Dark Wire
The Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever
Ratings5
Average rating4.2
15
The Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever
Ratings5
Average rating4.2
This cat-and-mouse story of a vast FBI sting operation reveals how the criminal underworld has become a globalized economy in its own right--one that can't be policed without crossing complicated ethical boundaries.
Beginning in 2018, a powerful app for secure communications, called Anom, began to take root among drug dealers and other criminals. It had extraordinary safeguards to keep out prying eyes--the power to quickly wipe data, voice-masking technology, and more. It was better than other apps popular among organized crime syndicates, except for one thing: it was secretly run by law enforcement.
Over the next few years, the FBI, along with law enforcement partners in Australia and parts of Europe, got a front row seat to the global criminal underworld. They watched drug deals and hits being planned in real time, making arrests where they could without blowing their cover. For a period of years, some one hundred thousand criminals worldwide, including members of South American drug cartels, the Calabrian mafia, and the Chinese Triad, did their business in full view of the officers they were trying to evade.
It was a sprawling global economy as efficient and interconnected as the legal one. But a surveillance operation like this couldn't last. It was too dangerous, too ethically fraught, too large. And it all ended in spectacular fashion.
Dark Wire is more than the story of this enormous sting operation--it shows the fundamental problems of policing in such a vast and high-speed economy. This is a caper for our modern world, where everyone is connected and no one is completely free.
Reviews with the most likes.
I first heard about this book thanks to an article on Ars Technica. What I found strange was it was the time I heard anything about this. Given the timing (2020-21) of the bulk of the story though, it's not too much of a surprise. I had other things on my mind back then.
I've read a lot of computer history and cybercrime books. I find the topic fascinating. This book is really more about more traditional crime (drugs, guns, money laundering) with a technical aspect (encrypted phones). From a technical perspective I didn't enjoy this as much as other books, but it's still a fascinating story.
It poses a lot of issues as technology and specifically encryption techniques continue to evolve how do you balance our right to privacy against the needs to prevent crimes? I don't have any answers and this book doesn't attempt to answer that question. What it does it instead is to tell a fascinating story that seems like it's right out of a movie.
I think this could turn into a great documentary or possible a movie, but it's probably not flashy enough for the latter. Staring at computer screens reading messages is not exactly big screen cinema. Overall though I found this a great read.
