Think the Feds might be jacked into your home line? Well, there’s no need to skulk down to the corner pay phone to conduct your business. All you need is a C note. University of Pennsylvania computer science professor Matt Blaze ­dissected the wiretap equipment commonly used by law enforcement and found a few, um, bugs. Spies, it turns out, don’t like to record dead air, so they turn the system off by playing a special C-pitched tone when the target phone is hung up. As a result, anyone with an MP3 player and a recorded C can prevent eavesdroppers from snooping on their private chatter.

At Wired.

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