The Wire: Payphone Code
In S01E05 of The Wire, why did they need to crack the code the way they did?
Freamon said they got the pages and the numbers of incoming and outgoing calls of the payphones as well as the duration.
Since they still mostly use the phone directly in the low rises and most likely that's one of the phones they get the call information from they could have easily matched the paged callback numbers to any of the (most likely) few phone calls that were made from the payphones in the next minutes.
It kind of feels like they didn't really use these information until they get the wiretap running and actually listen to the conversations.
Best Answer
This has been bugging me like crazy lately. The only explanation I can think of is they need proof that the specific calls they want to wiretap are between two suspects before they can get permission to record. Without understanding the code the calls may as well be between random people, and they wouldn't have good enough legal grounds to record. With the code, they can say "this pager belongs to this guy, he receives a page and then makes this call specifically so we know the call is implicated," as opposed to "this guy receives a page, and then any number of these calls may or may not be the call made afterwards."
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What is pager code?
using pager code, you can send messages to your friends immediately. sometimes it takes more than one call to complete your message, but it still allows for more efficent communication. below, i provide the alphabet as i know it: letter. code.How do you say I love you on a pager?
143: I Love You.S1E05 Prezbo cracks code
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