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posted by Fnord666 on Monday October 28 2019, @01:28AM   Printer-friendly
from the of-course-it-is dept.

Submitted via IRC for soylent_brown

A company that sold encrypted phones was run by crime lords

You've probably heard the idiom of the fox guarding the hen house — but how about the one of the encrypted phone company run by drug lords?

Okay, that's obviously not an idiom, but it's a true story chronicled by Vice's Joseph Cox. In the story, Cox tells how MPC — a now-seemingly defunct company that apparently sold phones, tablets, and computers running custom firmware with significant encryption protections — was ultimately controlled by two at-large criminal kingpins known as The Brothers.

As Cox's reporting explains, The Brothers apparently first bought and used encrypted BlackBerrys before hiring developers to make a custom operating system that could theoretically offer them even more privacy and loaded it on phones. The story doesn't say what type of phones The Brothers use(d), but MPC sold Nexus 5 and 5X phones loaded with a custom OS, which seems likely to be the same one paid for by The Brothers.

[...] It's a fascinating and, at times, horrifying story (warning: it describes a murder), but you should go read it.


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  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 28 2019, @05:42PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 28 2019, @05:42PM (#912895)

    You seem to have made a typo:

    Soonfully enough, everyone using encryption will be considered a criminal.

    Fixed that for you!

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 28 2019, @08:12PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 28 2019, @08:12PM (#912938)

    If "they" even know you are using encryption, you are already compromised.

    You should be right in the open, like everyone else, sharing boring vacation videos, sports events, baby shots, animals, whatever.

    And Steganography.

    The phone is just a timing aid or mutex.

  • (Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Tuesday October 29 2019, @02:52AM

    by Pslytely Psycho (1218) on Tuesday October 29 2019, @02:52AM (#913104)

    Everyone is already considered to be a criminal.

    It takes time to build that many prisons.

    --
    Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.