traffic analysis of phone calls?

[Steve Bellovin]

Slightly off-topic, but a reminder of the sort of thing that ordinary
crypto doesn't hide.

http://www.silicon.com/news/500009-500001/1/5093.html?rolling=2

IT Myths: Colombian drugs gang's mainframe-assisted assassinations?
Did drugs barons really use multi-million pound systems to see who
was grassing to informants...?

Colombian drug running, police raids and the assassination of
informants isn't something that has an obvious link to mainframe
technology but in the first of our series investigating IT myths
this was certainly the most intriguing.

The story has it that Colombian drugs cartels in the 1990s were
using massive mainframe computer systems to analyse telephone
billing records they had 'borrowed' from phone companies to find
out which people in their cartels were on the blower to Colombian
police and US agents.


....


		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb (me)
		http://www.wilyhacker.com (2nd edition of "Firewalls" book)



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