this post was submitted on 24 May 2024
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Technology

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[–] Asudox 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (4 children)

Yes. It’s not a news article. The article is promoting a podcast of an interview with someone who wrote a book about that story. You know sometimes books are about things that happened in the past.

[–] TheBat 21 points 1 month ago

You know sometimes books are about things that happened in the past.

Big if true

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

It's by Joseph Cox who did a lot of reporting on the phone while they were at Motherboard. Quite good tech journalist.

[–] Plopp 3 points 1 month ago

You know sometimes books are about things that happened in the past.

Only if the book has pictures in it. Otherwise those things didn't happen.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

So it's an ad, then? That's even worse.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

It is technically a news article, it's just by a guest writer who is writing an abridged version of what they covered in their podcast.

You can calm down. The content won't hurt you.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Somehow, on top of all that, Joseph also found time to write a new book coming out in June called Dark Wire: The Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever, and I can’t recommend it enough.

Criminals like drug traffickers represent a market for encrypted, secure communications away from the eyes of law enforcement.

In the early mobile era, that gave rise to a niche industry of specialized, secured phones criminals used to conduct their business.

Joseph’s done a ton of reporting on this over the years, and the book ends up telling a truly extraordinary story: After breaking into a few of these encrypted smartphone companies, the FBI ended up running one of these secure phone services itself so it could spy on criminals around the world.

The company was called Anom, and for about three years, it gave law enforcement agencies around the world a crystal-clear window into the criminal underworld.

Now, with the rise of apps like Signal, most criminals no longer need specialized hardware, but that, of course, raises a whole new set of issues.


The original article contains 408 words, the summary contains 181 words. Saved 56%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!