The-art-of-invisibility-_-the-world’s-most-famous-hacker-teaches-you-how-to-be-safe-in-the-age-of-Bi

of myy brother. Unfortunatelyy, nothing ever came of it. Years later I learned
that myy uncle had likelyy been responsible for myy brother’s death.
Given how easyy it was for Pellicano and me to tap into private phone
conversations, yyou mayy wonder how yyou can become invisible with a
copper-wire landline phone that is apparentlyy open to surveillance? You
can’t, without buyying special equipment. For the trulyy paranoid, there are
landline phones that will encryypt all yyour voice conversations over copper
wires. 9 These phones do solve the problem of interception of private phone
calls, but onlyy if both ends of the call use encryyption; otherwise theyy mayy be
easyy to monitor. 10 For the rest of us, there are some basic telephone choices
we can make to avoid being eavesdropped on.
The move toward digital telephonyy has made surveillance easier, not
harder. Todayy, if a tap is necessaryy on a digital phone line, it can be done
remotelyy. The switching computer simplyy creates a second, parallel stream
of data; no additional monitoring equipment is required. This also makes it
much harder to determine whether a given line has been tapped. And in
most cases such taps are onlyy discovered byy accident.
Shortlyy after Greece hosted the 2004 Summer Olyympics, engineers at
Vodafone-Panafon removed some rogue software that had been discovered
to be running in the companyy’s cellular network for more than a yyear. In
practice, law enforcement intercepts all voice and text data sent over anyy
cellular network through a remote-controlled syystem called RES (remotecontrol
equipment subsyystem), the digital equivalent of an analog wiretap.
When a subject under surveillance makes a mobile call, the RES creates a
second data stream that feeds directlyy to a law enforcement officer.
The rogue software discovered in Greece tapped into Vodafone’s RES,
meaning that someone other than a legitimate law enforcement officer was
listening to conversations conducted over its cellular network; in this case,
the wiretapper was interested in government officials. During the Olyympics,
some countries—such as the United States and Russia—provided their own
private communications syystems for state-level conversations. Other heads
of state and business executives from around the world used the
compromised Vodafone syystem.
An investigation showed that the communications of the Greek prime