FBI's Startup: A Short Review of Dark Wire

In the late 20-teens, the FBI and other international organizations found themselves locked out of criminal communications. Several companies created specialized encrypted phones for their use, preventing police agencies from gaining access to their communications. When they finally hacked one such phone network, the intelligence was situation changing. They could see, almost in real time, what the criminals were planning and doing. What, some FBI and Justice Department agents thought, would happen if we ran the network? Dark Wire by Joseph Cox is the story of the endeavor.

Dark Wire is a surprisingly lightweight book. That is not to say it is bad, only to mention that it is avoids many of the more interesting questions the story raises. The story itself is well told. Cox does an excellent job on the play-by-play aspects of the story. He takes through the initial appearance of these networks, how they worked and why they were so difficulty to penetrate and the impact such penetration had. He walks us through the FBI’s decision to get into bed with a secure phone provider in order to run their own network. We are with the agents as they build the network and use it to track drug shipments, kidnapping, and murder plots. We share their satisfaction when murders are prevented, and their horror when help does not arrive on time. We struggle with them as they try ot keep the network running as it expands and finally is brought down due to a lack of resources and thousands of criminals are rolled up. It is a riveting tale, well told, but it does largely shy away from the most interesting aspects of the network.

We see, for example, on lawyer whose messages were read, but get no sense of how the teams did or did not protect client confidentiality. We are shown one murder that was not prevented but have no real sense of how often the group failed to prevent death and, more importantly, why they failed in that or other cases. The network was largely focused on drug runners. Why? Why not other kinds of crimes, like money laundering or tax evasions? Were these kinds of secure networks not used by those kinds of criminals? The book makes a big deal about the program not being approved for use in the US, but only talks to thsoe who wanted to approve it. There is no serious conversation about why the higher ups didn’t want this used in the US. The San Diego office, the driver behind the program, seemed convinced the reluctance was merely careerism, But there are obvious privacy and warrant concerns with this kind of action. The book would have been stronger if it delt with the other side as openly as it did with the boosters.

And, of course, there is the larger question around privacy in general. While they obviously did quite a bit of good with his program, there is no mention of any downside. Did the FBI turn over dissidents to friendly regimes via this program? Did the explosion of these kinds of networks drive, for example, abuse victims into less secure methods of communications? The book is silent on the issue of harm versus help, though, to its credit, it does touch on the problem of what happens if criminals are driven into public apps like Signal. But it would have been a more interesting book if it has given us some indication that these concerns were at all approached.

Dark Wire is not a bad book. Quite the opposite — within its chosen scope, it is a great deal of fun. Cox tells the story very well, in a clear, understandable fashion that carries you along a fascinating ride. I do recommend reading it. Just note that it is a very light book, leaving the heavier, most interesting questions out of its story almost completely.