Quote:The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has announced an indictment against the head and associate of a Canada-based company that allegedly supplied custom encrypted phones to international drug traffickers. In just the second case of its kind, CEO Jean-Francois Eap and former distributor Thomas Herdman of Sky Global were charged with conspiracy to violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). Warrants have been issued for their arrests.

The RICO law is typically used to combat organized crime and was previously used against another encrypted phone company called Phantom Secure. Motherboard reports that the DoJ's announcement follows a crackdown in Europe that saw local law enforcement obtain and decrypt almost a billion messages sent between Sky Global's customers.

The indictment, returned by a federal grand jury on Friday, alleges that Sky Global installed sophisticated encryption software on devices designed to help drug traffickers to evade police surveillance. The custom phones — which included iPhone, Google Pixel, Blackberry, and Nokia handsets — allowed their users to communicate with each other in a closed network, with Sky Global routing their activity through encrypted servers located in Canada and France.

(03-16-2021, 03:59 AM)ballsinmyface445 Wrote: Its sad that there's a war on privacy going on, and not just in the United States. Maybe these drug lords should look into more decentralized forms of communication...