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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.
I'm trying to imagine the accent of a kid raised by a Canadian mother and an Australian father.
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Phantom then installs Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) software to send encrypted messages, and routes these messages through overseas servers, the complaint alleges.
If you want to stop drug trafficking and end cartels, you can stop trying to outlaw trapdoor math functions and start overhauling the century old criminal code that made a drug safer than aspirin a capital offense.
Good people go to bed earlier.
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At the moment I just have a dumbphone, and I entrust it with as little data as possible. I don't need the extra functionality provided by a smartphone.
But be assured that I'd buy an extra secured smartphone if I ever needed one. This idea that people should get weaker security on purpose just to potentially make police's job easier is beyond grotesque.
Authorities don't appear to be worried if criminals use off the shelf smartphones. Hmmm.
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."
This will now be used as a reason to make all use of encryption, by anyone, into a crime. Be ready for the authorities to start arresting anyone who uses encrypted e-mail, or messaging, as well as encrypting their smartphones. The War on encryption is being escalated, we need to be ready.
That's how there will be no cartels. Once stupid liberals are exterminated from American government, US will stop exporting liberalism to Latin America and finally let the local Latino Americans with reason and common sense take care of cartels by wiping them out, like Duterte does, or Lukashenko, or Mussollini.
Down with cartels. Make a parking lot of all their Coca plantations. Use napalm, exterminate every single person protecting them publicly.
That's all there is to it. There is absolutely no excuse for handling organized crime in XXI century when governments have unlimitedly more power than they used to in medieval times. The only medieval aspect that should be left nowadays is going medieval on the asses of protectors of organized crime and organized crime itself.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
The fist of the biggest bully in the world reaches worldwide.
It's a combination of back door racism and the American right wing attacking their political enemies. No, really, it is.
The sad thing is that the proof and the history are out in the open an nobody seems to care. A few college kids might but they grow out of it.
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Nothing would have stuck if they hadn't marketed it specifically for criminal activities and admitted as much to the undercovers. Of course, the feds did throw in a Sinaloa cartel witness to reinforce it. All this company had to do was watch their tongues with their shadier clientele and NOT tell people that it's expressly designed to break the law. Should have just said that "Well, technically it probably could be used for such purposes but Phantom Secure does NOT endorse such activity! If you need us to remotely wipe your phone and YOU MENTION law enforcement we will not interfere with their investigation..."
Hell, I'm not a criminal nor a Cartel member but the idea of a portable device without GPS, a mic or cameras that can send encrypted messages to anyone I wish sounds nice.
Personally, I think all phones should have a hardware switch that disables the above forced features unless folks elect to opt in by enabling said switch.
Our intelligence community would have an absolute cow about it though.
Where can I get one ?
Should it really matter who I sell to or who I tell about products im offering? Can we can the sale of these devices to pharmeucital companies that make opoid products? Can we make sure "medical" marijuana dealers are not encrypting their traffic so we can make sure they really are legit?
Despite you being modded down, you're correct. It's aiding and abetting. The Uber driver who drove the Parkland shooter to the high school did not break the law. However, if somebody drove the Parkland shooter to that school in order to help him perpetrate the shooting, the driver would have broken the law, even though driving itself is not an illegal act. Slashdot people are so fucking stupid, often.
From TFA:
Law enforcement agencies have cracked down on other encrypted phone companies allegedly catering to organised crime over the past few years. In 2016, Dutch investigators arrested the owner of Ennetcom, whose customers allegedly include hitmen, drug traffickers, and other serious criminals. And then in 2017, Dutch authorities also busted PGP Sure, which also allegedly catered to organized crime.
So they've been going after companies doing this for a while now.
But also:
Crucially, the complaint alleges that Ramos and Phantom were not simply incidental to a crime, like Apple might be when a criminal uses an iPhone, but that the company was specifically created to facilitate criminal activity.
So if a company can make the case their wares are 'dual use' and they're not responsible for how it's used, they can keep making this stuff. Nice work FBI, you just taught everyone how to avoid you coming after them, or at least how to defend themselves in court. Oops.
Of course we've been playing this game with a variety of technologies, the first that jumps to mind is BitTorrent, which is quite an impressive piece of technology that has some really great use cases. Alas, the biggest one is software/content piracy.
In Ramos' case, he kind shot him self in the foot with his discussions with clients and undercover agents. They'll nail him to the wall for sure, but he's making a great example of what not to do if you wanna fill his shoes.
Not hard to find the circuits and cut the wires to do this your self.
2nd, you could easily setup your own SSH port tunneled comms p2p between two phones, not that hard.
Dont use commercial chat apps, use a split screen real time bidirectional stream. aka YTALK.
All this modern stuff typing, and hit enter is so lame. Just type in real time and see it.
Better yet, dont send ascii, but use images, or better yet, use stylus to write , not type.
They should have 'given away the special' tech for free, in return for buying dozens of their retail phones.
Just like microsoft does, buy X to get Y free.
When are the going to go after the banks that facilitate the movement of the narcobucks through the banking system. After all it should be easy as they keep detailed records.
Where can I buy one?
Ya know what I always find funny? The ones screaming about the drug laws being "raciss" have no problem with the gun laws which are really REALLY racist and in fact were written by such lovely people as KKK members!
Protip: Any left leaners might want to watch "fear of an armed Negro" before they call for more gun laws, they got interviews with the ones that actually wrote the original gun laws and...damn, they aren't even subtle about how fucking racist they are, nor were they caring if you knew what their goal was, to make it so they could go stomp some black any time they wanted without worrying about the blacks being able to fight back, a "poll tax" for self defense as it were. Its one of the reason why they started with the Saturday Night Special", the original 38 special was a cheap and high quality self defense weapon...exactly what they did NOT want some black home owner to have when they kicked down the door.
As for TFA? This doesn't have shit to do with left or right, or did you forget Obama expanding the spying and prosecuting whistleblowers? Its about control and those who wield that control, and they stay in power whether its a D or R in the puppet chairs. All those wonderful 3 letter agencies, they stay no matter who you vote for and its they who have seen their power grow ever stronger every decade...of course after what happened to the POTUS that said he would "break the CIA" I seriously doubt you are gonna find ANY politician with enough balls to attempt to stop the 3 letter gangs any time soon, even the ballsiest politician knows who can easily make you stop breathing.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
This article just stinks. Blackberry? Those went out of style long ago. This is just some sort of fear mongering article trying to make the FBI sound like they're in the right about encryption. There are plenty of other phone manufacturers offering completely secure phones with recent hardware and software. And of course the guy just happens to conveniently admit to selling mostly to the cartel. Next he'll confess to selling to ISIS too and we'll have that "Ah ha, see! This is why we have to break encryption!" moment.
And to assume that the cartel in Mexico doesn't have the technical know how and skill to do this themselves, that they require an American company in the US to do this for them? Are we to assume the cartel is that dumb? Disabling the cameras, microphones, gps and installing encryption software on your phone is not difficult to do. The fact that they setup their own facilities to pack their product, we are to assume they can't start their own small facility to secure their phones for their own people?
Meanwhile, the cartels are setting up number stations all over the place and using encrypted communication for a while, without the need of some American company to do it for them. They've had the technical know how, the sophistication, the engineers for a long time. Something doesn't add up in this article.
So blackphone is illegal? They don't say "use this for criminal purposes" on their site, but you could infer that it's made so security and privacy oriented so that it could appeal to a criminal costumer base?
If you want to librefy/mangle your phone so that it de-blobs LineageOS to not rely on proprietary firmware, the Replicant project is it.
Of course half the hardware mightn't work but RMS will be impressed. :)
Then of course there's the Librem 5 phone which aims to use libre hardware as far as practicable.
A phone without a camera or microphone...
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Why doesn't a company do something like this for the general public? This one still seems "locked down". Locked down will always be code for "the owner is treated like a security threat". What about a secure device based on android that is secure from the OWNERS perspective, not the provider. Then ANYONE can use it. Honest people who dislike anyone else being in control of their shit or being able to sell access to my shit to anyone poking around... or bad guys.