Dark Wire

The inside story of the largest law-enforcement sting operation ever, in which the FBI made its own tech start-up to wiretap the world, shows how cunning both the authorities and drug traffickers have become, with privacy implications for everyone.

In 2018, a powerful app for secure communications called Anom took root among organized criminals. They believed Anom allowed them to conduct business in the shadows. Except for one thing: it was secretly run by the FBI. 
 
Backdoor access to Anom and a series of related investigations granted American, Australian, and European authorities a front-row seat to the underworld. Tens of thousands of criminals worldwide appeared in full view of the same agents they were trying to evade. International smugglers. Money launderers. Hitmen. A sprawling global economy as efficient and interconnected as the legal one. Officers watched drug shipments and murder plots unfold, making arrests without blowing their cover. But, as the FBI started to lose control of Anom, did the agency go too far?
 
A painstakingly investigated exposé, Dark Wire reveals the true scale and stakes of this unprecedented operation through the agents and crooks who were there. This fly-on-the-wall thriller is a caper for our modern world, where no one can be sure who is listening in. 
 

• "Joseph Cox has written an instant true-crime classic, the inside—very inside it turns out—story of the largest global crime sting in history, a fascinating portrait not just of the frontiers of technology but also how organized crime operates in the 21st century. Filled with stranger-than-fiction gangsters and smugglers, this book is part-Miami Vice, part-Sneakers, and part-Ocean's Eleven. Your eyebrows will be raised in amazement page after page."

  Garrett Graff, director of the Cybersecurity Program at The Aspen Institute, bestselling author of Watergate: A New History

• "A jaw-dropping page turner that truly terrified me. The story of how the FBI subverted an encrypted messaging program should send chills down the spine of anyone who cares about privacy and a free society."

  Julia Angwin, contributing writer at the New York Times and author of the bestselling book Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance

• "A tense, deep, beautifully told tale that could be a top-notch technothriller... except it's all true."

  Cory Doctorow, author of The Bezzle and The Internet Con

• “Cox has pulled off a breathtaking feat of reporting. He brings readers into the very rooms where the criminal underworld’s most audacious conspiracies are planned and executed—and into the rooms where the cops are watching it all. His book is true to its namesake, The Wire, but more real, more raw, and played out at a staggeringly global scale.”

  Andy Greenberg, WIRED senior writer and author of Tracers in the Dark and Sandworm

• “One of the best true crime thrillers I’ve read in years. With its tremendously flawed and persistent characters and crazy plot, it felt instantly like a television show while also illuminating the way the shadowy underworld uses encrypted and special phones.”

  Bradley Hope, co-author of BILLION DOLLAR WHALE and BLOOD AND OIL