from the Chris-Wray-needs-to-shut-the-fuck-up dept
To listen to consecutive FBI directors tell it, until legislators are keen to mandate encryption backdoors, the criminals (together with terrorists!) will win. That’s the only option — at the very least based on Jim Comey and Chris Wray — provided that the FBI, with its billions in funding and wealth of brainpower, is outwardly unable to decrypt recordsdata and units just by waving a warrant at them.
All proof points to the contrary. What FBI administrators discuss with as “going darkish” is definitely simply the short-term blindness that outcomes from staring straight on the Golden Age of Surveillance sun. Whereas FBI administrators waste their time making everybody stupider, regulation enforcement businesses around the globe (together with the one represented by these explicit misguided loudmouths) are placing plans into motion.
Twice in 2021 alone, investigators around the globe introduced the tip outcomes of lengthy investigations that concerned taking on message servers or in any other case compromising encrypted communication companies that have been allegedly marketed nearly completely to criminals. The FBI, along side Australian regulation enforcement, subverted and ran an encrypted messaging server for three years, intercepting hundreds of thousands of messages — something that led to hundreds of arrests around the world. A second investigation focused a Canadian encrypted service supplier, ensuing in a number of charges being introduced towards its CEO.
It has occurred once more, as Joseph Cox reports for Motherboard. And as soon as once more, we will try and put FBI director Chris Wray’s pouty, anti-encryption bullshit to mattress.
Dutch police have cracked one other encrypted telephone firm, this time studying messages from, after which shutting down, “Exclu,” based on bulletins from the police and Dutch prosecution service.
The information demonstrates regulation enforcement businesses’ continued focusing on of the encrypted telephone business, a part of which has served organized felony syndicates for years. The Dutch police particularly have been behind many of those hacks and shutdowns, engaged on different investigations into corporations such as Ennetcom and Sky.
From this seemingly not possible job springs an extended listing of successes — ones that may stay on the books till a courtroom finds one thing fishy about eavesdropping on 3,000 customers to impact 79 searches and 49 arrests. The mixed forces of the Netherlands, Germany, and Belgium used the data gleaned from 5 months of eavesdropping to… make a small dent in crime. And never simply the alleged felony clients of Exclu, however the house owners and executives of Exclu itself.
Whether or not or not these arrests will end in convictions or any perceptible lower in crime is unknown. However what is definite is that the mere existence of encryption is just not a lifeless finish for investigators. The FBI is aware of this. Its higher administration, nevertheless, continues to fake in any other case. Till the FBI could be trustworthy concerning the challenges posed by encryption, its opinion on the matter can’t be trusted.
Filed Beneath: dutch police, encryption, going dark, surveillance
Firms: exclu
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