The curious teens packed closely around
Scott in the hallway during a class break. They all wanted a glimpse of
the electronic beeper, something they had only heard some rich lawyers
and doctors used. How can Scott afford it? Those things cost hundreds of
dollars. While a silent minority knew the truth, most students and
faculty thought it was loaned to him by a rich uncle to keep abreast of
an ailing father's medical needs.
The real story came to
light only after a curious teacher eavesdropped on one of Scott's
calls home. The ailing father turned out to be a director in the local
drug ring, arranging drops of heroin and cocaine for eager customers.
And Scott was not the only one - dozens of kids at several schools
around the county were supplied beepers and cellular phones - high-class
luxury items in the early 1980s. By the time authorities connected the
dots, the drug ring had grown substantially and become more entrenched
in the community.
What many people don't realize - and most
wireless service providers don't publicize - is that a significant
portion of wireless services are used to support varying levels of
criminal activity. Commercial wireless equipment is quickly adopted as
an indispensable "tool of the trade" for all levels of crime.
While most people envision early adopters of new wireless tools as
white-collar businessmen with deep pockets, the truth is closer to gangs
and thugs eagerly dropping top dollar for something that will give them
an edge against rivals and law enforcement.
ROI in
the Criminal Enterprise
The commercial arrival of
cellular phones and pagers provided much more practical ways to organize
drug gangs and prostitution rings. Pimps now had a better way to
"manage the supply chain" of his enterprise - having a more
efficient means to locate and redirect his thinly dressed partners to
meet customer's needs. Regional drug lords could quickly take
market share from competitors by adopting wireless tools to improve CRM
(Customer Relationship Management) through quicker order fulfillment.
Ironically, while many wireless providers have tried for decades to
convince legitimate businesses that wireless tools can improve their
operations, just about every thug involved at any level of crime knows
that mobility can provide a substantial return on
investment.
Street vendors hawking a variety of legal and
not-so-legal goods quickly adopted cellular phones to protect their
black market activities. Once they made contact with a customer they
deemed to be legitimate, a simple wireless call or message to a partner
located in a nearby truck could provide the goods in a discreet and
undetectable manner. Thus the most lucrative sales for these businessmen
were preserved and now hidden from obvious view.
And once
cellular phones became a common tool of even the most unorganized crime
gangs, it did not take long for some to learn some very simple
techniques to take it one step further. Early cellular transmissions
were inherently insecure due to their analog nature, and ill-intended
wrongdoers could easily find their way into someone else's call by
using a radio frequency scanner to capture signals. The true danger here
was not the loss of privacy when making a cellular call, but that the
identity of any number of cellular phones could be
stolen.
The Attack of the
Clones
The theft of mobile phone identities -
called cloning - has become a very big problem for law enforcement
around the globe. To clone a cellular phone a thief only has to obtain
the phone number and ESN (electronic serial number) of an activated
phone and then have it programmed into another phone. Cloning became so
rampant in the early 1990s that many countries outlawed the sale and use
of scanners that could pick up cellular signal or even be easily
modified to do so.
More technically savvy outlaws cleverly
adapted these wireless tools to rapidly grow their business. In one
notable case, a crafty drug dealer took advantage of a simple cellular
scanner to eavesdrop on the communications of competing dealers in New
York. By turning law enforcement on to these illegal activities, he
quickly grew his business by taking over markets abandoned by
incarcerated adversaries. A favored snitch, the dealer then had the
impudence to trace the identities of the cellular phones and pagers of
the detectives and police he worked with in order to ensure his own
operation was not endangered.
Wireless service providers - who
at first were making millions off criminals - were now eager to fund
police sting operations to stem the fraud. One particular operation in
Florida had a false retail location set up to capture and charge almost
100 criminals in a little over a month's time. In this period
alone, the tracked outlaws racked up $165,000 in stolen airtime, giving
a sense of the magnitude of the problem to mobile service providers.
Police benefit from the arrangement since criminals caught in cloning
stings are also often involved in a whole host of other misdemeanor and
felonious activity - usually involving drugs, weapons and stolen
property.
The dual effect of criminal behavior on balance sheet
of wireless companies has left them in a quandary. While unethical and
illegal activity makes up a substantial portion of revenue for service
providers, it also accounts for the majority of fraudulent charges. The
love-hate relationship with wireless companies and touchy subjects such
as crime and pornography helps explain why companies contacted by The
Feature about this article unanimously declined to
comment.
The Criminal Fortune 40 Goes
Wireless
Cloning is a tool that goes far beyond
street crime though. The most sophisticated criminal organizations still
use cloned cellular phones routinely in their operations today. A major
Colombian drug cartel, for instance, is known to have had a
telecommunications expert modify cellular phones so that multiple
identities could be programmed into it. Before each call was made, the
identity of the phone would be "tumbled" to a new number so
that any law enforcement agency would have no idea what number to tap -
all calls from the phone would look like a random list of legitimate
users.
Organized crime around the globe also lived up to its
sophisticated methods by using wireless communications to cover tracks
of illegal gambling, kidnappings, money laundering and other felonies.
In today's wireless world, even capturing the head of organized
crime gangs sometimes does little to curtail their activity. Babloo
Srivastava, a notorious Indian crime boss, used a cellular phone to
continue kidnappings and extortion from the safety of his cell in Tihar
Jail. It was not until authorities tapped the phone of an outstanding
accomplice that they realized he was communicating from the
jail.
Terrorists are also unpopular benefactors of wireless
communication. Crude timers set to detonate bombs at specific times were
quickly replaced with an off-the-shelf cellular phone with the ringer
tied to the detonator. Now human tragedy could be accurately
choreographed to instill as much fear as possible by simply dialing a
number at the appropriate time. Some have even speculated that Pan Am
103 was destroyed over Lockerbie by a "radio bomb" detonated
when the pilot crew switched to a predetermined radio frequency channel
rather than the popular belief that it was set off by timer or
altimeter.
The Smoking
Gun
But police and state authorities adjust
quickly, and they have learned to adapt the very methods criminals use
to track and capture them. As the popularity of wireless communications
in criminal acts exploded, police forces began educating themselves and
hiring reformed bad guys to get in on the wireless action. In the very
same way that computer security firms were hiring hackers to boost their
capabilities to fend off cyber attacks, law enforcement was tapping the
knowledge of wireless experts and convicts to even the playing
field.
Personal cellular phones used by criminals usually led an
extensive electronic and paper trail for investigators to follow. Simply
recovering a cellular phone from a suspect could provide law enforcement
with a virtual Rolodex of criminal contacts - something that days of
coercion, interrogation or even torture may not reveal. Very quickly,
wireless communications were becoming more of a hangman's noose
than a secure communication tool.
Many recent, high profile
criminal cases have been solved thanks to the radio fingerprints left
behind by wireless technology. Kevin Mitnick, one of the world's
most notorious computer hackers, was finally tracked and caught in 1995
as he logged onto a computer network through a cellular phone. While he
had employed cloned phones to hide his network intrusions, the tenacious
US Secret Service actually turned the tables and used his cellular
signal to locate and apprehend him.
Only a few years before,
the infamous Medellin drug lord Pablo Escobar was tracked and killed
with the help of the CIA by homing in on his cellular phone signal. In
late 2001, cellular phones left in backpacks by suicide attackers of the
Indian Parliament House were instrumental in connecting the mass murder
to Pakistan.
Terrorists have also taken a dose of hard medicine
served up by increasingly sophisticated government agencies. In 1996,
Hamas leader Yahya Ayyash was slipped a cellular phone with explosives
hidden inside. The functional unit was supposedly tracked by Israeli
Intelligence, who listened in on conversations and detonated the unit
when it was up to Yahya's ear, taking most of his head off and
killing him instantly. The same year, Chechen president Dzhokar Dudayev
found himself on the wrong end of a missile that was directed to his
location by the satellite phone he was talking on at the time. Osama bin
Laden is also said to have narrowly escaped death traps that were set by
information tapped from conversations on his Inmarsat satellite phone.
Encryption - The Unbeatable Opponent?
Since the 1998 bombing of his bases in Sudan and
Afghanistan, Bin Laden has reportedly been much more careful about the
wireless equipment he uses. Some have even said that he strictly forbids
any radio use in his inner circle of commanders, fearing the advanced
detection capabilities of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). But
others believe he has simply stepped up to the latest advance in secure
communication - encryption.
To evade the new tools in the hand
of law enforcement and government agencies, criminals have started
adopting advanced encryption methods in increasing numbers. Very
sophisticated yet simple to use encryption such as PGP and "secure
phones" are now common in communications between organized gangs
and terrorists. This new threat is something law enforcement is once
again struggling to keep up with today. The most advanced supercomputers
and decoders still often take too long to break codes - by then the
information is useless or redundant.
So once again law
enforcement is at a disadvantage with sophisticated encryption
technologies in the hands of devious criminals. While some well-funded
government agencies such as the NSA may be making headway against these
new high-tech threats, the average local police department still
struggles with resourceful, mobile cons adopting new technology. Just as
the mass consumer market follows the lead of early adopters, so will law
enforcement continue to take cues from the criminal enterprise in an
effort to keep up.
Dave Mock is author of
"Tapping Into Wireless", a hardcover book from McGraw-Hill
covering investing in the wireless market. A freelance writer and
consultant, he has also published numerous eBooks for investors and
industry staff that are available through his website and all major
eBook retailers. He can be reached at dave@davemock.com.