7 ms·

Why no-one in America was arrested as part of Operation Ironside

130 points by incompatible 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
boomboomsubban 5y ago
>agents were not allowed to download or read any messages sent from AN0M accounts in the United States because of privacy laws. "Privacy laws" being the Fourth Amendment, which the article still makes it sound like they violated by downloading all the messages three times a week.
- kube-system 5y ago
  > By the end of 2019, this third country was sending data to the FBI every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, according to the court document. > "This data comprises the encrypted messages of all the users of AN0MS with a few exceptions," the document reads. > Those exceptions included approximately 15 AN0M users in the United States. Sounds like the FBI got the data of everyone except the US users.
  - mannerheim 5y ago
    Isn't this the classic Five Eyes loophole? I'll spy on you, you'll spy on me, and we'll exchange notes.
    - creato 5y ago
      The US is explicitly not getting data on US citizens from foreign spying according to this article? And the article implies that no loophole was needed for Australia to get data on Australians, there was a legal warrant for that in Australia. So how is this the "classic Five Eyes loophole"?
      - mannerheim 5y ago
        Indeed, I suppose not, then.
      - 34679 5y ago
        >It notes while Australia's judicial order "did not allow for the sharing of the content with foreign partners" the AFP "shared generally" with the FBI the nature of the conversations occurring over AN0M.
      - helsinkiandrew 5y ago
        It was accidentally leaked that the UK GCHQ had provided intelligence about the US perpetrators of the Times Square 2010 car bomb attack, so it probably does happen. Although the US ANOM data wasn't sent to the FBI, presumably a foreign agency could see that data and tell the FBI which US citizens might be involved in illegal activity so they can be monitored/investigated in other ways.
    - dillondoyle 5y ago
      The article says that Australia would alert the US. "AFP agreed to monitor them "for any threats to life"."
    - geoffmunn 5y ago
      In New Zealand, immigration send details of selected individuals to US Homeland Security for further analysis. The reason it goes to the US is because we (NZ) don't have the resources to do what the US does. Homeland Security specifically promises to delete any data once they've finished, but it doesn't say anything about the agencies that they presumably share it with. Basically if the US wants data on particular people from the Five Eyes network, it can be arranged. And once it's in Langley, it can go anywhere.
    - teclordphrack2 5y ago
      Yes, its a feature not a bug.
  - boomboomsubban 5y ago
    That is what it sounds like, but it doesn't actually say that. Additionally, I don't know how this other country could even be expected to sift out American data, even their soft claim only rules out phones in America.
  - elliekelly 5y ago
    > Those exceptions included approximately 15 AN0M users in the United States. > The affidavit noted that if any other AN0M handsets "landed in the US" the AFP agreed to monitor them "for any threats to life". The FBI might not have been the one peeking in the window but they had friends willing to peek on their behalf. A mild inconvenience they can parallel construct around.
    - gamblor956 5y ago
      Parallel construction is actually quite difficult; it requires an independent chain of evidence not built upon the illegally-acquired evidence. We hear about the cases where parallel construction worked because those cases are rare, and thus are news. We don't hear about the vast majority of cases where the police couldn't parallel construct their way around 4th Amendment violations.
      - voxic11 5y ago
        If the parallel construction worked then we wouldn't know it had occurred. There are multiple officials on record saying parallel construction is a widespread practice and "used every day". > The two senior DEA officials, who spoke on behalf of the agency but only on condition of anonymity, said the process is kept secret to protect sources and investigative methods. "Parallel construction is a law enforcement technique we use every day," one official said. "It's decades old, a bedrock concept." https://web.archive.org/web/20130809014315/https://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE97409R20130805 https://web.archive.org/web/20130809014315/https://www.reute...
        gamblor956 5y ago
        Yes, I don't doubt at the federal level that parallel construction works better than it does at the local level, because the feds have jurisdiction over bigger crimes. Drug crimes, involving multinational criminal organizations, generally involve many participants and transactions, and you only need to break 1 participant in a conspiracy to unravel the whole thing. (And more importantly, due to the many overlapping crimes being committed toward the common end, there are simply more options for pursuing parallel construction or even just pursuing different crimes.) But at the local level where most crimes occur, parallel construction is a fantasy for the overwhelming majority of cases. Cops would absolutely love if they could just parallel their way around tainted evidence, but in most cases, there's only one crime, and only one trail of evidence, and there's no way to parallel around that. (And I speak from experience; I was a public defender before I went into tax. I've seen many more failed attempts at parallel construction than successful attempts.)
- mianos 5y ago
  Isn't doubly weird that the third country was Romania?
  - shadowythroaway 5y ago
    Source?
  - yawaworht1978 5y ago
    Do you have a link for that? Am curious to see.
    - mianos 5y ago
      From the analysis published a few months ago, believed to be the reason the operation was would up: https://web.archive.org/web/20210608102417/https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:bP-g6VgD1JcJ:https://anomexposed.wordpress.com/2021/03/29/anom-encrpted-scam-exposed/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au https://web.archive.org/web/20210608102417/https://webcache.... All the data was sent to some sever in Bucharest.
      - boomboomsubban 5y ago
        I don't understand why that would be weird. Romania had(has?) black sites for the CIA, hosting a server for the FBI isn't strange.
- rurban 5y ago
  More like that they didn't go to a judge. Without court order it is much easier to continue working in the illegal underground. So they couldn't make arrests of their informants.
- pc86 5y ago
  Yes, referring to 4A as a "privacy law" is sort of the jurisprudential equivalent of calling Tim Berners-Lee a "web developer."
tomc1985 5y ago
Now if only those super-strict privacy laws applied to the data orgy that is American private industry... At least California gets it...
Causality1 5y ago
So how many people did they spy on to get those 251 prosecutions?
- lugged 5y ago
  The app was a plant, preloaded on mobile phones you'd only buy for criminal acts, so probably not much more than 251. For the record, they almost certainly overreached elsewhere but imo, what was done with this app is pretty fair and balanced. It's much better than requiring backdoors in apps or services. It's almost like real police work.
  - senectus1 5y ago
    they also paid a subscription fee :-P and it was invite only...
    - taylorfinley 5y ago
      This is brilliant on two counts: 1. There is a well known adage that goes something like, 'if the service is free, you're the product.' One could easily think the inverse is true ('if you're paying for the product, you're the customer') but obviously in the light of this case it isn't necessarily so. But making users pay for the service likely decreased their level of suspicion. 2. Need to tie a pseudonym to real person? A credit card number, bank account, or even a bitcoin public key get you a long way toward that goal.
      - senectus1 5y ago
        I like privacy as well, but i can't help but be amused by this whole situation. I need to go find a copy of the adverts and spec for this product.. i'd love to know how they got around lying to their customers.
        PeterisP 5y ago
        IIRC they explicitly used the slogan "Developed by criminals for criminals" or something like that in marketing the device - which has the nice side effect of providing some justification to issue a warrant for all users, that there is some probable cause for reading all data, not just some specific people.
quantumofalpha 5y ago
More like no arrests that they could talk about, but it's not unheard of for governments to launder the evidence until it's more admissible in court (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction)
- MrBuddyCasino 5y ago
  Yeah I don't buy this for a second. US agencies are known to violate constitutional rights on a regular basis, usually without any repercussions. Yet in this scenario, where there doesn't even seem to be much innocent bycatch they're Doing It By The Books?
  - fifticon 5y ago
    With regards to the US, there was a probably a high risk rich people were involved, and they constitute one of those minorities that America has had some degree of success in protecting the rights of.
    - sixothree 5y ago
      That was my first assumption here. I assumed parallel construction and all of the other theories fall flat to occams razor. It's quite likely someone wealthy and connected was involved.
  - helsinkiandrew 5y ago
    Do they ever violate constitutional rights in cases that involve a huge number of agents and agencies and are front page news all over the world? This wasn't someone not being read their miranda rights in the back of a police car - it was a huge international operation that got a lot of press and attention.
    - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
      Exactly. Big operation means senior oversight. Senior oversight means people who care about politics and optics are involved. Someone at the FBI probably got a verbal briefing from foreign agents about the US users and what they were engaged in and then decided that a dozen mid level drug suppliers wasn't worth yet another political fight over the 4th amendment, international coordination that effectively circumvents it and the legality of drugs themselves. Remember, federal agents didn't get their shoot first ask questions later reputation from nowhere. Their bosses aren't blind to this. Each one of those fifteen doors you kick in comes with a non-zero risk that you create another Brianna Taylor or Vicky Weaver and in this day and age it might wind up in 1080p on Youtube before you can clamp down. What do you gain by this? Maybe you'll get a drug table photo op but it will be nothing like what CPB or the Coast Guard get when they bust a semi truck or a smuggling boat. You'll get to flaunt the fact that you took part in an international drug bust operation. But the public mostly doesn't care. From the FBI's perspective the risk reward ratio of skirting the 4A to take part in this operation just just doesn't work out.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
YetAnotherNick 5y ago
How was the app marketed? Is there any T and C? Doesn't this imply willful lying of government to its citizens. What's the guarantee that they aren't doing the same with contact tracing apps or other necessary apps?
- rexreed 5y ago
  The app was an inside job. It wasn't marketed. This was an app made for criminals, developed by the FBI and others. It wasn't put on an app store for non-targeted criminal users to use.
- lupire 5y ago
  Yes, the government allows itself to lie. The CIA famously abused a polio vaccine campaign to spy on people, possibly killing many people indirectly. The guarantee on contact tracing aps is your trust that Apple and Google made them government-proof as they promised.
  - hdhjebebeb 5y ago
    I don't think you should be downvoted, but the polio campaign was lying to citizens of other countries, not domestically, which I think is the crucial distinction here.
    - SiempreViernes 5y ago
      Eh, how about the reasons for the Iraq war, or the nice brochures the AEC gave the people of Utah about the innocent fairy dust raining down on them from the atmospheric Nuclear Tests in Nevada ?
    - vertis 5y ago
      Just a reminder, the internet is global. Many people on HN, aren't from the US. Many aren't even from 5-Eyes countries. This distinction is a bit shit. If US wants to portay itself as leader of the free world, it needs to stop acting like a them and us set of rules.
- 5y ago
londons_explore 5y ago
It's time to weaken the legal privacy protections of users, but strengthen the technical protection (encryption) and strengthen the requirement to notify users whose data has been accessed. I'd like so see police able to access any unencrypted data for any court sanctioned purpose, but within 6 weeks I'd like the owner of that data notified that the police have used their data and the reasons why. Then people can vote with their feet and use only encrypted services for things...
- ur-whale 5y ago
  >It's time to weaken the legal privacy protections ... I'm sure you do believe that, and that if you lift enough rocks for a long enough time, you will find a couple of weirdos who agree with you. What you're basically saying is you want to relinquish legal protection in favor of technical protection. First, you clearly have never been the target of the full force of the government (technical layers will be absolutely no protection), and second, thankfully, you're not a majority.
- kube-system 5y ago
  This is what a world without legal protections of data looks like: https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/ There's a major flaw in all encryption algorithms that humans use. They all have humans involved at some point in the decryption process.
- ViViDboarder 5y ago
  > I'd like so see police able to access any unencrypted data for any court sanctioned purpose They already can. That’s what warrants are for. Why should privacy protections be weakened?
swiley 5y ago
Closed devices and App Stores will never have secure communication. Ever.
ticktock 5y ago
No one from the US was arrested because the US just wanted to eliminate the competition internationally.

130 points by incompatible 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

>agents were not allowed to download or read any messages sent from AN0M accounts in the United States because of privacy laws. "Privacy laws" being the Fourth Amendment, which the article still makes it sound like they violated by downloading all the messages three times a week.

kube-system 5y ago
> By the end of 2019, this third country was sending data to the FBI every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, according to the court document. > "This data comprises the encrypted messages of all the users of AN0MS with a few exceptions," the document reads. > Those exceptions included approximately 15 AN0M users in the United States. Sounds like the FBI got the data of everyone except the US users.
- mannerheim 5y ago
  Isn't this the classic Five Eyes loophole? I'll spy on you, you'll spy on me, and we'll exchange notes.
  - creato 5y ago
    The US is explicitly not getting data on US citizens from foreign spying according to this article? And the article implies that no loophole was needed for Australia to get data on Australians, there was a legal warrant for that in Australia. So how is this the "classic Five Eyes loophole"?
    - mannerheim 5y ago
      Indeed, I suppose not, then.
    - 34679 5y ago
      >It notes while Australia's judicial order "did not allow for the sharing of the content with foreign partners" the AFP "shared generally" with the FBI the nature of the conversations occurring over AN0M.
    - helsinkiandrew 5y ago
      It was accidentally leaked that the UK GCHQ had provided intelligence about the US perpetrators of the Times Square 2010 car bomb attack, so it probably does happen. Although the US ANOM data wasn't sent to the FBI, presumably a foreign agency could see that data and tell the FBI which US citizens might be involved in illegal activity so they can be monitored/investigated in other ways.
  - dillondoyle 5y ago
    The article says that Australia would alert the US. "AFP agreed to monitor them "for any threats to life"."
  - geoffmunn 5y ago
    In New Zealand, immigration send details of selected individuals to US Homeland Security for further analysis. The reason it goes to the US is because we (NZ) don't have the resources to do what the US does. Homeland Security specifically promises to delete any data once they've finished, but it doesn't say anything about the agencies that they presumably share it with. Basically if the US wants data on particular people from the Five Eyes network, it can be arranged. And once it's in Langley, it can go anywhere.
  - teclordphrack2 5y ago
    Yes, its a feature not a bug.
- boomboomsubban 5y ago
  That is what it sounds like, but it doesn't actually say that. Additionally, I don't know how this other country could even be expected to sift out American data, even their soft claim only rules out phones in America.
- elliekelly 5y ago
  > Those exceptions included approximately 15 AN0M users in the United States. > The affidavit noted that if any other AN0M handsets "landed in the US" the AFP agreed to monitor them "for any threats to life". The FBI might not have been the one peeking in the window but they had friends willing to peek on their behalf. A mild inconvenience they can parallel construct around.
  - gamblor956 5y ago
    Parallel construction is actually quite difficult; it requires an independent chain of evidence not built upon the illegally-acquired evidence. We hear about the cases where parallel construction worked because those cases are rare, and thus are news. We don't hear about the vast majority of cases where the police couldn't parallel construct their way around 4th Amendment violations.
    - voxic11 5y ago
      If the parallel construction worked then we wouldn't know it had occurred. There are multiple officials on record saying parallel construction is a widespread practice and "used every day". > The two senior DEA officials, who spoke on behalf of the agency but only on condition of anonymity, said the process is kept secret to protect sources and investigative methods. "Parallel construction is a law enforcement technique we use every day," one official said. "It's decades old, a bedrock concept." https://web.archive.org/web/20130809014315/https://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE97409R20130805 https://web.archive.org/web/20130809014315/https://www.reute...
      - gamblor956 5y ago
        Yes, I don't doubt at the federal level that parallel construction works better than it does at the local level, because the feds have jurisdiction over bigger crimes. Drug crimes, involving multinational criminal organizations, generally involve many participants and transactions, and you only need to break 1 participant in a conspiracy to unravel the whole thing. (And more importantly, due to the many overlapping crimes being committed toward the common end, there are simply more options for pursuing parallel construction or even just pursuing different crimes.) But at the local level where most crimes occur, parallel construction is a fantasy for the overwhelming majority of cases. Cops would absolutely love if they could just parallel their way around tainted evidence, but in most cases, there's only one crime, and only one trail of evidence, and there's no way to parallel around that. (And I speak from experience; I was a public defender before I went into tax. I've seen many more failed attempts at parallel construction than successful attempts.)
mianos 5y ago
Isn't doubly weird that the third country was Romania?
- shadowythroaway 5y ago
  Source?
- yawaworht1978 5y ago
  Do you have a link for that? Am curious to see.
  - mianos 5y ago
    From the analysis published a few months ago, believed to be the reason the operation was would up: https://web.archive.org/web/20210608102417/https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:bP-g6VgD1JcJ:https://anomexposed.wordpress.com/2021/03/29/anom-encrpted-scam-exposed/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au https://web.archive.org/web/20210608102417/https://webcache.... All the data was sent to some sever in Bucharest.
    - boomboomsubban 5y ago
      I don't understand why that would be weird. Romania had(has?) black sites for the CIA, hosting a server for the FBI isn't strange.
rurban 5y ago
More like that they didn't go to a judge. Without court order it is much easier to continue working in the illegal underground. So they couldn't make arrests of their informants.
pc86 5y ago
Yes, referring to 4A as a "privacy law" is sort of the jurisprudential equivalent of calling Tim Berners-Lee a "web developer."

tomc1985 5y ago

Now if only those super-strict privacy laws applied to the data orgy that is American private industry... At least California gets it...

Causality1 5y ago

So how many people did they spy on to get those 251 prosecutions?

lugged 5y ago
The app was a plant, preloaded on mobile phones you'd only buy for criminal acts, so probably not much more than 251. For the record, they almost certainly overreached elsewhere but imo, what was done with this app is pretty fair and balanced. It's much better than requiring backdoors in apps or services. It's almost like real police work.
- senectus1 5y ago
  they also paid a subscription fee :-P and it was invite only...
  - taylorfinley 5y ago
    This is brilliant on two counts: 1. There is a well known adage that goes something like, 'if the service is free, you're the product.' One could easily think the inverse is true ('if you're paying for the product, you're the customer') but obviously in the light of this case it isn't necessarily so. But making users pay for the service likely decreased their level of suspicion. 2. Need to tie a pseudonym to real person? A credit card number, bank account, or even a bitcoin public key get you a long way toward that goal.
    - senectus1 5y ago
      I like privacy as well, but i can't help but be amused by this whole situation. I need to go find a copy of the adverts and spec for this product.. i'd love to know how they got around lying to their customers.
      - PeterisP 5y ago
        IIRC they explicitly used the slogan "Developed by criminals for criminals" or something like that in marketing the device - which has the nice side effect of providing some justification to issue a warrant for all users, that there is some probable cause for reading all data, not just some specific people.

quantumofalpha 5y ago

More like no arrests that they could talk about, but it's not unheard of for governments to launder the evidence until it's more admissible in court (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction)

MrBuddyCasino 5y ago
Yeah I don't buy this for a second. US agencies are known to violate constitutional rights on a regular basis, usually without any repercussions. Yet in this scenario, where there doesn't even seem to be much innocent bycatch they're Doing It By The Books?
- fifticon 5y ago
  With regards to the US, there was a probably a high risk rich people were involved, and they constitute one of those minorities that America has had some degree of success in protecting the rights of.
  - sixothree 5y ago
    That was my first assumption here. I assumed parallel construction and all of the other theories fall flat to occams razor. It's quite likely someone wealthy and connected was involved.
- helsinkiandrew 5y ago
  Do they ever violate constitutional rights in cases that involve a huge number of agents and agencies and are front page news all over the world? This wasn't someone not being read their miranda rights in the back of a police car - it was a huge international operation that got a lot of press and attention.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    Exactly. Big operation means senior oversight. Senior oversight means people who care about politics and optics are involved. Someone at the FBI probably got a verbal briefing from foreign agents about the US users and what they were engaged in and then decided that a dozen mid level drug suppliers wasn't worth yet another political fight over the 4th amendment, international coordination that effectively circumvents it and the legality of drugs themselves. Remember, federal agents didn't get their shoot first ask questions later reputation from nowhere. Their bosses aren't blind to this. Each one of those fifteen doors you kick in comes with a non-zero risk that you create another Brianna Taylor or Vicky Weaver and in this day and age it might wind up in 1080p on Youtube before you can clamp down. What do you gain by this? Maybe you'll get a drug table photo op but it will be nothing like what CPB or the Coast Guard get when they bust a semi truck or a smuggling boat. You'll get to flaunt the fact that you took part in an international drug bust operation. But the public mostly doesn't care. From the FBI's perspective the risk reward ratio of skirting the 4A to take part in this operation just just doesn't work out.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

YetAnotherNick 5y ago

How was the app marketed? Is there any T and C? Doesn't this imply willful lying of government to its citizens. What's the guarantee that they aren't doing the same with contact tracing apps or other necessary apps?

rexreed 5y ago
The app was an inside job. It wasn't marketed. This was an app made for criminals, developed by the FBI and others. It wasn't put on an app store for non-targeted criminal users to use.
lupire 5y ago
Yes, the government allows itself to lie. The CIA famously abused a polio vaccine campaign to spy on people, possibly killing many people indirectly. The guarantee on contact tracing aps is your trust that Apple and Google made them government-proof as they promised.
- hdhjebebeb 5y ago
  I don't think you should be downvoted, but the polio campaign was lying to citizens of other countries, not domestically, which I think is the crucial distinction here.
  - SiempreViernes 5y ago
    Eh, how about the reasons for the Iraq war, or the nice brochures the AEC gave the people of Utah about the innocent fairy dust raining down on them from the atmospheric Nuclear Tests in Nevada ?
  - vertis 5y ago
    Just a reminder, the internet is global. Many people on HN, aren't from the US. Many aren't even from 5-Eyes countries. This distinction is a bit shit. If US wants to portay itself as leader of the free world, it needs to stop acting like a them and us set of rules.
5y ago

londons_explore 5y ago

It's time to weaken the legal privacy protections of users, but strengthen the technical protection (encryption) and strengthen the requirement to notify users whose data has been accessed. I'd like so see police able to access any unencrypted data for any court sanctioned purpose, but within 6 weeks I'd like the owner of that data notified that the police have used their data and the reasons why. Then people can vote with their feet and use only encrypted services for things...

ur-whale 5y ago
>It's time to weaken the legal privacy protections ... I'm sure you do believe that, and that if you lift enough rocks for a long enough time, you will find a couple of weirdos who agree with you. What you're basically saying is you want to relinquish legal protection in favor of technical protection. First, you clearly have never been the target of the full force of the government (technical layers will be absolutely no protection), and second, thankfully, you're not a majority.
kube-system 5y ago
This is what a world without legal protections of data looks like: https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/ There's a major flaw in all encryption algorithms that humans use. They all have humans involved at some point in the decryption process.
ViViDboarder 5y ago
> I'd like so see police able to access any unencrypted data for any court sanctioned purpose They already can. That’s what warrants are for. Why should privacy protections be weakened?

swiley 5y ago

Closed devices and App Stores will never have secure communication. Ever.

ticktock 5y ago

No one from the US was arrested because the US just wanted to eliminate the competition internationally.