Listening in [electronic spying]

The author addresses the following question: are the glory days of electronic spying over-or just beginning? Rather than the creation of ever more sensitive receivers or code-breaking computers, the hot areas of cloak-and-dagger information gathering include tapping fiber-optic cables (even at the bottom of the sea); using tiny bugging devices and old fashioned bribery, blackmail, and burglary to get at data before it has been encrypted; exploiting software flaws and poorly configured communications systems to bypass data security measures; and automatically winnowing the vast amounts of intercepted communications.