Anyone here watched The Wire?
It's an amazing show, probably the best thing I've watched on TV, and it deals in depth with how the police try to track and bring down drug distribution.
The two guys responsible for the show are an ex-cop and a journalist from Baltimore.
While not a true story, it has many of its characters on both sides of the law based on actual people (or a combination people) in Baltimore history, from the low-level slingers to the dons to the pigs and the law-makers, and the shit that plays out in the series is all pulled from local history. There's even been a few drug traffickers upset about obviously being portrayed by characters in the show under a different name.
I feel like since I've watched the show I understand a little more in-depth how tracking realistically goes on. Hypothetical advice:
1. If they're listening to your line, or more likely your dealer's line, masking the words probably won't help much. They know what you're talking about.
2. It costs a lot of money to maintain a wiretap or listen to people's conversations, a lot of man hours, and there are so damn many goings on in big cities and a need for cops to be doing something that more than likely you're not far up enough on the food chain (or obvious enough) for anybody to give a shit about you. After 9/11 a lot of money got moved around and the drug war isn't what it was.
3. If you do talk to your people over the phone, make small talk first for a minute or two.
4. Keep yourself insulated with discreet people. If your people are discreet, then you run less of a chance of popping up on the radar.
5. Cops are dumb and removed from your reality. They can maintain a totally deluded understanding of what's really going for a long period of time because they don't have a way to check their facts beyond occasional CI's and busts. This can be either good or bad depending on what they hear.
There's plenty more but I thought it might be a conversation starter
--tobala]
