You wrote:
We have potential bugging devices in all our houses - The telephone! Of course, when it is onhook, the microphone does not transmit... or does it?
The Mondo article ("Total Surveillance" by Charles Ostman) was a joke.
From the innacuracies in what I do know about, I assume all of the phone-paranoia is also unjustified.
Actually, there is a germ of truth in this. On older phones (don't know if this works on newer electronic phones) when the handset is 'on-hook' a switch opens and breaks the voice circuit. This of course only works for DC circuits. If you drive that same circuit with an AC signal (from further up the line) then that 'open' switch becomes a capacitor and acts as a band-pass filter. Signals from the mic will then modulate that AC current and can be extracted and reconstructed. Supposedly the Dutch police have perfected this and use it in investigations to circumvent legal restrictions on physically bugging suspects homes; or so was alleged a couple of years ago during a narcotics trial in Amsterdam. Dale H.