Stranger than fiction


News Corporation CEO Rupert Murdoch holds a copy of The Sun and The Times as he is driven away from his flat in central London July 11, 2011. Photo: Reuters


MURDOCH'S PIRATES

Reviewer: RICHARD THWAITES




This book reads like a spy novel, but the combatants work for private corporations, not states. There are no innocent parties, only winners and losers, in a world where law is seen as a tool and business ethics are for wimps. And because it is true, the story raises serious questions over the ability of national governments to provide a business environment in which rule of law can be taken seriously.
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The competition is for control of a small item costing $2 - the credit card-size smart cards that give access to satellite pay TV. The security of those cards is the key to billions of dollars in pay TV revenues. Since the inception of pay television, independent hackers and organised pirate rings have repeatedly broken the codes to provide unauthorised access via a black market in forged smart cards.
Naturally, investors in pay TV have fought back to defend their revenues. News Corporation, planning a global satellite-television empire, acquired its own card security development company - News Datacom (later NDS). It was based in Israel and employed mainly former Israeli military and intelligence operatives. Its first chief executive turned out to be a convicted American swindler on the run from US authorities, but the staff were expert in their fields. Their primary task was to develop the DataCrypt system for New Corporation's pay TV systems.
But as Chenoweth writes, NDS also ran intelligence operations against pirate card makers and against New Corporation's competitors. They infiltrated the internet chatrooms where hackers would boast about their achievements, developed contacts and recruited agents. They employed former police detectives and intelligence operatives for many nationalities, including a former head of Scotland Yard's criminal intelligence bureau. These agents used their contacts with state agencies, bugged phones, burgled homes, set traps and employed every device familiar to readers of crime fiction - with apparent disdain for the law. As in the high times of maritime piracy, one man's pirate would be another man's privateer.