On a Tuesday morning in June last year, criminals and the public alike were greeted with the news of a global crime sting run by Australian police.
Hundreds of people had been arrested as a result of Operation Ironside, a years-long collaboration between the Australian Federal Police (AFP), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other international law enforcement agencies.
“We worked in partnership [with the FBI] and we provided a technical capacity to do that,” AFP commissioner Reece Kershaw boasted at a press conference announcing the operation.
The “technical capacity” comment related to ANOM, a messaging app that made the whole sting possible. But it might also be the undoing of Operation Ironside if defence lawyers have their way.
In the months since Operation Ironside was revealed, we’ve learnt that the FBI took over a real company that was selling ”secure” phones with a custom app that was supposed to be impervious to attempts by third parties to read their messages. A source arrested for his involvement in another encrypted app, Phantom, was given immunity and paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to give the master keys to the app to the FBI.
ANOM was altered to share unencrypted copies of the messages and the location of the sender with law enforcement to a server in Romania, where it was re-encrypted and sent to law enforcement servers elsewhere. In effect, ANOM app users were unknowingly CC-ing everything they sent through the app to the police. (In a strange little side note: months before the sting was revealed, an anonymous blogger publicly wrote that the app seemed to be communicating with a Romanian server).
Informants then seeded the app to organised crime circles — first in Australia, and then throughout the rest of the world. By the end, it had reportedly more than 11,000 users globally who were allegedly using it to coordinate international crime rings, murders, drug trafficking and other crimes.
There have been more than 1000 arrests linked to the ANOM app globally. Last month the AFP marked the anniversary of the action it called the most significant organisation crime operation in its history:
In Australia, 383 alleged offenders have been charged with 2340 offences. More than 6.3 tonnes of illicit drugs, 147 weapons/firearms and $55 million has been seized. Forty-two offenders charged under Operation Ironside have already pleaded guilty or have been sentenced.
At the same time as police were patting themselves on the back, barristers in South Australia defending three men arrested on drug trafficking charges were challenging the legality of using messages obtained through the ANOM app. These include questions about the reliability of evidence obtained through the app and the legality of law enforcement in obtaining evidence without a warrant. (There’s precedent for this: a Finnish court threw out messages gathered through the ANOM app last year for failing to apply for the correct surveillance permits.)
“Under what law of Australia were the AFP allowed to act?” barrister Michael Abbott QC said in the state’s Supreme Court.
Last week Justice Sandi McDonald granted a subpoena requested by the men’s lawyers for access to the app’s source code, but only to be viewed under “controlled and secure conditions” by specialists. Access was also granted to some documents and materials explaining the operation of the app.
With hundreds of Australian arrests hingeing on evidence gathered through ANOM, all eyes are on this case and whether the app that made it all possible will also be the operation’s Achilles heel.
Never underestimate the stupidity of crooks (of all types, including politicians & the professions). In general they spend far more effort being evil than would be needed in a day job.
The Users aren’t much smarter TBH.
Ha ha. Society deserves this for being part of the corruption called drug laws. Go All the way back to prohibition and the corrupt handy work of J Edgar Hoover. Just imagine if all drugs were available from a pharmacy, instead of the black market. You main streamers need to hurry up and get off my planet.
Except organized crime would pivot to other lucrative business niches, be that extortion, child porn, protection rackets.
Like they don’t do these already. Go and have a look at the experience in Portugal, which decriminalised drugs over 20 year ago. Ask yourself why Oregon decriminalised drugs in 2020. It’s already happening.
Drug trafficking in your two “examples” is still a Criminal offence as it should be. Gee I wonder why that is?
A prime example of the law being the Crime.
Trafficking is what needs to be stamped out. Sorry. Not interested in excuses for this destructive crap.
So Prohibition is necessary as a job creation scheme to prevent them taking up other “business niches” that truly are deleterious to society?
Interesting idea which needs to be more widely promoted – “forget drugs, go where the big money is!”
Arms trafficking perhaps? No, the USA has that one wrapped up… mercenary soldiers, nah, ditto…
They should have just had T&Cs that had buried right down the bottom that the user acknowledges that the app is owned by the FBI. No-one ever read those things.
What a massive waste of time and money this all is honestly. Prohibition makes zero sense and just creates criminal enterprises. Drug laws should be rethought completely based on health not legality. Then let the AFP spend their time catching real criminals and the country can legalise the drug trade and benefit from better health outcomes as well as increased tax revenue from the legal trade of something people are going to buy anyway
It’s not just about Drugs if you read the article.
Weapons? How do you think drug traffickers deal with competitors or defend their stash? That accounts for the weapons found. This is ALL ABOUT THE STUPID DRUG LAWS and the time and money wasted by the police when there are so many other things that should be dealt with … like ONE WOMAN BEING MURDERED EVERY WEEK BY THEIR FORMER OR CURRENT PARTNER.
Bollocks. The Drug Dealers are scum and usually are involved in different crimes anyway. I personally would like to see the Death Penalty reintroduced for Drug Dealing. Too many lives are lost to this crap.
There has never been a death penalty in this country for drug dealing – again you betray your antecedents.
I know but there certainly should be.
BTW. My antecedents are from the UK and Germany and I’m 5th Generation Australian. I have zero tolerance for the illegal drug industry and its supporters. I’ve seen what happens is why.
Nice try. Whiter than you Sport, wealthier and better educated I expect as well. My immediate family are Chinese. If you learned anything about actual English, you would know the rules around capitalisation:
Capitalize the first word in a sentence.
Capitalize the pronoun ‘I’ in any location.
Capitalize all proper nouns.
You do know what a proper noun is don’t you?
Proper nouns help distinguish a specific person, place, or thing. These words should be capitalized. The names and titles of things are always proper nouns, such as the brand name Starbucks and the personal name Jenny.
Personally i could care less where you or your family are from, thats not the issue at hand.
I would though encourage you to think about how prohibition of alcohol supported the mafia and how drug laws are doing the same to create cartels and violence. What it doesnt do is prevent the trade and use of drugs, it only makes it more dangerous. Weed consumption in the US is a key example of this right now. I would humbly suggest that you have drunk the kool-aid on repressive drug laws. Also the death penalty is not even morally questionable, it ludicrous and should never be the answer. In fact, prison reform is needed so that we can focus on rehabilitation not punishment. I know that prison and the death penalty feels like justice but really they are just tools of state violence against people that often have few choices and aren’t supported adequately by the state and the community in the first place.
Again, I have seen this system in China. Drug Addicts are treated as medical patients (at least for the first couple of times, after that they will be penalized if they refuse to clean up their act) .
Drug manufacturers, distributors and importers are all prosecuted and executed if found guilty. You can’t rehabilitate Drug Dealers I’m sorry. They are reprehensible individuals that cause pain and suffering.
You are focused on the Drug Users whereas I am focused on eliminating the damage done to ordinary people by both Users and Dealers. Sorry but they make their choices they bear the consequences. Something we have seriously forgotten in society. More focused on the rights of the criminals than those of their family impacted by these criminals.
If you want to live in a totalitarian regime that restricts your choices and meters out harsh punishments with zero focus on rehabilitation then go ahead. No one is stopping you. If you want to live in a country that is more forward thinking than that then feel free to join the rest of us.
Yeah i know that its not just drugs. But its the vast majority was drugs. Prohibition is what makes many of these people buy and use weapons and violence. So legalisation would already prevent most of the guns and violence. Then imagine the cops could focus on just the violence, guns and non-drug offences. They would be far more effective. 4000 cops worked on this, 4000?!
I would also feel way better about the massive invasion of privacy rights this represents if it wasnt done for such a stupid reason. Right now its not really justifiable
It’s not the buyers, it’s the Dealers. Most of the violence, guns and other serious crimes stem from the drug industry. End them and you end the supply that enables these weak-willed individuals to continue their habit. I would execute all Drug Dealers as they do in Asia if it were up to me. I have lost a few friends in the past to this crap.
You will never end the drug trade. I can say that with 100% confidence. I am sorry that you have lost friends to drugs i really am, thats terrible. But your anecdotal experience has zero relevance on the numbers and reality here. Alcohol and tobacco kill orders of magnitude more people than all the illegal drugs combined. Why are they legal? or do you propose a wholesale ban of all drugs? and where do you draw the line? Caffeine? Prescription drugs?
Don’t like drugs yourself then dont do them, thats your choice. But dont push your poorly informed drug views on the rest of us and take away my choice to do whatever the hell i decide to with my body and brain.
Your choice to do “whatever the hell you decide with your body and brain” has consequences for both your family and society. Drug driving, drug related crime such as violence etc all impact others who have made no such choice. Overdose and become a vegetable? Medical costs because of selfish choices. Irresponsible choices impact others not that Druggies seem to care.
One of the problems in the West is that there is too much focus on the individual rather than society. BTW. I will push my “poorly informed drug views” wherever I like.
I have witnessed what can happen when you are tough on Dealers and give users some latitude until they become irresponsible and it works.
What about stories you hear that the smart drug smugglers are now turning to the more lucrative people smuggling? I agree that drug laws should be seenthrough a health lens rather than a crime lens (similar to the way the most damaging drug, alcohol, is treated), but there’ll always be a few criminals out to make an easy buck any way they can.
Drug laws for Users should be treated as a health issue (within reason) but not for the scumbags that distribute this poison. No mercy should be shown to them. If not drugs they will be involved in other criminal activities.
You’re right but I do think we need to expand this a little. Firstly, if we stop focusing on stupid laws then cops can focus on crimes that matter like people smuggling. More broadly though, we need to look at the societal precursors that create crime in the first place. Lack of opportunities, poor school systems, lack of social funding and a general societal disconnection. I would argue that capitalism and neo-liberalism are the root of a lot of this disconnection and poor planning. No one is born a criminal. These are people, often desperate people. They are also often from countries outside of imperial capitalism and they are often taken advantage of economically so we can buy new iPhones and other crap we dont need
Didn’t the AFP become involved because some of the badly-written “anti-terrorism” legislation introduced by the Coalition meant that they could do what was otherwise illegal for US & European authorities?
Without knowing for sure, I’d say that explanation is plausible enough to bet a lot of money on.