IN JUNE 1970 the CIA did something audacious. In partnership with the BND, Germany’s spy agency, it secretly purchased Crypto AG, a Swiss firm that was then the world’s leading purveyor of cipher machines. The devices were used by over 120 countries to encrypt sensitive diplomatic and military communications. For almost 50 years America, having subtly rigged the machines, could read many of those messages. “It was the intelligence coup of the century,” boasted a CIA report.
In 2018 the FBI went one better with Operation Trojan Shield. “Dark Wire” by Joseph Cox, a technology journalist and the co-founder of 404 Media, a website, tells the story of how American and Australian officials quietly established Anom, an encrypted messaging service, to attract criminals seeking to evade surveillance on traditional platforms.
