# Christopher Soghoian: A brief history of phone wiretapping -- and how to avoid it

Who is listening in on your phone calls? On a landline, it could be anyone, says privacy activist Christopher Soghoian, because surveillance backdoors are built into the phone system by default, to allow governments to listen in. But then again, so could a foreign intelligence service ... or a criminal. Which is why, says Soghoian, some tech companies are resisting governments' call to build the same backdoors into mobile phones and new messaging systems. Learn how some tech companies are working to keep your calls and messages private.

- Kind: Talk
- Year: 2015
- Runtime: 6 min
- By: TED.com
- Genres: Education, Science, History
- Archive: [Internet Archive](https://archive.org/details/ChristopherSoghoian_2015U)
- Licence or status: [CC BY-NC-ND 3.0](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/) (as the archive states it)
- Who can watch: Teens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/ia/ChristopherSoghoian_2015U?play=1)