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2 days ago
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I once accidentally hacked into a San Francisco hotel’s switchboard.
CLICK! A CEO in the penthouse is holding an executive meeting with his minions from around the world. CLICK! Room service for 1724: a bottle of champagne and strawberries.
CLICK! Room 1212—an American woman with a Southern accent, complaining to the front desk that the cushion on her bed ‘looks like it’s been raped by an Indian man.’ CLICK!
What the hell was going on? How was this possible? Was I doing something illegal? At the time, I was a cybersecurity journalist at ZDNet UK, flown in from London to cover Bill Gates opening the 2004 RSA Security Conference at Moscone, which was a few blocks away from my hotel.
I’m fascinated by radio. There’s something magical about signals floating around waiting to be listened to. Wherever I travelled, I took a scanner. My colonial upbringing draws me to search for the BBC World Service. That calming voice feels like home, and don’t get me started on the Shipping Forecast. It’s therapy.
In a new city, hotel, or conference, I’d scan in the background while I went about my business. If I was at an event and the speaker had a wireless mic, it was easy to tune in and capture a clear recording.
As a hobbyist, I'd only ever caught scratchy, distorted snippets of taxi drivers and catering staff going about their miserable lives. But on this day, I struck gold! If I’d been a metal detectorist, I’d have done a little dance!
CLICK! Incoming male caller to a female guest he’s clearly sleeping with. They launch into vivid plans for their fantasy conference week which ends with shenanigans in the airport limo and a moist business-class flight home to the husband. CLICK!
In my room I heard these voices as clear as if I’d tuned into a commercial radio station.
I owned an Icom R5 but a friend had lent me their Alinco DJ-X3E and I finally realised that I didn’t need to know what “ATT” or “BANK LINK” meant, and submenu hell was a feature, not a requirement. I was an instant convert.
It turns out the luxury hotel opposite mine was using a wireless phone system that was broadcasting unencrypted between FM 46–49 MHz—frequencies which these days are mostly used by low-end walkie-talkies.
No one could possibly know I was listening—I had a basic radio, passively receiving unencrypted waves broadcast into my room.
But I was anxious as hell.
This was just a few years after 9/11 and the U.S. was completely obsessed with security. Everyone was super suspicious about brown people generally, and I happen to share my first name with a Muslim bloke who had recently blown up a McDonald's.
At the time, I felt like it would only take one sliding-doors fuckup—wrong place, wrong face, wrong name—for me to end up in Guantanamo. I’ve often wondered if anyone else was listening? And how many other hotels were/are still broadcasting a Truman-esque show?
I’ve never shared this story publicly before. But recent developments in the U.S. have made me think about that day a lot. I feel the same anxiety now, even from the other side of the planet.
I’m Munir Kotadia, and this is an extract from my book, A Million Years in Tech.
It’s based on my life growing up a refugee in Thatcher’s Britain—and discovering the world as a technology journalist during the dot-com boom.
Genetically Indian. Born in Uganda. Raised in the UK with a thick Scottish accent. Now an Australian citizen, living in Asia.
I’ve been called a refugee, a paki, a migrant, a half-nigger, a sand-nigger, an expat, and a freak. My first name is Muslim, surname is Hindu. My favourite food is American junk.
I was one of the UK’s first online journalists back when the national newspapers were still calling the internet a ‘fad’. I won awards for my security coverage. I’ve watched cyberthreats evolve from picking a physical lock on a server room, to whatever AI-powered, self-replicating nightmare we’re dealing with now.
