Reminds me of Operation “Ivy Bells” where the NSA/CIA/USN
wiretapped the undersea cable located between the Soviet Pacific Fleet naval base at Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka Peninsula to the Soviet Pacific Fleet’s mainland headquarters at Vladivostok. They did this utilizing a submarine and USN divers.
The Soviets had no idea we were tapping the cable until an NSA civilian employee who was also fluent in Russian, Ronald Pelton, entered the Soviet Embassy in D.C. in 1980 and told them all about it. For a price of course. Pelton was, at the time, $65K in debt. A lot of money in 1980.
Pelton was eventually caught and sentenced to a long stretch in prison. The Soviets located the tap and dismantled it.
NSA wised up since then—and started focusing on tapping physical devices at the manufacturer level and software at the developer level as well as “monkey in the middle” tactics.
If folks want privacy they need to stick to dogs and cats.
Would that be “Avalon and Mystic”???