Slashdot Mirror
Feds Bust CEO Allegedly Selling Custom BlackBerry Phones To Sinaloa Drug Cartel (vice.com)
An anonymous reader shares a Motherboard report: For years, a slew of shadowy companies have sold so-called encrypted phones, custom BlackBerry or Android devices that sometimes have the camera and microphone removed and only send secure messages through private networks. Several of those firms allegedly cater primarily for criminal organizations.Now, the FBI has arrested the owner of one of the most established companies, Phantom Secure, as part of a complex law enforcement operation, according to court records and sources familiar with the matter. "FBI are flexing their muscle," one source familiar with the secure phone industry, and who gave Motherboard specific and accurate details about the operation before it was public knowledge, said. Motherboard granted the sources in this story anonymity to talk about sensitive developments in the secure phone trade. The source said the Phantom operation was carried out in partnership with Canadian and Australian authorities.
Which is why FBI, CIA, and NSA members should never travel abroad. Tor was designed specifically for the illicit use of supporting dissidents and facilitating their own anonymous clandestine activities at home and abroad. Too bad Germany doesn't try pushing for the extradition of the NSA chief for their spying on Germany's Chancellor. Of course, no doubt the US would have reason to extraditing in kind for Germany's head of BND. *shrug*
Seriously, though, yea, you shouldn't explicitly facilitate explicit use. Shame the FBI can't track down drug dealers, though. As in, it's oddly the case they know of these Cartels, what they do, and the names/faces of their leaders but can't seem to actually arrest anyone significant. Going after these phones isn't likely to substantial shift them away to insecure communication channels because all the tools are there and "super secure" phones that don't cater to cartels exist. It'd seem wiser to acknowledge the reality and adapt. Easier said than done, of course.
How else would I call a fella who says the following to anyone?
“We made it—we made it specifically for this [drug trafficking] too,”
As he reportedly told undercover agents...
One conclusion: "Moron."
He may be an idiot but looking at this from a SIGINT point of view I have to ask myself: Why the hell did they arrest the guy? If they had a lick of sense they'd have flipped him, spiked the phones with some innovative spyware and then done the same to every single supplier of custom phones to the Sinaloa Drug Cartel, and Los Zetas, and Los Templarios, ... etc. They could not only be listening in on their comms, they could be tracking thousands of these bozos in real time mapping their smuggling routes, safe houses, factories, labs, ...
The banks are watched. There was a reporter who investigated the Zetas and their connections in the U.S. Their biggest problem is laundering their money. If the banks were bought off, they wouldn't have that problem.
It turns out a good place for them to launder funds is the horse industry. Much of it is done though untraceable cash and personal communications. Rich idiots like to own horses that compete in races, but they do not want to let their fellow rich idiots know what horses they are going to use to enter races, so they buy and sell through intermediaries.
Too bad Sessions and his merry band of illegal alien children chasers don't want to go after the horse people, rich people can fight back. Illegal alien children can't, so naturally he goes after them. I rather miss him in his Senate hearings where he'd always salt any panel of "experts" with dingbats who believed what he does.