I’ve never been on board with deliberate vandalism of public telephones. So I never had much love for the “This Phone is Tapped” sticker campaign which saw as many as half a million stickers affixed to payphone handsets around the world. This movement raised awareness of government surveillance while irritating the hell out of the individuals who owned the payphones, potentially costing them thousands of dollars in fines while scaring off their already fading customer base.

Still, the widespread presence of the stickers seems to have struck a nerve in a surveillance-wary populace. The campaign was officially retired in 2014.

Echoes of “This Phone is Tapped” inform this pair of then-and-now photos from Flickr photographer Tim Perdue, showing a piece by street artist Vinchen in which Uncle Sam was depicted as listening in on the payphone nearby. Tim describes the photo he titled “He’s Still Listening …“:

This is a piece by local street artist Vinchen – it’s been there since at least before 2008, when I started taking photos of it. Originally there was a payphone on the wall beside him, and he had he had his glass pressed up against the side of the box, eavesdropping on your conversation. Eventually the phone went away, and sometime later was replaced by a big WiFi symbol on the wall – that’s gone now as well. He’s a bit worse for wear these days, but nevertheless Uncle Sam still perseveres, and you never know when he might be listening to you!