Prosecutors drop Montreal Mafia; RCMP surveillance tactics questioned

"The development is a new setback for a once-promising prosecution, but allows federal authorities to sidestep questions about police surveillance gear."

"Police [...] had intercepted more than a million supposedly secure electronic messages sent on BlackBerrys."

"Prosecutors offered them relatively light sentences on murder-conspiracy charges. The bargain was struck last March after their criminal lawyers raised a litany of questions about how the RCMP got inside the suspects’ smartphones."