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.
This story is from the April 24 - May 01, 2023 (Double Issue) edition of The New Yorker.
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This story is from the April 24 - May 01, 2023 (Double Issue) edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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