The purpose of a civilized society is precisely to avoid this sort of ``arms race'' between bandits and those who pay for services. Even
This "arms race" would not have been necessary had the vendors and cellular carriers not been so short sighted as to not put meaningful cryptographic security into their system at the very beginning. All of the technology necessary to prevent the now-rampant snooping and replay of ESNs already existed in the early 1980s when AMPS was being deployed. It certainly exists now. Unfortunately, the TIA seems to be just as incompetent now as they were back then. The cellular industry is as bad as the credit card industry. Both claim that cryptographic security mechanisms are not "economically viable", but if you look more closely you'll discover this conclusion is based solely on their own direct costs. They ignore the consequences of bad security borne by others: the mail-order merchant stuck with a bad debt, the honest customer with a credit rating destroyed by a stolen card number, the taxpayers who have to pay the police, courts and prisons to investigate, prosecute and punish credit card and cellular fraud, and of course every customer who pays a higher price to subsidize fraud. As long as the credit card and cellular carriers don't have to carry these costs themselves, they don't give a damn. And I can't get too sympathetic when I see them trying to heap even more of the consequences of their laziness on the legal system. Phil