Escobar and Cellular Ph0n3z

[lex@mindvox.phantom.com (Lex Luthor)]

I found it very interesting to read in the paper this morning about how
EXACTLY the Columbian authorities were able to LOCATE Pablo Escobar. The 
article stated that Pablo was concerned about his wife and child's safety
and called them on a CELLULAR phone to check up on them. The Columbian
Police did not know where either of them were located. It stated that the
U.S. government (DEA in print, but was it the NSA?) gave or let the
Columbian police borrow equipment that did the following:

1) The equipment scanned all the cellular phone frequencies used in that area.
2) Already having a voice print/sample of Pablo's voice, the equipment
   continuously compared cellular conversations with those they had of Pablo,
   in near real time.
3) Once a match was made, the equipment would triangulate? or otherwise 
   locate the origin of the call within two minutes. It did not say how 
   good the accuracy of the location was (ie within 1 mile or 1/10 of a mile
   or 10 feet, etc.) however. Apparently it was CLOSE ENOUGH.

This is sophisticated, no question about it. I imagine the equipment/circuits
are available to do all this to the general U.S. public, but still, I think
the NSA probably provided the equipment as it was probably all integrated
together and fairly idiot-proof to use. Maybe one big box, with a few of
these big boxes being dispersed about the country-side.

The report stated that Escobar was worth a few Billion dollars and that he
was a smart man. Why didn't he use encryption? This would have thwarted the
police. Of course you may say, how many encrypted cellular conversations take
place in that part of Columbia, and the answer would probably be close to 
zero if not zero. So just modify the equipment to recognize encrypted/scrambled
speech or whatever and locate the source. Fine, but if Escobar has so much 
money and so many allies, why not buy many encrypted cellular set-ups and 
distribute them to his people (paying them of course) to move throughout the
region constantly and make cellular encrypted phone calls at random?

Now, tying this in with the 'ol Clipper-chip debate, if Escobar who is worth
billions of dollars, is smart, and is considered one of the biggest drug
kingpins in history does not use encryption, how many lower-level criminals,
who don't have the financial resources nor the intelligence will?

Lex