Many criminals have been convicted as a result of encrypted-phone stings—more than four hundred in the U.K. alone.
In 1895, a police officer in Manhattan who had once worked for a telephone company, and whose name has been lost to history, suggested adding a hidden circuit to lines used by known criminals: a wiretap. The city’s mayor, William L. Strong, approved the technique, and for two decades wiretapping secretly flourished at the N.Y.P.D. In 1916, news of the practice leaked, resulting in an outcry and a public inquiry— not least because the police had been tapping the calls of priests. New York’s police commissioner, Arthur Woods, defended his officers’ methods, saying, “You can’t always do detective work in a high hat and kid gloves.”
Crooks have always wanted to talk without being heard, and cops have always wanted to listen without being seen. Since the exposure of the wiretap, criminals have tried to stay one step ahead of eavesdroppers. Some underworld figures have avoided phones altogether. Bernardo Provenzano, the Sicilian Mafia don, communicated through pizzini—messages written on tiny pieces of paper—using a variant of the Caesar cipher, an elementary mode of encryption in which each letter is shifted three places in the alphabet.
Denne historien er fra April 24 - May 01, 2023 (Double Issue)-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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Denne historien er fra April 24 - May 01, 2023 (Double Issue)-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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QUARTET ISLAND
Mendelssohn on Mull celebrates chamber music away from urban pressures.
FIX YOU
The self-help positivity of Coldplay.
ILLUMINATIONS
Suzanne Jackson captures the transformative power of light.
RAT PACK
The classic rodent studies that foretold a nightmarish human future.
ROYAL TREATMENT
The unrivalled omnipresence of Queen Elizabeth IL.
WELL, WELL, WELL
Eating—and not-in the epicenter of hype diets.
NEWARK STATE OF MIND
Mayor Ras Baraka's reasonable radicalism.
DOOM SCROLLING
Social media and the teen-suicide crisis.
THE WORKER REVOLT
Harris and Walz try to stop blue-collar Americans from drifting to Trump.
THE CHIT-CHATBOT
Is talking with a machine a conversation?