Well, it is true, from a pragmatic point of view. A neighborhood kid with a Radio Shack scanner can't listen in on digital cellular calls. You have to actually hack a phone, which is a much less prevalent skill.
True. And the fact is, monitoring any _one specific call_ is rather difficult to do without specialized equipment - in my experience with modified analog phones, one has to hop between 50 cells at the minimum before they can hope to monitor a specific call. I've yet to obtain a digital cellphone to modify, but with the recent legislation about cellular phone monitoring, I wouldn't be surprised if it were more difficult to hack them. (and just from the size of them alone, I would guess that they're mostly surface-mount, which is a pain in the arse for most people without elaborate facilities)
I still think that CDMA+DES is the way to go for secure cellular, but from a purely pragmatic point of view simply going digital does increase privacy. Using analog cellular is like using a walkie-talkie.
Good analogy. -jon ( --------[ Jonathan D. Cooper ]--------[ entropy@intnet.net ]-------- ) ( PGP 2.6.2 keyprint: 31 50 8F 82 B9 79 ED C4 5B 12 A0 35 E0 9B C0 01 )