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In a story that should interest anyone involved in on-line security the Canadian Press reports that:
The chief executive of a Vancouver-based company appeared in a Washington state court on Thursday in the first U.S. case in which a company has been targeted for providing criminal drug cartels with the technology to evade law enforcement, the U.S. Justice Department said.
Phantom Secure CEO Vincent Ramos was indicted, along with four of his associates, on charges related to providing criminal organizations with cellular phones and encrypted networks to coordinate the shipment of illegal drugs around the world.
"Phantom Secure allegedly provided a service designed to allow criminals the world over to evade law enforcement to traffic drugs and commit acts of violent crime without detection," said FBI Director Christopher Wray in a statement.
CNBC suggests that Phantom Secure was selling "hacked" BlackBerry and Samsung phones:
The people behind a company that hacked Samsung and BlackBerry phones to make them more secure, have been indicted for allegedly conspiring with drug cartels to help them evade law enforcement and sell narcotics.
Phantom Secure, a Canada-based firm, sold Samsung and BlackBerry devices that had been modified with a higher encryption. This made it difficult for the authorities to trace drug traffickers.
Phantom Secure's web site does say that:
We are a law-abiding company that is permitted to deliver encrypted communication services to our clients in order for them to protect their communications, without having the ability to decrypt their communications. Our service does not require personal information and has no back doors.
In providing such a service we do understand that there will be a very small number of people that may use our service to do activities we do not support. We do not condone the use of our service for any type of illegal activities and if known we will terminate the use of our service without notice. Considering this, requests for the contents of communications may arise from government agencies, which would require a valid search warrant from an agency with proper jurisdiction over Phantom Secure. However, our response to such requests will be the content and identity of our clients are not stored on our server and that the content is encrypted data, which is indecipherable.
(Score: 2) by tonyPick on Saturday March 17 2018, @04:05PM (4 children)
Yeah, but in this case the accusation is sworn testimony based on a long and detailed set of FBI, RCMP and Australian law enforcement activity records that would be very hard to manufacture (e.g. tracing drug shipment details between Australia and the US). It's not likely to be something one guy, or even one agency, could just make up in a field office to get promotion, and it's not something the FBI would use unless they're confident they can incorporate it into their case reliably.
I mean Ramos & Phantom Secure might have a spectacular defence planned for all of this, but it sounds like it'll have to be pretty good, and until we see a response then the Affidavit is the only set of facts we actually _have_.
Actually I think it counts against the various government "weaken encryption" arguments - it highlights that weakening or subverting public encryption tech won't affect the criminals (since they'll just be rolling their own anyway), and it shows that regardless of the encryption the criminals have the traditional law enforcement and social engineering techniques work against it.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Saturday March 17 2018, @05:10PM (3 children)
Sworn testimony by the FBI? LOL
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 17 2018, @09:12PM (1 child)
I'd take their word over yours any day. And twice on Sundays.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Sunday March 18 2018, @04:46AM
Weird -- I've never tried to get a national hero to kill himself, but have it your way.
(Score: 2) by tonyPick on Sunday March 18 2018, @12:56PM
If you ignore what the FBI says just because they are "big government", and then just take the "big government is bad" spin on stories as true, then all you've done is swap out one form of Gullible for another. Only you're easier to fool, because you're being taken in by things you want to believe,
You don't have to *trust* the FBI, to look at the evidence they actually produce and judge how plausible (or otherwise) that evidence is, and you don't have to like the conclusions to assess how likely they are to be true.