It took her some time to realize that the ghost was in fact the neighbour on the monitor, trying to wake her son.
For maximum monitor fun-o-rama one should live by interesting locations such as airports, government buildings (preferably military-related) and mental wards. Imagine the surprised joy of the pilots in aircraft making their way to Britain’s Luton airport when they started getting infant squealing instead of landing instructions on their radio – “I’ve heard of child labour but this is simply ridiculous!”
The door can also swing both ways, as was case where a couple with a young child living next to hostel for adults with learning difficulties. One resident was prone to have seizures followed by violent outbursts in the middle of the night, and naturally one of the staff came up with the idea of using a baby monitor to keep check on him.
The result was a mutually effective succession of fright nights where child’s crying and adult screams were consistently sent to wrong receivers. Just before calling a priest for the act of exorcism the couple happened to bring the subject up with one of the hostel workers…
must have been quite a relief to both the parties.
The reason for the aforementioned incidents, and many similar ones, is that authorities do their best to severely restrict the number of transmitting frequencies available for commercial use.
In addition to that the general policy seems to be that The Man should hear us but we shouldn’t hear him. For example the Pentagon is doing its best to stop secrets from leaking out. Since 2001 workers in classified meeting areas aren’t allowed to use wireless devices unless they disable their transmission capabilities. In the Pentagon’s case there might actually be something very very sinister they’re desperate to hide.
Luckily when even the best electronic tools fail there is still the most powerful weapon on earth left to resort to. Yes, I’m talking about imagination. Back in 1967 a Yippie activist Abbie Hoffman and his merry bunch found out that there’s actually a demon of war trapped inside the Pentagon. Abbie figured if the reason for a war you’re fighting and losing overseas is an evil spirit instead of the usual foreign politics gone terribly wrong, people should at least know about it. But how on earth would he get the authorities to confirm he knew the truth?
The solution was simple yet brilliant: he applied for an official permission for 50,000 people to levitate the Pentagon to 300 feet in order to free the demon. Would The Man fall for it? The surprising answer was ‘yes’, though the official granting of permission allowed only a modest ten foot rise.
Sadly The Man, as usual, got the last laugh. Damn hippies were too stoned to understand the official acknowledgement of the demon; instead everyone went crazy about the levitation part: talk about missing the point! The last time I checked the Pentagon (and its contents) it was still resting firmly on the ground and the US marines get to see the world. A lot.
Right click here to save a sample of baby monitor action.
Filed under: Pepe Deluxe Gets Technical by Flexmaster Nylon
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