Expired Patriot Act = No Phone Service

It could be purely coincidence, but my home phone stopped working yesterday evening.

While I am not sure how phone companies and the government coordinated the data collection process, I guess it's possible that all phone data was running directly through some government agency in real-time. Maybe for everyone or just certain segments of the population.

If that's the case, cutting the government off may not be all that seamless.

I am curious, has anyone else experienced an interruption or problems with their phone or internet service ?

a reply to: MaryStillToe

Although Land-lines play a (ever-diminishing) role in the NSA spying on all American citizen terrorists, if your smartphone suddenly got cut-off too (for no reason by your carrier) I'd start to think there might be shenanigans at play.

After all, smartphones / ipads can be remotely accessed and activated (mic, camera, speaker) even with a dead battery - that's one reason why they have seemingly built-in batteries.

a reply to: MaryStillToe

No I did not experience any outage (that I know of) I go to bed fairly early...but I am very curious as to why you did.

What time of the night was it? I wonder if they were doing a last collection of data before the change.

Yep, think your paranoia is working a little overtime here.

Our landline and cell phones are just fine.

Just give a huge thanks that the Patriot Act expired, let it stay dead!

a reply to: MaryStillToe

I haven't had a landline in 7 years. Don't miss it at all. Don't talk much on my cell phone either. Didn't notice.

Yesss!! Last night my phone got caught in a boot loop.. finally got it to boot up this morning and a TON of things were reset. Had a bunch of google play services werent working notificationa it was very strange

a reply to: MaryStillToe

a reply to: Sublimecraft

Well my landline isn't quite a landline anymore. It's bundled through a package with TV and phone. The phone will no longer work without electricity the way a traditional phone line would, so it's likely being routed through the internet.

Verizon installs an ONT box and neither phone or internet will work without electricity. Their agreement says you are not allowed to remove their ONT box for any reason, even if you cancel their service. Kind of weird, but nothing surprises me anymore.

a reply to: caladonea

The phone went out shortly before or after midnight. It is back up now, but very strange because I've never had this problem before in the 8 or 10 years since having their service. The internet and TV worked fine, but only the phone was out. It was dead on my end, but busy for others and no phones were off the hook.