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by cylde_frog 1835 days ago
Not quite. They were using an app developed by the police as a honeypot. Someone else had even discovered this and blogged about it[0]. If they had used email and PGP they likely wouldn't have been caught in this way. 3-letter agencies are not going to use their trump card of backdoored OS or hardware to catch drug runners.

[0]https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PwQXt6...
2 comments
CTDOCodebases 1834 days ago
True.. however the three letter agencies are going to pass along any relevant information that they stumble across while filtering for money laundering in relation to terrorism.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction?wprov=sf...

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vkou 1834 days ago
If they used email and PGP, they wouldn't have been caught this way...

That is because the usability of PGP is so bad, they wouldn't have any time to actually operate their criminal enterprise.

Also - email, PGP or not, leaks metadata, and the police will happily end your whole criminal career based on metadata.

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