FBI-encrypted platform tricks organised crime

Australian Federal Police Commander, Jennifer Hurst speaks at The Hague on Tuesday. Pic/AFP

A global sting involving an encrypted communications platform developed by the FBI has sparked a series of raids and arrests around the world, delivering ‘an unprecedented blow' to crime gangs, law enforcement authorities said Tuesday.

Operation Trojan Shield involved police swoops in 16 nations. More than 800 suspects were arrested and more than 32 tons of drugs - cocaine, cannabis, amphetamines and methamphetamines were seized along with 250 firearms, 55 luxury cars and more than $48 million in cash and cryptocurrencies. It was, said Australian Federal Police Commander Jennifer Hearst, "a watershed moment in global law enforcement history."

Dutch National Police Chief Constable Jannine van den Berg said the operation "dealt an unprecedented blow to criminal networks, and this is worldwide." The seeds of the operations were sown when law enforcement agencies earlier took down two other encrypted platforms, EncroChat and SkyECC. That meant crime gangs that traffic drugs and organise underworld hits around the world were in the market for new secure phones. The FBI had just what they needed. An app called ANOM that was installed on modified mobile phones.

"There was a void that was created by a lack of these encrypted platforms," said Calvin Shivers of the FBI. "So that created an opportunity for collaboration with our international partners to not only develop the specific tool, but also to develop the process of gathering the intelligence and disseminating the intelligence."

The app formed the backbone of Trojan Shield, an operation led by the FBI that also involved the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the European Union police agency Europol and law enforcement agencies in more than a dozen countries.

It allowed police to look over the shoulders of criminals as they discussed hits, drug shipments and other crimes. Intelligence gathered and analysed "enabled us to prevent murders. It led to the seizure of drugs that led to the seizure of weapons. And it helped prevent a number of crimes," Shivers said.

Earlier Tuesday, authorities in Australia and New Zealand said they'd dealt a huge blow to organised crime after hundreds of criminals were tricked into using the messaging app.

Major websites crash across world

Several major websites across the world, including the UK government's Gov.Uk website, crashed for some time on Tuesday due to an outage at global website hosting service Fastly. The affected sites, which included media organisations Financial Times and Guardian, displayed a message saying "503 Service Unavailable". San Francisco-based Fastly, a global online content delivery network (CDN), reported an outage across its network affecting the sites which use its platform.

800
No. of approximate suspects arrested

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