I kept thinking about the last remaining step of the Motorola hack: getting hold of a compiler that would translate the source code into a form the cell-phone chip could understand. Having the compiler would allow me to make changes to the source code and compile a new version of the firmware that would shrink my visibility—for example, letting me toggle on and off how my cell phone communicated with the mobile provider to disable tracking, and adding functions that would make it easy to change the ESN from the cell phone’s keypad, so I could easily clone my phone to any other subscriber’s number.