Words are important things, as they can be illuminative, obscurative, positive or hurtful depending on how you use them. As a writer, I tend to choose words carefully, looking for the word, or combinations of words that convey as precise a meaning as I am trying to communicate.
Others, notably those in the Public Relations Industry use language as a weapon of imprecision. I tend to call those in the PR business, fartcatchers; you can divine my opinion easily. As to what the fartcatchers for Dalton McGuinty, Conrad Black and Paris Hilton may have as an opinion about me, I could care less. My opinions about those three individuals are less than flattering.
Pretexting is one of those obscurative terms. The chairperson of Hewlett-Packard was concerned about leaks coming from the board meetings. She caused a private investigation agency to be hired, who obtained the phone records of all the board members and several journalists.
Telephone records are between you and your phone company, or so we all thought. Unless a subpoena is involved, forcing your phone company to tell the cops what digits you have been calling, or the company supplies the phone, your employers has no right to the data unless you employment contract specifically says “You can ask and find out anything you want about me, any time you feel like it”. I think we both know that not too many people sign that kind of employment contract.
Pretexting is mumbling something about Federal blah blah Investigation on the phone records for Jerimiah Dingobaby. The caller hasn’t actually said they are from the FBI, but are doing everything to give the person on the other end of the call the impression that they are in a position of authority to demand the phone records of Jerimiah Dingobaby.
Faced with what appears to be “the police” the phone company gives up your records. As the pretexter, you are not going to break that illusion, so you dutifully write down the data.
In other words, you are conducting fraud. Lying. Bullshitting, whatever term you care to use. That the person or organization on the other end of the line is swallowing your story is not your concern and you are obtaining information that you do not have the right to obtain, through fraud.
If a telemarketer does it, PhoneBusters and FraudBusters get involved. If someone saying they are from a Nigerian/Saudi/Iraqi bank sends you an email does it, it is one of those lovely Internet Bank Scams.
This is really easy to understand. Pretexting is Lying to Commit Fraud. Except Pretexting sounds much nicer than Lying.
It is the same with Rendition. Rendition is defined, in law, as the surrender or handing over of persons or property from one jurisdiction or another. Extradition is a rendition, for example, unless you or I try it.
Rendition Flights are the airplane rides that certain CIA detainees have been taking. According to Amnesty International a Rendition flight starts with the stripping of the passenger naked. An adult diaper is affixed appropriately and the detainee is dressed in a disposable overall. Usually the passenger is either hooded or blindfolded, as well as handcuffed and leg shackled. The passenger might ask a few questions, but the answers are usually a billystick to the kidneys.
At some point, especially if there is a likelihood of questions being asked, the passenger is injected with something to make them sleep for several hours. Valium, Talwin and Brietal make a nice cocktail to flatten someone for a few hours: Dentists use it all the time for root canal surgery.
The now soft and floppy passenger is strapped to a gurney and loaded like a sack of turnips. Often a pair of sound-isolating headphones are taped on their heads in case they wake up. A gag is often also part of the safety briefing.
The plane flies to wherever it is going. The passenger is unloaded again on the gurney, loaded into an ambulance and taken to whatever safe house is being used that day for whatever purposes the CIA has in mind.
Using the test of “If you or I did it, what would happen?”, try this. If you scooped a person off the street into your minivan, handcuffed, shackled, blindfolded, deafened and drugged them, there would be a multi-state and province manhunt.
It is called Kidnapping. You might wind up on the 11 pm news as “The Psycho Soccer-Mom Kidnapper”.
Rendition is Kidnapping. Pretexting is Lying. What part of this do the authorities not understand?
The PR fartcatchers and the lawyers are trying to pull one over you and me. Don’t let them.
RoadDave 