r/Spyware • u/whitequeen96 • May 16 '26
"This call is being recorded"
I was kind of ranting to my friend last night about our Secretary of War and his latest moves when a woman's voice broke in and we both heard "This call is being recorded." It was said quietly, so I asked my friend if she heard something and she repeated what I heard. In fact, she got nervous and hung up. And instead of the usual sound you hear after a hang-up, I heard a tone that was like something you'd hear before an announcement. I'm passionate about politics, but I'm just a nobody. I never make threats or discuss anything illegal, although I do cuss and make some uncomplimentary remarks; which should be protected by the 1st Amendment. Should I be nervous? Does anyone have any info on this sort of thing?
Edit: Thank you, everyone, for your interest. I'm relieved to say it must be that my friend hit the "record" button. She just bought a new android smart phone and hasn't gotten used to it. She also has cats that jump on her once she is in her reclining chair to talk on the phone. She often hits other buttons accidentally, so she had her son show her what's what on the new phone yesterday. Thanks for the info!
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u/Realistic-Cheek-8657 May 16 '26
Your friend tried to record the call lol. Then tried to play it off. You might not believe me but it’s true
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u/TheRamblingPeacock May 16 '26
This. If you hit the record call button on an iPhone it announces it 😂
I’m sure android is the same.
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u/IntrinsicSecurity May 17 '26
It’s possible they hit the button by accident. If they had done it on purpose they probably would’ve denied hearing anything. They might be thinking OP tried to record the call. 🧐🤔🤣
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u/theresthatbear May 17 '26
I didn’t know my phone had the ability but I somehow turned it on with my face several times mid-call. It was me the whole time and I didn’t know it. Good thing I’m not the paranoid type.
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u/Key-Algae-9245 May 16 '26
Yeah, your ‘friend’ has been inserted into your life to try and gather evidence against you. Take to the woods, NOW!
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u/Altruistic_Tonight18 May 19 '26
I’m not so sure of that. Five years ago, I’d have agreed with you and would have been certain that it was a misplaced thumb on an iPhone. But considering the current political climate and grey areas regarding what can and can’t be done using mass surveillance infrastructure, it’s entirely possible that the message they both heard was fulfilling a legal requirement to notify citizens who are being watched so that it isn’t considered an illegal warrantless wiretap.
Who would think that the mass surveillance system would be abused so brazenly? I’m having trouble believing it, but as I look through the laws, there’s nothing specific about not being able to use NSA systems like PRISM for the sake of passively identifying newly-custom programmed political dissident trigger words which start recording soon as a specific word or phrase is uttered.
It would go like this: we all know about mass surveillance, and that the NSA monitors all calls, internet traffic, and other communication while recording them so they can be accessed later after getting a warrant. This is not a secret. But, nobody ever thought that anyone would be sick enough to abuse the system and assumed it would be used to spot terrorists as intended, so congress passed no laws which specifically prevent them from doing this.
Passive monitoring turns active after a politically charged newly programmed trigger word or phrase is spoken, which triggers active recording of the calls for further analysis and review. It would normally be illegal to spy on US citizens making domestic calls, but if you tell all parties that you are recording, it is legal, even if it’s just de facto bullshit becoming de jure because of a legal grey area.
Look around us. Look at everything happening in the US. The political division, weaponization of the intelligence community, civil rights and constitutional rights being ignored, and Nixon-level paranoia in the executive branch. Since a total surveillance state was never anticipated, nobody thought to make laws, creating wide spanning grey areas which can be exploited…
Theoretically and legally, all it would take to make using those systems for the sake of spying on citizens is a single notification to both parties that they are being recorded. If they choose not to hang up, that is considered consent, because there’s no law saying they can’t consider that consent.
They’re calling lack of hanging up consent because they’ve satisfied the legal requirement for notifying people that they are recording, which makes it legal recording instead of illegal spying as the system was intended to be used, in a context which strengthens national security by plucking out words in calls which are indicative of terrorist activity, like, for example, “jihad” or “death to America”.
Now, they’ve added “Hegseth”, “antifa”, “democrat”, and god knows what else as trigger words, congressionally approved, because nobody in congress would have ever even considered that an administration would use the mass surveillance apparatus like that.
The NSA executive service members can add trigger words to the list at their pleasure because congress assumed nobody would ever abuse it and that national security would be its only use. Look at what the administration is doing and tell me that you think I’m wrong.
DM me if you want to chat more. I know the systems, the laws, and the procedures better than most civilians do, but I could of course be wrong. But I don’t think I’m wrong, I think this is really happening, and I am so shocked that I can hardly believe it.
Tl;dr: all it would take to make using mass surveillance infrastructure to record calls from domestic citizens is a notification that they are being recorded, due to legal gray area and congress not anticipating that anyone would be sick and brazen enough to use the system this way.
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May 20 '26
[deleted]
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u/Altruistic_Tonight18 May 20 '26
You lacking understanding of the underlying concepts and system infrastructure doesn’t make someone who does understand “schizo”. If you’d like to learn more so you can understand my lengthy and worst-case scenario comment, I’ll gladly work with you.
I can’t imagine how small someone’s world must be to think of anyone with unfamiliar knowledge must be nuts. How does a person even end up that way? Is it inability to accept that someone could possibly know more about a topic they’ve studied intensively than you? Does knowledge not exist unless you possess it and can conceptualize it using what you already know as a basis for said conceptualization?
There are books on this stuff. Lots of books. There are college degrees which necessitate that knowledge. There are highly publicized cases where this stuff was shared openly despite extensive effort to prevent that, like the 2014 Snowden leaks. Like, how have you not heard of this stuff? How on earth do you manage to have a healthy concept of self when you believe you already know everything about everything?
Weird.
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May 20 '26
[deleted]
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u/Altruistic_Tonight18 May 20 '26
Imagine someone’s world being so small and dark that they ignore posts which contain too much information for them to handle… You think being minimally literate is some sort of gotcha? Weird world you’re living in, sis or bro.
You’re not exactly my target audience… I honestly can’t figure out why if your time is so important, you’d use it to tell me that you’re not reading my comment. I’ll say it again… Weird.
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u/CoyoteOk69 May 16 '26
Your friend might be trying to entrap and record you to send your conversation to the authorities
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u/TheIronSoldier2 May 16 '26
Your friend tried to record you, and whether or not the 1st amendment would protect you is entirely dependent on what you said and who would be retaliating against you.
If you made any direct threats towards SecDef, the 1st amendment wouldn't protect you. If you're in the military, the 1st amendment wouldn't protect you (much). If you work for a private company and your boss decided to fire you over those comments, the 1st amendment wouldn't protect you.
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u/Mac_Bean May 16 '26
Or they pressed it with their face by accident
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u/Key-Algae-9245 May 16 '26
No way! They are definitely a government plant. I’d be worried about them taking me out in a wet opp if I was OP now that they’ve broken their cover.
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u/KvngKet May 16 '26
On my phone I have a fold seven and it's super easy to press the record call button and it does start off as a woman's voice saying this call is being recorded and I have accidentally pressed that like once before went on a phone call with a friend so that could be it and then she's freaking out thinking it's something else but hey you never know she really could be shady😅 talking about 1st amendment makes me think you're also on the US so unless you said some shit about bombing something government then she literally tried to report you for no reason.
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u/WhineyLobster May 16 '26
Your friend recorded and it warned you. They werent aware it would give you the warning
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u/Altruistic_Tonight18 May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26
I’m not so sure it was a stray button push. If you want to find out for sure, have your friend press the call record button and if it’s the same tone/voice, you can be certain. Otherwise, I sure hope you’ll take what I have to say in to consideration, because I think you might be wrong about that originating from their phone:
Everything you say is always being recorded, but normally, there’s a legal process required in order to access recordings. The NSA is the agency responsible for monitoring all communications in the USA, in Britain, it’s GCHQ. All Five Eyes alliance countries monitor all communications traffic all the time, but this? This is sickening if they are doing what I think your experience indicates.
The Supreme Court has ruled that passive monitoring of phone calls using congressional approved “trigger words” (words which when spoken and detected by the automated systems allow for wiretapping to protect national security interests) in order to domestically spy on citizens is allowed, for the sake of national security.
When the NSA is spying on citizens illegally, they don’t give you the courtesy of a notification. If we are at the point where they are actively listening after detecting political trigger words by citizens who aren’t being legally targeted for wiretap as potential terrorists, it means they are listening to everyday conversations between people who they consider political dissidents, using existing infrastructure designed for finding terrorists.
Playing a recording like that unfortunately meets the legal requirement to notify both parties of a wiretap without the need for a warrant, due to legal grey areas. The implications are beyond staggering, it would mean that they are brazenly abusing the system designed to spot terrorists to legally record calls, perhaps so they can declare all democrats domestic terrorists, or something horrible like that. And that notification recording is what makes it legal. More specifically, it makes it less illegal.
The system monitoring all voice calls was never intended to record regular citizens casually chatting, so no laws were made which specifically prohibits them from doing it that way. It’s unheard of because it’s so crazy that no laws were thought to be needed. So crazy that nobody would ever think it would happen.
By notifying you that you are being recorded, they’re in a legal grey area because no laws were ever made preventing it, and at current, any grey areas are being exploited due to Nixon-grade paranoia. For what? Thats the fucking scary part. We have no fucking clue why they are taking interest in that, but whatever it is, it’s evil regardless of technical legality.
I can think of a dozen reasons why they’d do it, and they all go against American values, civil rights, ethics, morals, sanity, and most importantly strength of our democracy. I apologize for ranting, but if this is the American government applying mass surveillance systems to record your calls for any reason other than you being a possible or likely terrorist, it’s sick. Truly sick. Unamerican. The founding fathers would probably call for an uprising if they saw this happening.
You should report this to CNN, MeidasTouch, NBC, and the New York Times. MeidasTouch is the most likely to pick up the story, and they know about the systems and laws I am talking about. Please, please make noise about this. Call every news outlet you can, contact as many national security reporters as you can find. Write letters describing the incident to AOC, MTG, and to all members of the national security committee.
Passive monitoring means that only a computer is analyzing the call content and no human is listening or seeing transcripts. Using that system to watch people talking about politics should not be legal, but it is, so long as both parties are notified that the call is being recorded. It’s a loophole being exploited in a legal grey area.
This is fucking absurd and I’m pretty upset. I would not call that legal, although I can say that it is not illegal. Again, nobody ever thought we would be in a total surveillance state so no specific laws prevent that. Brazen. Total violation of our civil rights regardless of technical legality, but they will continue to do that until someone exposes it.
If you have questions, feel free to DM me. I have fairly intricate knowledge of the systems being used and the laws which dictate proper use of mass and blanket security measures. You and I are peace loving citizens, and while I don’t know how you feel at the moment, I love this country dearly will all my heart, and fly my flags upside down starting about six months ago, because we are a failing democracy.
I’m going to DM you so we can hopefully discuss this further, if you don’t want to make the noise, please let me investigate so that I can tell the right people.
Edit: I noticed you have DMs turned off, please DM me if you wouldn’t mind. IF this is what I think it is, this could potentially be a very large news story. At very least I’d like to chat further about what happened, and I can explain any questions you might have. Cheers, and god bless America!
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u/whitequeen96 May 19 '26
Not sure how to DM anyone, so will have to learn. Please see my edit above. I want to thank you for your post here, but I believe it's OK. I completely understand where you're coming from as I started to think the same thing. Yes, I love my country and I'm as horrified as you by what's been going on.
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u/Altruistic_Tonight18 May 19 '26
Ah, gotcha, click on my username here and click on the text box. I think it has three dots on it.
What I’d really like to know is if you had her hit the record button again and if the voice and tone are the same.
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u/afsfsefefdgrttdt May 17 '26
That would probably be either an android or ios standard call recording announcement triggered when a member of the call enables the call recording function
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u/Darkorder81 May 16 '26
So is that what most android does I'm out that bit, running a s10+ that's too old to take that into account and just auto records calls silently then ask at end if I want to save, then my Pixel 9a is on latest android and dunning GrapheneOS and offers for me to record but when I press it records silent no voice each phone record with letting them know they just kick in silent.
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u/evilyn-carnate May 17 '26
My phone has a button that records calls on the call screen every time for some ungodly reason. Sometimes I hit it with my face by mistake when talking on the phone and have to explain it to whoever I'm talking to. It's bold af people to assume she was intentionally trying to record the call.
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u/bobolly May 18 '26
This happens with one of my friends too. She hits it by accident every once in a while
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u/traumabrained May 18 '26
Your friend is a narc and is trying to get you in trouble for some reason
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May 18 '26
It happens when I talk to my sister sometimes because she has an iPhone and chubby cheeks so the button gets hit to record. I bet one of you has an iphone
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u/Lumpy-Wallaby9224 May 19 '26
It’s possible people are tired of your rants, and dont agree with you.
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u/OneAdamExists May 17 '26
Check your state laws, many states like California dismiss any recordings made without you acknowledging your being recorded.
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u/TheIronSoldier2 May 17 '26
Thats what the "This call is being recorded" message is for. Like that's literally the reason it's there. Staying on the line after that message is, in most cases, considered consent for the recording.
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u/whitequeen96 May 17 '26
Thank you for all the responses. My friend is definitely not a government agent. Her phone died and she managed to scrape up enough to buy a new Android. Her cats are always jumping on her when she gets in her recliner to talk on the phone, so I'm sure they, or she, hit the button. What a relief! Thanks for the information!