ABSTRACT
Despite technological advances in blocking interceptions, there is still little privacy afforded to cellular telephone or internet communications (Alexandropoulou, 2008; Garfinkel, 2000; Ogura, 2006). In an age of wireless mobile communications, it is common to hear of both legal and illegal telephone tapping (Edwards, 2004). Although electronic interception by individual hackers is a crime, it no longer makes headlines. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, authorities have used heightened security concerns to further legitimate state-initiated communication interceptions (Beck, 2002; Schulhofer, 2002; Sidel, 2004). Individual hackers, corporate rivals, and government agencies use interception technologies to monitor communications for assorted purposes. Phone tappings only become scandalous when they unlawfully target the
power elite and those who supposedly protect telecommunications privacy and security; that is, when they target the traditional state watchers and eavesdroppers. If such monitoring is discovered it is usually not disclosed publicly to avoid embarrassment. Nonetheless, in recent years the public has learned about several telecommunication scandals, including the Telecom Italia spying incident, the phone tapping of the British Royals, the Hungarian, Brazilian, and Portuguese political hacking scandals, and so on.1
