A British court has sentenced a “corrupt” police analyst to almost four years behind bars for tipping off a friend that officers had compromised the EncroChat encrypted messaging app network.
According to the cops, their secret infiltration of the supposedly impregnable chat app, allowing officers to silently read crooks’ private messages and probe criminal dealings, has led to action against many of its more than 60,000 users.
“Operation Venetic is a once in a generation investigation which has made a huge contribution to public protection,” said John McKeon, head of the NCA’s anti-corruption unit, in a statement.
Once they’d busted into the network’s servers, cops used that access to collect conversations and other data from EncroChat handsets and use this information to make arrests, with the NCA doing the legwork in the UK.
The operation also led to lawsuits arguing the dragnet surveillance of the chat network violated European and UK laws, and that evidence wasn’t obtained legally.
According to the NCA, Mottram told Jonathan Kay, 39, the police were monitoring people’s encrypted EncroChat conversations, and tipped him off that the cops had intel on him presumably from his use of the app.
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A British court has sentenced a “corrupt” police analyst to almost four years behind bars for tipping off a friend that officers had compromised the EncroChat encrypted messaging app network.
According to the cops, their secret infiltration of the supposedly impregnable chat app, allowing officers to silently read crooks’ private messages and probe criminal dealings, has led to action against many of its more than 60,000 users.
“Operation Venetic is a once in a generation investigation which has made a huge contribution to public protection,” said John McKeon, head of the NCA’s anti-corruption unit, in a statement.
Once they’d busted into the network’s servers, cops used that access to collect conversations and other data from EncroChat handsets and use this information to make arrests, with the NCA doing the legwork in the UK.
The operation also led to lawsuits arguing the dragnet surveillance of the chat network violated European and UK laws, and that evidence wasn’t obtained legally.
According to the NCA, Mottram told Jonathan Kay, 39, the police were monitoring people’s encrypted EncroChat conversations, and tipped him off that the cops had intel on him presumably from his use of the app.
The original article contains 634 words, the summary contains 193 words. Saved 70%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!