Ex-Military Hacker: The Secret World Of Government Surveillance - Bill Thompson - #1131

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
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What phone have you got? What is that?

**Bill Thompson** (0:36)
This is a Galaxy Fold. So it's got like the regular phone setup, but then when you want to go wide, you get this bad boy.

**Chris Williamson** (0:44)
Why no Apple?

**Bill Thompson** (0:46)
I mean, it's a philosophical thing for me.
I just, back when I used to do a lot more of this myself, instead of running companies that do this, but when I was doing it on my own, essentially, the Android operating system is published online and the AOSP it's called, it's the open source project. You used to be able to see most, like a good amount of the inner workings of the phone essentially and understand how it works and where the holes were. I looked at it for two reasons. One reason was I was trying to develop implants or zero days for the military at the time, and Android being open allowed us to look into those types of things. Then the second reason was I could dump my phone myself and look at it. So if I was traveling to a country where I was sure something was going to be going on with my phone, or maybe I got pulled into secondary customs and my phone was out of my hands for a while, it was a lot more available to me to do that. Whereas with Apple, it was very difficult to do those types of things.

**Chris Williamson** (1:50)
Does it not make it more secure that it's a closed architecture that doesn't allow you to see where potential vulnerabilities are?

**Bill Thompson** (1:57)
As long as you trust the company.

**Chris Williamson** (1:59)
Right. So you've got, on one hand, how much I trust Apple and on the other hand, how competent I think people that can look at the Android operating system to find its vulnerabilities are?

**Bill Thompson** (2:09)
Yes.

**Chris Williamson** (2:10)
Right. Okay.

**Bill Thompson** (2:10)
Yeah. I'd rather be able to look for myself.

**Chris Williamson** (2:13)
Have you got any idea what the justification is for getting access to somebody's phone without them giving permission?

**Bill Thompson** (2:20)
You don't need a lot of justification with things like the Patriot Act. I mean, with those things hanging around, it's just-

**Chris Williamson** (2:25)
Even though that was created before phones and operating systems for phones?

**Bill Thompson** (2:30)
Yeah. At that point, they were going after the telephonic infrastructure. So microwave links, down and up channel links from BTS's base transceiversations.

**Chris Williamson** (2:43)
That's tapping into signals.

**Bill Thompson** (2:45)
The infrastructure.

**Chris Williamson** (2:46)
Right.

**Bill Thompson** (2:46)
Yeah. And the signals that live from the cell from the tower to the cell phone.

**Chris Williamson** (2:50)
But by saying infrastructure, you've kind of future-proofed yourself for if there's going to be technology that comes out, which is a different kind of infrastructure.

**Bill Thompson** (2:57)
Yes.

**Chris Williamson** (2:59)
Oh, so it was very cleverly written, unless they updated it in future.

**Bill Thompson** (3:01)
Well, they updated it and made it more, it's more usurpacious. It's one of the most usurpacious pieces usurping underhanded. It was the Patriot Act. Can you think of a more innocuous term for something?

**Chris Williamson** (3:17)
The Department of Peace.

**Bill Thompson** (3:20)
It's just one of those things where we would need a six-hour podcast to pull the string on how we got there, but it's a conflation of a lot of useful idiots looking for power. It's essentially the long and short story of it.

**Chris Williamson** (3:35)
How much do you think, I've heard that people bring up 9-11, Patriot Act after that, surveillance, NSA.

**Bill Thompson** (3:43)
FISA.

**Chris Williamson** (3:44)
All of the FISA.

**Bill Thompson** (3:46)
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

**Chris Williamson** (3:47)
Right. I thought you meant the fucking, I was like, how is Big Pharma involved in this?

**Bill Thompson** (3:51)
I'm sorry.

**Chris Williamson** (3:52)