At 22:05 2001-10-08 -0700, Bill Steward wrote:
Actually, the press article describes the message as an "SMS", which is a GSM Short Message Service cell-phone text message, rather than an email. This implies that the Belgian police are either routinely eavesdropping on GSM text messages, or else some intelligence service is doing so and asked them to do the local legwork.
I doubt that the story is true. Belgium couldn't be that different from Sweden. Since SMS-ing is cheap it's a major method of communicating especially for younger (poorer) persons but increasingly also for the middle aged. The "Hi, I feel lonely, everybody seems out to get me, can I stay at your place for a while, Grettings, Osama"-SMS joke chain letter - with several variants - have been around here for several weeks and in a very large scale. I've recieved several and everyone I've asked has got at least one, usually from a close friend. The joking community is unintentionally flooding Echelon. //Mob