Ask Lemmy

Mr Robot perhaps?

“Burner” phones are becoming more common in tv and movies, including the Jason Bourne movies. A phone line is mostly secure if no one knows to listen to it or who owns it.

Even assuming the NSA records everything for pattern analysis and data mining, they won’t care about most of us and can’t legally share that data with cops…. and still may not be able to identify the owner of a burner phone

Mr. Robot is a very accurate depiction of hacking in its era. Everything they use is a real hack available to the public. It does a good job of showing backend corporate structure.

Person of Interest.

This answers the question in the title.

That's sort of the whole premise of The Wire, especially the 1st, 4th, and 5th seasons. The mass surveillance side is mostly shown through the cops' perspective, and the show is now 20+ years old, but it shows an extremely realistic portrayal of how cops use surveillance to build cases against criminal organizations and career criminals.

It's set in the early days of mass adoption of cell phones, so there are some pretty dated moments. The entire 1st season centers around monitoring a drug enterprise that uses pay phones to communicate. There's a moment in a later season where the cops have to have text messaging and sending pictures over cell phones explained. They go into a lot of detail about what a burner phone is. It's kind of funny in retrospect, but it was all very timely when the show originally aired.

The title "The Wire" is a reference to wire taps, ie the police getting warrants to allow them to listen to phone calls.

Jurassic World: Chaos Theory. One of the characters is very diligent about avoiding having his location traced by phone

It's probably a pacing thing. Having a section of the film where the protagonist has to sit down and learn about threat models, flash a Tails image to a USB stick and fiddle around with PGP keys before they can communicate securely would probably ruin the vibe.

Minority Report basically has mesh biometric ID so you get personalized ads everywhere. And while they do rely on psychic precognition, they are essentially thought police.

Older movies, but these themes are central to both The Net and Enemy of the State.

I mean there are non-magic ways to secure a phone line or conversation. Cell phone calls are already encrypted, which doesn't help you if the cell company is 'in on it', but you can use a secure messaging app like signal to encrypt texts or calls., provided both people are using it. But lots of media acknowledges the danger of using your own device, and even goes so far as to depict characters theowing away their phone or smashing the sim card. Using a burner phone is not entirely secure but is pretty reliable since you basically become a needle in a haystack of millions of people. Somebody else mentioned person of interest though, and thats a great show that takes the premise that an ai system is eatching and aware of every communication that happens digitally, as well as all camera feeds that are hooked up to a network.

The Simpsons Movie

The Bourne films.

The Wire.

It's not a film or TV show, but Cory Doctorow 's Little Brother series has this.

It's been a long time since I saw it, but I remember the Simpsons movie had a part about the NSA listening in on phone calls.

I haven't seen all of it yet, and it's in French, but 'The Bureau' is very down to earth, in this regard.

Enemy of the State and Gattaca comes to mind

Pine Gap, TV Series 2018, Australia.

Shows fictionalized accounts of call and location tracking, and cellphone data infiltration.

Not exactly what you asked, but Die Hard 4, Live Free or Fie Hard, is about a fire sale.

Also the Bourne movies.

If they're talking about magic, they might just be using magic to make it secure. 🤷🏻‍♂️

It’s the whole premise of The Capture.