Hum. Been thinking about something. Seems to me that the big TLAs will probably try to avoid detection, whenever possible, by even local authorities such as Police, security companies, etc...One of these could inadvertently (or 'advertently'!) tip off the observee. I'll give you an example I've been thinking about. Consider that someone wants to start monitoring your hotmail/gmail etc... Of course, they could just issue some piece of paper, send a couple of guys with guns (or threaten to) and boom! A copy of all your stuff starts getting funneled over. No doubt this happens a lot. BUT, what if they'd rather avoid that. Email companies aren't necessarily experts in hiding the fact that they have been contacted. So it seems to me that a TLA will probably first go about trying to guess your password or otherwise crack your account. If they're just reading your email, there's probably a number of things they can do to make themselves undetected. One 'obvious' thing is, after opening your email, is to resend it to your account using a spoofed originator. So then, we you access it, it all looks fresh and new. The same "avoiding local detection" probably applies across the board. If they want to enter your house, they probably don't want to telegraph this by contacting your local alarm company and having them shut off the alarm (on the other hand, seems to me someone should open an alarm company where any down time is automatically encrypted and downloaded somewhere so that it could never be tampered with and is always retrievable by the customer). There may be some interesting consequences, however, to this. -TD