As I was listening to the radio on the way to work today there was a short segment about hacking in which some expert made a comment on how it was very easy to hack a cell phone signal and listen in on somebody’s call. He said, I quote, “Knowing that someone with the right equipment a few hundred feet outside your house can listen in on your phone call is very disconcerting.” Very disconcerting indeed! My whole life would totally be over if someone listened to some casual conversation that I had with one of my friends.
Unless your name is Jack Bauer I don’t think that there is any phone call that you would take on a personal cell phone that is so important that it needs to be encrypted. I mean I know there are business people that talk about important business stuff, and they probably have company phones, maybe encrypted, maybe not, but for your average every day consumer, if they are actually worried about someone listening in on a call, I think they might have bigger problems to worry about.
I mean seriously, who cares? I hear people talking on their phones all the time on the train. Sometimes they are juicy or otherwise intriguing conversations, but when all is said and done, I didn’t care enough to confront them about their conversations. Sure there could be some creepy stalker or something listening in on the “woman of his dreams” phone calls, but he’d have to be putting a lot of effort into doing this, and he’d be putting a lot of effort into something else creepy if that weren’t an option.
Basically, what I’m guessing is that we live in a world of paranoia, and the paranoia exists only because some corporation told us we should be paranoid so they can sell us another product.