The Wire: Pager Cloning
In S01E05 the police finally gets all the paperwork to clone Dee's pager.
I'm wondering how exactly they cloned the pager, as they had him in earlier episodes but did lack the paperwork. Was it possible to get a clone, through the pager company e.g. without having to actually clone Dee's pager? They didn't bring him in again.
Best Answer
Old analog phones & pagers had a kind of "MAC address" that would identify them. They didn't change after every connection like they do these days, they were fixed for the life of the device.
It was a pretty simple job to give 2 devices the same 'address'. I had my carphone cloned to my mobile (illegal-ish but I used it fairly:)
The network would only know you'd done it if it was used in 2 disparate locations in a short period.
As this was a legal tap, the network would know not to flag it.
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The Wire - Pager Tracing Scene
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