I hate how every character just pretend like phone lines and text messages are secure, and talk about their plan to defeat the villain, blow shit up, cast magic, or whatever, on their normal smartphone with all the surveillance on it.
And like “Is this a secure line?” WTF is that question? How do you magically “secure” a line? (there’s no magic in-universe btw)
Is there anything that’s accurate to real life?
“Burner” phones are becoming more common in tv and movies, including the Jason Bourne movies. A phone line is mostly secure if no one knows to listen to it or who owns it.
Even assuming the NSA records everything for pattern analysis and data mining, they won’t care about most of us and can’t legally share that data with cops…. and still may not be able to identify the owner of a burner phone
Jurassic World: Chaos Theory. One of the characters is very diligent about avoiding having his location traced by phone
That’s sort of the whole premise of The Wire, especially the 1st, 4th, and 5th seasons. The mass surveillance side is mostly shown through the cops’ perspective, and the show is now 20+ years old, but it shows an extremely realistic portrayal of how cops use surveillance to build cases against criminal organizations and career criminals.
It’s set in the early days of mass adoption of cell phones, so there are some pretty dated moments. The entire 1st season centers around monitoring a drug enterprise that uses pay phones to communicate. There’s a moment in a later season where the cops have to have text messaging and sending pictures over cell phones explained. They go into a lot of detail about what a burner phone is. It’s kind of funny in retrospect, but it was all very timely when the show originally aired.
The title “The Wire” is a reference to wire taps, ie the police getting warrants to allow them to listen to phone calls.
It’s probably a pacing thing. Having a section of the film where the protagonist has to sit down and learn about threat models, flash a Tails image to a USB stick and fiddle around with PGP keys before they can communicate securely would probably ruin the vibe.
Mr. Robot is a very accurate depiction of hacking in its era. Everything they use is a real hack available to the public. It does a good job of showing backend corporate structure.
And the weakest link in most chains, the people.
Person of Interest.
This answers the question in the title.
Man it was fucking WILD how that show told us about the government spying on us (albeit dramatized) and ran so long they referenced Snowden directly.
First time I heard about the NSA was on a Simpsons episode, the joke was that they spied on people. I also had the misfortune of reading Digital Fortress some time after that and again it depicted NSA as spying on people.
I didn’t get why people were so shocked when it turned out that NSA was spying on people.
Yes! I second this! Not many mention of this in the wild these days.
Its more like “Can y’all list them all” question, but I didn’t know how to word it properly.
I mean there are non-magic ways to secure a phone line or conversation. Cell phone calls are already encrypted, which doesn’t help you if the cell company is ‘in on it’, but you can use a secure messaging app like signal to encrypt texts or calls., provided both people are using it. But lots of media acknowledges the danger of using your own device, and even goes so far as to depict characters theowing away their phone or smashing the sim card. Using a burner phone is not entirely secure but is pretty reliable since you basically become a needle in a haystack of millions of people. Somebody else mentioned person of interest though, and thats a great show that takes the premise that an ai system is eatching and aware of every communication that happens digitally, as well as all camera feeds that are hooked up to a network.
It’s not a film or TV show, but Cory Doctorow 's Little Brother series has this.
Minority Report basically has mesh biometric ID so you get personalized ads everywhere. And while they do rely on psychic precognition, they are essentially thought police.
Older movies, but these themes are central to both The Net and Enemy of the State.
The Bourne films.
Do you get the headaches?
Look what they make you give
Pine Gap, TV Series 2018, Australia.
Shows fictionalized accounts of call and location tracking, and cellphone data infiltration.
The Wire.
It’s been a long time since I saw it, but I remember the Simpsons movie had a part about the NSA listening in on phone calls.
