Diario Libre’s “ADC – Antes de comenzar” opening editorial comment, by Anibal de Castro, focuses once more on the question of telephone surveillance. It remarks that Vice-President Milagros Ortiz Bosch’s telephone conversations were routinely monitored – and even recorded – when she did her stint as Acting President while President Hipolito Mejia was out of the country. Fellow PRD members have also been tapped, not to mention opposition politicians, writes de Castro. He asks therefore whether we should call those who are listening in “calieses”, a word evocative of the Trujillo era, used to describe government spies. The only person who isn’t being eavesdropped on is telecommunications institute INDOTEL president Orlando Jorge Mera, “perhaps because he is a mute?” de Castro quips. Due to this practice, the telephone has become the ideal medium for protest “about the economic situation, the power cuts or whatever,” he continues, “done with the knowledge that the authorities are listening.” Ending with a note of sarcasm, de Castro says that with all the surveillance going on, the people unwittingly have the chance to make themselves heard. “And then we complain that no one is listening to us?” Anibal de Castro can be contacted on acastro@diariolibre.com