Last night I was having a phone conversation with my friend about a potential job he referred me to that I just had a phone interview for that day. It’s for a pharmaceutical company and he works for one of their competitors (he’s waiting for a position to open up in what he does so he can jump ship) but he referred me to a friend/ex-coworker. So the conversation was about 25min long and lots of talk about position details, compensation and company specifics. Comparing this position and company to his position (similar) and company. About 20min into it there is this loud automated message that we BOTH heard that said ‘This conversation is now being recorded’ and we both froze in silence. I looked at my phone (we both use Androids & there are apps you can use to record… some of which announce) and made sure nothing else was running and sure enough, display was off (had to turn it on to check) and nothing else was running. I asked him if he had heard that and he concurred that he had. I asked if he had started recording the conversation or if an app launched itself on his phone and he double checked and confirmed that he was in the same boat as me. No idea where that sound came from. We were both on mobile phones (Sprint and VZW) and he was in Corpus Christie TX on business and I’m in Colorado. Neither one of us is what I would consider a strong supporter of the GOV and voice our opinions from time to time… never do we make threats or any sort of actionable statements… just questioning our leaders intents like a good patriot (probably soon to be changed to ‘Domestic Terrorist’) should. Other than that neither one of us is running a crime syndicate that we’re aware of and don’t break any laws other than perhaps occasionally speeding and similar minor traffic infractions.
Any ideas as to what the hell is going on here? Kind of hard to not jump to something more than just a minor glitch when privacy is involved these days. Seeing as how the Supreme Court ruled that simply compiling evidence w/o warrant isn’t an invasion of privacy unless that evidence is later used against you in court I don’t know why they would even announce it but I don’t know. I’m at a loss on this one. Needless to say we stopped our conversation and wrapped things up just because we felt like we were being ‘watched’ at this point. Not that we were doing anything wrong but we’re both of the mindset that it shouldn’t matter if you’re doing anything wrong or not… you’re entitled to privacy.
Apply the rule of parsimony, add a little dose of Occam’s razor, inject a little Google.com, and you wind up with this, from “Google Voice” tech support:
"Some users have reported that the Call Recording feature has been turning on unintentionally. We are working on resolving this issue as soon as possible.
As a workaround you can disable call recording. To disable this feature:
Sign into Google Voice and go to your Google Voice Settings.
Click the Calls tab.
Under Call Options deselect the checkbox next to Enable recording and Conferencing options on inbound calls."
No, when you have a Google Voice account you can choose when you place a call if you use that # or your main # to call from. Either number rings in on your cell and you can even set it so that incoming calls ring on your laptop/PC if you’re signed into Gmail. You can also places calls from your laptop/PC in the same manner with completely free airtime and cheap international calls. You can text and it has free voice mail to text and all sorts of features for free. Normally I talk to close friends from my normal wireless number but I had just called him minutes earlier from my laptop and when he called that number back I wasn’t at my laptop so I took it on my cell phone. I know you love your iPhones but there is SO much stuff you can do with an Android phone that you just can’t do with an iPhone.
Nothing new as the FBI began illegal wire tapping as far back as the days of John Dillenger. And no the .gov does not give you an audible warning if they record you. At least back in the day clicking on the line was a tell tale sign.
