Italian scandals launch a market for encypted phones

A national mania for evesdropping on cell phone conversations has opened a huge market for encrypted handhelds in Italy, the New York Times reported yesterday. In the past few years, a number of influential political figures in that country — including a former head of Juventas and Prince Victor Emmanuel — have been exposed in various predictable Italian scandals by intercepted phone calls. Even a former head of Italian intelligence found his conversations splattered all over the tabloids. This sequence of events has been a windfall for Turin-based Caspertech. “Initially, we thought we would market to the big businesses, to lawyers and the government,” said director Ferdinando Peroglio. “But after the Juventus soccer scandal, we had so many clients that we had never thought to contact.”

Compared to three years ago, when all of Caspertech’s business was with the government, sixty percent of its sales are now with in the civilian market, and its sales increased 100 percent between 2005 and 2006. The problem, the New York Times reports, is the widespread availability of evesdropping technology on the Internet, as well as a culture that pays a high premium for private glimpses of celebrities — the latter perhaps explaining why Brazil, Greece, and Spain are considered the three other hottest markets for encryption technology. As for the price on the consumer end, high end packages retail at approximately $2,200, but software that will scramble text messsages can be had for $410, and you can encrypt your faxes for $1,500.