Communications between VIPs are, of course, heavily managed, but suppose Obama or Clinton or Hague or anyone very senior were browsing the Dope and wanted to talk to you about one of your posts.
Obviously they can use government resources to get your real name and telephone number, but if they were to ring you, you’d likely think it a joke, right? So how do they do it?
Have you any evidence that they ever do do this (i.e., convince someone, over the phone or via a message board or instant message, or whatever, that they are who they say they are)? If it is never done, there is no reason to think it can be done.
After all, we do not even know for sure that Cecil is Cecil. :eek:
I very much hope that, in most cases, that is not true. Not without a warrant, anyway.
send you a private message asking you to contact them at xxxxx@ whatever.gov? Seems like it could work.
president@whitehouse.gov will take you to someone in the President’s office. It’d be unlikely they’d impersonate their boss.
That does not appear to be the scenario that the OP is asking about, though.
It would be fairly easy to establish the identity of Mr Obama, since he is so public. Just give him a phrase or word you made up and at the next public speaking he’d work it into the speech.
Since YOU are making up the code to give to Mr Obama, it’d be easy to do that way.
Remember Palin getting fooled. The guy claimed he was French President Nicolas Sarkozy. They got it on tape.
I think it would be difficult convincing someone that you’re Obama or any other well known politician. But it obviously is possible. The pranksters that fooled Palin had to also fool her staff first.
If someone that high up wanted to talk to me, they’d have a minion do the contacting.
“Good afternoon Mr Shakester, I’m Bob Blahblahblah, I’m calling on behalf of the Prime Minister, who was randomly surfing MySpace and stumbled across your music page. She wanted me to tell you she’s very impressed and wonders if it would be possible for you to burn an audio CD of your original music for her?”
I can imagine that happening a lot more easily than I can imagine a leader of state calling/emailing me directly.
In the film “The American President”, the titular character, played by Michael Douglas, had exactly this problem in trying to contact Annette Bening’s character.
His solution was to tell her to call the White House switchboard at 202-456-1414, and that they’d put her call through. That is the number of the White House switchboard, and they did use it in the film.
Yes, she was convinced.
It does happen. If you accept the premise that a congresswoman is a pleb.
Berkeley Breathed told the story of the time he got a phone call from Ronald Regan (apparently, the Gipper liked how Bloom County showed that Opus had a picture of Nancy on his desk for inspiration.) Basically, the president’s office makes an appointment for a phone call, with you personally if you don’t have staff of your own (as was the case at the time with Breathed), then they call you again, put you on hold, and shortly thereafter, the President picks up the phone and greets you, and says what he wanted to say.
Story is somewhat simalr to one from Slash of Gun’s and Roses. He’s sitting in a hotel, with some random unknown groupie, the phone rings, and someone asks, “Can you take a call from Michael Jackson?” Slash was shocked the King of Pop wanted to talk to him of all people, but he waited on hold until Michael was ready to ask him to play on an album.
That’s probably the way most things are done, between, equals, near equals, and anyone who has something another wants, regardless of status.
A neighbor of ours got a call from President Reagan, shortly after his inauguration, thanking him for his campaign assistance, and it worked as described above by Arkcon: first he got a call from a White House staffer, explaining that the President would be calling him between such-and-so times, so he should be by the phone (days before cell phones!) Then during the appointed time, he got the call, someone verified he was really him, and then “Hold for the President.” He was told ahead of time that the call would be very brief.
I’ve been told that when the NSA started being more active in reaching out to the public, their PR person had a hell of a time convincing news sources that they were who they claimed to be.
“Hi, I’m calling from the NSA–”
“Uh huh. :click:”
There’s a poster here who claimed, in a private message, to be Mr. Obama. I didn’t believe him, so I asked him to work the word "kumquat" into a public speech during his upcoming trip to Europe.
Bingo. But, still skeptical, I asked him to say "roofie" at a press conference. There it was, two days later. Then he PM’ed me, and asked me to prove who I was by slipping "llama" onto our company’s home page. It was a little tricky, making it fit…
But totally worth it, because the next morning, he referred to Netanyahu as a "purebred hamster". Since then we’ve had two "carabiner"s, a "snoopy" and the first verse of "Jailhouse Rock". And I had to fit "Portugese Water Dog", "purple collander", and a lengthy Mark Twain quote from Huck Finn into our weekly podcasts.
So everytime I see a post from <user name redacted> I’m pretty sure he’s who he says he is.
BTW, I’ve tried to get him to respond to some Great Debates, but he says he only posts in The Pit.
So if I’m going to impersonate a VIP, I just call you ahead of time while pinching my nose, and then say “please hold for Senator Congressman” when I call you a second time while pinching my nose, and then go into a very brief impression?
In the few times that I’ve been randomly approached by high-level figures they just send an underling to talk to you and set up a meeting at the appropriate place.
“Hi, I’m XXYY from the embassy. If you have a few moments, the ambassador would like to talk to you. Are you free at 3:00?”
What are the circumstances that you see in the movies where the President needs to get a hold of someone (Air Force One) he probably does not dial to many phones himself and does not know the number but knows it to the switch board. Where he probably knows enough to get passed through. I am sure there are certain phrases and words that the staff know to mean the other person on the line is staff of country xxx or something. Not to mention that big red phone that only went to the President of Russia
My mother was a directory assistance operator for years. Later, she was a clerk in the office, responsible for scheduling and payroll. Once she had to do some paperwork on a Saturday, so she dragged me along to help with some PC questions. While I was there, I thumbed through a procedure manual. I distinctly remember a section on how to handle requests for unpublished numbers. The process was to never give out these numbers. If a caller needed to contact an unpublished customer, the procedure was to take the number of the caller, and contact the unpublished customer with the relevant information so that they could place the call. The only exception was for calls from the White House operators, in which case the phone company would give up the number of an unpublished subscriber. I wish I’d copied that section of the manual, because I can’t remember how they verified that it was actually the White House making the request.