The analyst told her friend that the police could access what was thought of as private. That was the crime. Being honest about what the police can do.
The police also say that having the ability to breach privacy is key to keeping people safe but there is no mention of when info secretly scraped from the unsuspecting prevented other unsuspecting people from morbid circumstances.
This whole event looks like the cops are big mad they will now be asked for accountability on another method of investigation. Imagine having to answer for your actions!
To be fair to the plod that’s not the only thing she’s being charged with.
She’s specifically been leaking information about ongoing investigations which for an LEO is a big no-no.
Mottram drove to Kay and Bennett’s house to warn them about the police file on Kay – which as we know, and she didn’t, was deliberately bogus.
If she’d just told people that EncroChat was insecure then she’d have plausible deniability, but she’s clearly pretty involved in trying to assist people in keeping clear of the law (which is pretty cut and dry in the eyes of the law - regardless of what you think of the morality of it all).
Mottram bought weed from a dealer whose phone number was saved in her mobile phone. She also told Bennett about a murder file she had seen on her boss’s desk, and took selfies with her work computer visible and showing an “official sensitive” document.
A few other dodgy bits here too, again, very much in breach of her terms of employment which, for LEA employees can get sticky pretty rapidly.
All of this is quite apart from whether you think the fuzz should have access to private citizens communications (which I should be clear I don’t). But she’s not just an innocent person who just told her mates that they shouldn’t use a specific service to discuss breaking the law.
The analyst told her friend that the police could access what was thought of as private. That was the crime. Being honest about what the police can do.
Do you suggest police analysts should be fully transparent all the time, as in “Hey bob, the cops know you are going to raid the bank tomorrow, better re-arrange”?
Yes. The police, like any government agency, needs to state both the scope of its work and provide metrics for how taxpayers can expect their money spent. This expenditure should include how it achieve its goals and what progress should look like. Then let the people judge the methods are consistent with public expectations of accountability.
Police have repeatedly shown an incapability to behave, respect, or function as a person who has to be responsible for their actions. They cannot be allowed to operate without oversight.
The police, like any government agency, needs to state both the scope of its work and provide metrics for how taxpayers can expect their money spent.
That would be in the charter as set out by the UK parliament. It doesn’t include the requirement that suspects be tipped off about ongoing investigations.
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Which is not at all something being suggested.
Should they prevent a crime or watch it happen knowing they could have stopped it just to get an arrest? What will happen in cases of murder?
Allowing the police to make up the rules as they go and then justify them later is not the answer to a civilized society. That’s how you end up with a police state. We have privacy laws and basic human rights for a reason. If the cops want to circumvent them, then the laws change first. We are not a society that should accept shooting first and asking questions later.
They should be open about how investigative tools work, and what the current privacy expectations are, yes. In the end they have to present their evidence in court, and that includes things like this.
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.
She basically tipped off crooks who were selling weapons illegally according to the article.
While I think that cops shouldn’t have a backdoor to an encrypted messaging system or access to any messages without a warrant, this woman is also a big piece of shit who deserves to be in jail.
I just read the article and I missed that somehow. I thought she tipped off her mate who was selling weed and said that they were focussing on arms deals for now but be careful.
She tipped off a guy who was selling weed, and that guy tipped off a guy who might be selling arms? Or is being reassured that the police are only focused on firearms currently. The wording was kind of weird in their text message.
I agree, I’m not really sure myself. I took it as reassuring him that they were focussing on arms but you could be right that he was tipping off his arms-dealing mate.
This is why more people should use Signal.
Bold of you to assume that GCHQ & NSA hasn’t already compromised Signal.
Pretty unlikely. It’s more likely they would find some way into one device and then replace its Signal app with a compromised version.
Very unlikely they cracked it’s encryption, but they can just crack the “human” part. Unattended device, patterns, contacts, etc
Did you just say what the comment already said, worded differently? Isn’t this what Reddit bots used to do for karma?
What the fuck are you talking about? I saw your comment and replied
I don’t think that what she did was wrong. I think that the police hacking a person’s device is wrong.
Is it “corrupt” or corrupt? Because there is a difference, and the deference shown in the article is part of the problem.
The former. It is a quote and does not seem like corruption to me.
Edit: it’s also quoted in the headline, but OP changed it.
Absolutely agreed, and I swiped those quote marks on purpose. :)
If police in general could be trusted, they’d still need to fuck off.
How can end-to-end encryption be compromised though?
The investigation accelerated in early 2019 after receiving EU funding.[2] At the end of January 2020, a judge in Lille, France, authorized the infiltration of the EncroChat servers.[23] Intelligence and technical collaboration between the NCA, the National Gendarmerie and Dutch police culminated in gaining access to messages after the National Gendarmerie put a “technical tool” on EncroChat’s servers in France.[20][22][1] The malware allowed them to read messages before they were sent and record lock screen passwords. Messages could be read by law enforcement beginning in April.[12] EncroChat estimated that around 50 percent of devices in Europe were affected in June 2020.[1][17]
