The bottom line is that no solution will ever be secure unless it‘s a face-to-face meeting with no digital traces for the spooks to follow. Be paranoid. I just want to leave you tonight with something that‘s going to make you even more paranoid. Someone here in Sydney is hacking into your mobile phone on a routine basis. This is a cryptophone. It uses high-end encryption to protect cell phone calls from spying, and a lot of media companies and corporations are now using these in troublespots overseas where they don‘t trust local phone companies not to listen in. But someone is snooping on our supposedly encrypted phone calls here in Australia. What this cryptophone also does is alert me when there‘s a rogue cell tower – or IMSI catcher – in the area. These rogue towers are spying devices used (we hope legally under warrant) by police and intelligence services – and illegally by crooks and unscrupulous commercial spies – and what these rogue towers do is catch any cell phone in the vicinity and force that phone to route its data unencrypted through the rogue cell tower.

Now there‘s a lot I would like to tell you about what I‘ve discovered in Sydney about the location and frequency of these rogue cell towers. On one night a week ago I was warned numerous times by alerts on this phone that a rogue tower – an IMSI catcher – was trying to hack into my phone at different locations right here in Sydney. The places I found them shocked me. But the only reason I know about it is because this technology tells me – a normal mobile user wouldn‘t think there was anything wrong. The obvious question is: Who is spying on us with these rogue cell towers, what legal basis do they have for doing it, and how widespread is it? Now I‘d love to tell you more but of course the new s35P of the ASIO Act says I‘m committing an offence if I recklessly disclose information relating to a special intelligence operation. If I tell you any more I risk going to jail for ten years because I don‘t know – and I have no way of finding out – if this cellphone spying is part of an authorised special intelligence operation. So – for the moment – that‘s one story I‘m not going to tell…but watch this space!