Twice in my life I have noticed things that made me wonder. The first time I currently think was in my imagination. This time I am not so sure. I am noticing for example a cell phone whose battery level drops when connected to the charger and not in airplane mode. Google chat messages apparently long delayed. That this started after the Snowden leak makes it even more suspicious to me. I am an American citizen residing abroad.

I could just be seeing things that aren't there. However as a vocal opponent of this sort of surveillance, it would make sense that I would be caught up in some sort of filter especially as the hunt for Snowden continues.

(So note: If you are listening I think you might be. I am a patriot, as I believe Snowden is. I have not provided any active assistance for him, but I applaud those who do. My wife thinks I am too political but at some point my loyalty to my country, the United States, compels me to stand up to this sort of thing.)

Battery levels will drop when connected to the charger - because of code in the battery controller. It's bad for the battery to stay at 100% for any amount of time, so the controller will cycle it in the 95-100% area. Smarter controllers will hide what they're doing.

Google chat messages can be delayed for any number of reasons, ranging from internal glitches to "Your network connectivity was bad at the precise moment the message was attempted to be delivered, thrice, and it retries at exponentially longer intervals."

But go from 5% to 0%? I am used to glitches but there are oddities here that are either hardware issues (battery discharging while low and connected to the charger), network issues. This is beyond what I am used to. Again, I could be connecting the dots incorrectly but I would not be surprised if I am right :-P