This is far more than just "calling the police".

The criminals called the police and gave them: "an emergency call purporting to come from a minor child reporting that her parents had been drinking and shooting guns inside the minor's home."

All the police have to go on is there are armed, drunk people, threatening a minor child.
The police will respond accordingly.

The perps knew exactly what buttons to push to get the maximum response.

Ask anyone in the US who uses a pre-paid phone number how their banks application is going.

We have prepaid TracFones. My spouse just got a car loan 3 weeks ago. So....

"...posing a threat to national security under a 2019 law..."

So, just continuing the previous guys efforts.

More govt contracts should be done like this.

It's what plants crave!

Would you consider a Mini Cooper to be 'massive'?
Curb weight for a 2022 4 dr Mini is only 100 lbs under that 3,000 lb limit.

Not 'everyone'.

My ecosystem remains gleefully Apple free.

The two party consent thing applies to audio recording. Not video.
At least until the laws change.

Which they won't, because video is just far too usable for the gummint.

You are continually admonished to secure your private data and account details. Strong passwords, VPN, encryption...
We take great pains do this.

Meanwhile, those who we entrust these details to, not so much.

And of course, 3 layers of shell companies later...anyone who comes calling with 10 cents per account.

They busted one of these operations years ago. Frequency of robocalls dropped not one bit.

Jail time, not a simple fine.

as a rock

Why a helicopter on Mars?
Would that weight have been better used for more instruments and experiments?

Flying a helicopter on Mars IS one of the experiments.

My Fuji X-T1 can also take "hundreds" of shots on a single battery.

If your friend is only getting 50 pics per charge, she has a duff battery.

Given enough access, the disgruntled employee would have deleted those backups as well.

This then goes into a deeper level of distributed and restricted access, and offsite backups.