MovieChat Forums > Breach (2007) Discussion > Why pagers? Why not cellphones?

Why pagers? Why not cellphones?

posted 8 years ago by skat1140
7 replies | jump to latest

Why is O'Neill wearing a pager, in 2001? (Also, you'd think he would've put it on vibrate.)

If his wife "wants to know where he is" why doesn't she just call his cellphone, which he has, from her home phone?

[–] aGuiltySoul 8 years ago

Some of the details, like this, are duplicates of what was used in the actual case. So I guess you'd have to ask the FBI.

But I have a guess. He wore a pager to stay in touch with his handlers, not with his wife as he said. They paged him with codes, thus avoiding exposing Eric.

It's not what a movie is about, it's how it is about it.
RIP Roger Ebert

[–] ARoggen 8 years ago

I know, his boss had a Palm Pilot, too. I got one free with my laptop in 1997, I believe.

[–] Saltpeter 8 years ago

I just watched the film and could not understand why, if this is set in 2000 & 2001, nobody had cell phones, including all the government agents. Unless I wasn't paying close attention, every call was made from a landline. Quite a head-scratcher... 

[–] akswan88 8 years ago

I saw plenty of people in the film talking on cell phones. At the very end after Hanssen took young Eric back to his house after crazily shooting his gun at him in the woods, Eric took out his cellphone and called Agent Burroughs and told her to put the tail back on Hanssen.

Earlier the passenger in the tail car kept calling the investigators in the garage to keep them informed of the whereabouts of Eric and Hanssen.

It's been a few weeks since I watched this so I can't off the top of my head remember any other specifics, but I'm sure everybody had a cellphone, no "nobody".

~~~~~~
Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once. ;)

[–] morganseer 7 years ago

Cell phones aren't as secure as landlines.

I'm not sure why Hansen wasn't more suspicious of the pager, though I can see why a pager would be more useful to his superiors. I don't think pagers are as easy to break into as cell-phones.

BBL

[–] subwoofers 8 years ago

sometimes "reliability" is 5 sometimes 10 years behind what they are selling to consumers

i noticed on a recent hospital stay the nurses still carry those big giant thick "call only" cell phones pre iPhone times. i think they are the 3 watt babies that can't text but they are reliable as hell

the nurse handed it to me once to talk to my doc and it was nice and heavy and beefy

[–] d-r-marmol 8 years ago

Back then cell phones (for the most part) were for work purposes. Not everyone had a cell phone like today. I don't know when call waiting became available on cell phones, so he may have been required to keep the line open for work. Which in turn justifies the use of the pager so that he can call her back from the office line.