This is cat-and-mouse sting story of a vast FBI operation revealing how the criminal underworld has become an globalized economy in its own right one that can’t be policed without crossing complicated ethical boundaries. In 2018 many of the world’s most sophisticated criminals began using Anom, a supposedly secure encrypted communications app. Little did they know Anom was a front company run by the FBI. Dark Wire highlights the devious lengths to which law enforcement agencies will go to ensnare criminals. But they go too far?

Anom, began to take root among drug dealers and other criminals. It had extraordinary safeguards to keep out prying eyes – the power to quickly wipe data, voice masking technology, and more. It was better than other apps popular among organised crime syndicates, except for one thing, they did not know the fact that it was secretly run by law enforcement.

Over the next few years, the FBI, along with law enforcement partners in Australia and parts of Europe, got a front row seat to the global criminal underworld. They watched drug deals and hits being planned and executed in real time, making arrests where they could without blowing their cover. Some one hundred criminals worldwide, including members of South American drug cartels, the Calabrian mafia, and the Chinese Triad did their business in full view of the officers they were truing to evade. It was a sprawling global economy as efficient and interconnected as the legal one.

But a surveillance operation like this couldn’t last, as it was too dangerous, too ethically fraught, too large and it all ended in spectacular fashion.

Dark Wire is a caper for out modern world, where everyone is connected and no one is completely free.

Dark Wire: The incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever by Joseph Cox (Public Affairs).