Encrochat busted by NCA

[anonymous-user]

untakenname said:

sebdangerfield said:

Under the IPA the innocent 10% you're referring to are termed collateral intrusion. The act allows this data to be obtained along with the naughty 90% as long as it's necessary and proportionate to what you're trying to achieve. Any data obtained under collateral intrusion must not be acted upon but must be stored for disclosure in the appropriate secure way. In essence, if your data is collected as collateral intrusion then it ends up in an incredibly secure data base held by a law agency where noting is done with it when it would previously be held on a less secure data base by the service provider.

In the case of the encrochat and the amount of cash, drugs and weapons seized it's certainly proportionate.

Interesting didn't realise that, wonder what percentage is the tipping point for collateral intrusion?

When it was the regulation of investigatory powers act the decision was made by a high ranking police officer who was uninvolved in the case or the Home Secretary depending upon the type of surveillance and if it incurred property interference. The IPA supersedes that and passes authority outside of the police to OCDA https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/office...

Staff at OCDA who authorise surveillance are all civilian and judge any job on the necessity of the breach of human rights to achieve the desired goal and the proportionality of that. So if your mate’s a drug dealer and he calls you regularly you’ve probably cropped up as collateral intrusion on his call record by now. That would be proportionate. Would taking a cell dump from a mast in a busy city Centre be proportionate to locate a shoplifter? No, you’d have potentially 10s of thousandS of phones attach to a mast in a given time frame so a huge amount of collateral intrusion. If it was a murder though, definitely. Terrorist attack? Wouldn’t even get written up before it was being done.

It’s a genuinely interesting piece of law that’s well written and easy to understand. It effects us all and really gets people debating which is in itself interesting when people are passionately against law enforcement doing this stuff balanced with how much data we give away for free to organisations who don’t have to look after it nearly as carefully.

Edited by anonymous-user on Friday 3rd July 22:43

[Digga]

Re-reading the article linked in the OP, the other very interesting aspect is that the cracking of Encrochat was achieved by French and Dutch security infiltrating the network. This was then shared, via Europol, with UK agencies.

Kudos to Europol and their band of hackers across the channel.

It will be fascinating to see the reach and depth of resulting prosecutions here. Undoubtedly, it will reduce levels of crime. I am guessing many of these gangs are pan-European anyway, so there may also be similar operations ongoing, in other countries too.

[jamoor]

Digga said:

Re-reading the article linked in the OP, the other very interesting aspect is that the cracking of Encrochat was achieved by French and Dutch security infiltrating the network. This was then shared, via Europol, with UK agencies.

Kudos to Europol and their band of hackers across the channel.

It will be fascinating to see the reach and depth of resulting prosecutions here. Undoubtedly, it will reduce levels of crime. I am guessing many of these gangs are pan-European anyway, so there may also be similar operations ongoing, in other countries too.

It could also create power vacuums that lead to more crime? Who knows

[vikingaero]

There will always be smaller players that will efficiently fill the void left by others

[mick987]

[quote=Gecko1978]

Just occurred to me. If you made some money from selling the marching powder all in cash. Can you set up a corporate structure of some sort, have it buy some land, you then live on this isolated land (i am thinking foresst area in the US Canada etc) and build a cabin and live totally off the grid.

I mean you would not be gangstas paradise but that might be only way to leave no trace.

Might just be easier to not be a criminal.

Google Carlos Lehder Norman's Cay island

[bristolbaron]

Fundoreen said:

While I am always impressed to hear of big busts

[Carl_Manchester]

News Shopper has published the 34 names and home addresses of those charged in the south east london area.

https://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/18567137.encroc...

[anonymous-user]

Carl_Manchester said:

News Shopper has published the 34 names and home addresses of those charged in the south east london area.

https://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/18567137.encroc...

2 on that list are in my postcode

Slightly misleading from the NS though as SE18 is Plumstead rather than Greenwich and some of the others they have under Greenwich are Charlton and Belvedere

[Mikebentley]

I hope they found Niel Chambers.

[Carl_Manchester]

another wave of prosecutions. Chislehurst gets a shout.

https://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/18943655.se-lon...

also if you are interested in this type of crime, i can highly recommend watching the following C4 Documentary, 24 Hours in police custody, 'the home county cartel'.

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/24-hours-in-po...

Edited by Carl_Manchester on Saturday 26th December 19:30

[AJL308]

Carl_Manchester said:

another wave of prosecutions. Chislehurst gets a shout.

https://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/18943655.se-lon...

also if you are interested in this type of crime, i can highly recommend watching the following C4 Documentary, 24 Hours in police custody, 'the home county cartel'.

https://www.channel4.com/programmes/24-hours-in-po...

Edited by Carl_Manchester on Saturday 26th December 19:30

It consistently baffles me as to why people actually do this st. The sentences handed out there are huge and I don't think anyone mentioned is under their early 40's. There were pensioners getting sentences of a decade or more ffs! Even though there were large amounts of money found I don't get the impression that any of them were actually making serious money from this line of business.

I thought the same when I watched the 24 hours in police custody thing the other week. No one was getting really rich from it, the main guy was living, at best, the life of a driving instructor who had lots of holidays and he'd been involved with the importation of literally hundreds of millions of pounds of gear! He ended up getting something like 23 years - for what??? Why tf would you run that level of risk for so little reward? He's going to be in prison until well into his 60's and perhaps his 70's. He'll probably have lost his kid forever, the wife will have have fked off long ago and he'll come out to a life of old age and poverty.

Why does anyone think that something like that is a reasonable risk to run given the fact that you aren't going to make a lot of money but when you're caught (and you will be) you will probably do a couple of decades inside?

[anonymous-user]

AJL308 said:

It consistently baffles me as to why people actually do this st. The sentences handed out there are huge and I don't think anyone mentioned is under their early 40's. There were pensioners getting sentences of a decade or more ffs! Even though there were large amounts of money found I don't get the impression that any of them were actually making serious money from this line of business.

I thought the same when I watched the 24 hours in police custody thing the other week. No one was getting really rich from it, the main guy was living, at best, the life of a driving instructor who had lots of holidays and he'd been involved with the importation of literally hundreds of millions of pounds of gear! He ended up getting something like 23 years - for what??? Why tf would you run that level of risk for so little reward? He's going to be in prison until well into his 60's and perhaps his 70's. He'll probably have lost his kid forever, the wife will have have fked off long ago and he'll come out to a life of old age and poverty.

Why does anyone think that something like that is a reasonable risk to run given the fact that you aren't going to make a lot of money but when you're caught (and you will be) you will probably do a couple of decades inside?

If you want a serious answer, because we don't rehabilitate, at all, in this country

I know of a young man who wasn't the smartest and was largely ignored at school unless he was causing trouble, he managed to leave school barely able to read, some of it certainly his fault, a lot of it his parents and teachers

He started selling weed to make a but extra, by his 20's he'd done a couple of stints inside and that's it for him now, wholly unemployable, no education, so he'll be in and out of the system for the rest of his days

[AJL308]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

I can't comment on the people in the article but that doesn't seem to the be the case with the guys in the 24HIPC show. The ringleader was hardly uneducated or some unemployable dosser. He was a driving instructor so had the wherewithal to obtain a qualification and obviously didn't have a string of convictions, had a stable life, wife, child, etc. How does someone who isn't a total waster and who is far from bereft of prospects come to the conclusion that that level of risk for seemingly low return is actually wort it. This was not a man who's only option was serious crime.

Same goes for the older guy in that show, I think he was in his 60's. He didn't give the impression of having been a life-long loser who'd failed at life and who'd spent half of it inside either.

[Oakey]

AJL308 said:

It consistently baffles me as to why people actually do this st.

Really, is it that much of a mystery? Don't you remember Tbops brother?

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/london-crime...

[Evanivitch]

AJL308 said:

I can't comment on the people in the article but that doesn't seem to the be the case with the guys in the 24HIPC show. The ringleader was hardly uneducated or some unemployable dosser. He was a driving instructor so had the wherewithal to obtain a qualification and obviously didn't have a string of convictions, had a stable life, wife, child, etc. How does someone who isn't a total waster and who is far from bereft of prospects come to the conclusion that that level of risk for seemingly low return is actually wort it. This was not a man who's only option was serious crime.

Same goes for the older guy in that show, I think he was in his 60's. He didn't give the impression of having been a life-long loser who'd failed at life and who'd spent half of it inside either.

But you've absolutely no idea about his personal financial situation. Could be full of debt, bad choices and found himself desperate to make some cash.

[Derek Smith]

AJL308 said:

It consistently baffles me as to why people actually do this st. The sentences handed out there are huge and I don't think anyone mentioned is under their early 40's. There were pensioners getting sentences of a decade or more ffs! Even though there were large amounts of money found I don't get the impression that any of them were actually making serious money from this line of business.

I thought the same when I watched the 24 hours in police custody thing the other week. No one was getting really rich from it, the main guy was living, at best, the life of a driving instructor who had lots of holidays and he'd been involved with the importation of literally hundreds of millions of pounds of gear! He ended up getting something like 23 years - for what??? Why tf would you run that level of risk for so little reward? He's going to be in prison until well into his 60's and perhaps his 70's. He'll probably have lost his kid forever, the wife will have have fked off long ago and he'll come out to a life of old age and poverty.

Why does anyone think that something like that is a reasonable risk to run given the fact that you aren't going to make a lot of money but when you're caught (and you will be) you will probably do a couple of decades inside?

During a prison officers’ strike, low risk sentenced prisoners were housed in police cells, and had their own gaolers, of which I was but one for a period that seemed to go on forever, but was just a couple of weeks or so. Some did it for months.

Unlike the normal police prisoner gaoler, I’d turn up each day to find the same ones there and I’d chat to them. They were a pleasant bunch; happy to talk about the lives, crime ‘sprees’ – they were all multiple offenders – and choices. They asked to help out in the cell block and the regs allowed only one outside each cell at a time, whilst closely supervised. Give them a mop and bucket and they’d clean every cranny and nook while we chatted. One tidied the gaolers’ office, finding property that had not been returned to police prisoners. Well, there you go.

After forming relationships, albeit one where there was an authority figure, they would often give explanations as to why they ended up with what amounted to a life of crime.

With such a limited catchment, no conclusions can be drawn, but the general explanation seemed to be that they could not be arsed to go straight. They’d point out the failure of logic, given the hours they were behind bars, but most were resigned to the fact that when they were let out, they’d go back to stealing, drug dealing or ‘a bit of fiddling’.

Some were intelligent, but the productive life of these seemed to have been headed off at school or via their home life. One studied law to push his own appeal. He couldn’t get funding and was contemptuous about legal aid briefs in any case. Another gaoler asked him if he was considering a life after release as a lawyer, but he said, ‘I’m not that dishonest,’ earning him extra cigarette rations.

My conclusion, open to being destroyed by anyone who knows different, is that many just needed a nudge; perhaps training in a new skill. Recidivism was made less likely by the fact that they were surrounded by so many other failures (no, not gaolers) so to them it was the norm. I felt sorry for them as they’d be released into the group of mates more or less the same.

Nice bunch. We had a juvenile cell that could hold half a dozen prisoners and one of the gaolers left a portable TV in the juv. cell for, I think, the home internationals, or possibly the 1980 Olympics. It kept them calm. However, the regs stated that no more than one at a time should be out of their own cells. They wrote a letter of thanks for their treatment after the strike ended, thanking us by name, mentioning the home cinema. The chief super wasn’t too chuffed at first but accepted that there was a sensible ulterior motive. Problem was that they sent a copy to the nationals. Big fuss.

A police gaoler was accused by an arrested prisoner of beating him in his cell. The brief, all pomp and circumstance, demanded to see the station inspector. Along he came, listened intently, then he brought a sentenced prisoner from his cell and asked the brief to repeat what he said. The prisoner, in his own inimitable style, suggested to the brief that his client was not a nice chap. Or words and phrases which meant the same. The inspector said he had another five who would say exactly the same. End of complaint.

Gaolers then a'bed think their name cursed they were not there for that.

[hyphen]

Oakey said:

AJL308 said:

It consistently baffles me as to why people actually do this st.

Really, is it that much of a mystery? Don't you remember Tbops brother?

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/london-crime...

The article says he was holed up in Dubai. Has he been extradited, or 'got away with it'?

[hyphen]

random_username said:

TOR / VPNs etc are only as secure as the exit points - there have been quite a few cases where state level actors have intercepted TOR traffic by having their own exit points, or even bad actors looking to steal data:

I think you have to work to the assumption that NSA/GCHQ and other state agencies can access *everything*. But they are not interested in you watching a PPV boxing match for free.

If you are a Terrorist/high level criminal/political dissident then you need to be paranoid and take extreme measures. otherwise carry on.

I would hazard a guess that many of the Encrochat users would have bee better off with using encrypted chat apps and the like and regularly changing numbers and phones. The Encrochat data seizure means they are now on a low hanging fruit list that the police are going through.

Edited by hyphen on Tuesday 29th December 12:08

[AJL308]

Evanivitch said:

But you've absolutely no idea about his personal financial situation. Could be full of debt, bad choices and found himself desperate to make some cash.

He was having multiple holidays a year and had jewellery, watches and cash stashed around his house. He wasn't full of debt. Even if he was at one point, in what reality does one wake up one morning and think I know, I'll get myself out of debt by becoming the head of a small group of international drug traffickers and import a hundred million quid of heroin. Sorry, debt or no debt, taking on that level of risk to sustain what was a very modest lifestyle in comparison just makes no sense.

[Sheepshanks]

AJL308 said:

Why does anyone think that something like that is a reasonable risk to run given the fact that you aren't going to make a lot of money but when you're caught (and you will be) you will probably do a couple of decades inside?

I suppose we only hear about the ones who get caught...