Feds Bust CEO Allegedly Selling Custom BlackBerry Phones to Sinaloa Drug Cartel
motherboard.vice.com
motherboard.vice.com
Rule #1 for managing products with grey-market applications: never acknowledge the existence of the illegal market (or any activity that opens you to up to material civil suits).
That instantly exposes you to all kinds of criminal and civil liability; the fact an individual said it vs. "the company" likely makes you personally liable as well, the corporate veil won't help you much here.
You're not making cheap guns for gang members to kill people with, you're developing affordable security options for lower income citizens who are exercising their 2nd amendment rights.
You're not creating tools that help criminals hide their past, you're helping good people clear their record from legitimate mistakes and errors... or evade privacy invading snoops... etc.
Always talk about the white hat applications, never the sinister ones...
So why doesn't the same apply to these phones vis-a-vis the 1st Amendement? Sure, you could use the phone for drug transactions; but that's not what it was designed to do; just like you could use a car to carry drugs, but that's not what it was designed for.
Well you used to be able to buy cocaine at the corner store, too, but cooler heads eventually prevailed.
And lots of people simply like guns and have fun taking them out to the shooting range.
Ibid.
And absolutely you're 100% correct. The vast majority of owners are law-abiding and just enthusiasts who like customizing and shooting their semi-neutered human killing tool at the range. Hey, I agree, the AR-15 is cool looking and fun to shoot in "safe" environments.
However, humans are unpredictable, unreliable bags of irrational emotions. The future is going to be marked by a steady removal of humans from things they are unreliable and unsafe at doing (ie. driving, etc). If you think 100 years from now Bob is going to be driving himself to the range to go shoot whatever absurdly powerful handheld-railgun-type-instrument-of-death exists in the future I'd say you're comedically on the wrong side of history.
Let me get this straight, some hypothetical extremely dangerous future weapon might exist and so not allowing ownership of that is like banning the most popular rifle in the United States because it's marginally more 'dangerous' than your hunting rifle?
... and therefore much like the future weapon which lacks a very obvious practical use case, beyond sport shooting/fun, then expecting it not to get banned .
If the OP didn't intend to communicate such a position then he chose a very poor way of stating it.
Does your state have a hog problem?
>humans are unpredictable, unreliable bags of irrational emotions
Ya, but not really. Death by mass shooting is so rare, like winning a big jackpot in the lottery rare. There are so many opportunities for humans to make mischief and commit violent acts day in and day out, yet they don't. The only reason mass shootings get so much attention is because it is so rare. Guns in America aren't going to go away anytime soon. 100 years in the future, maybe, but with the advent of cheap 3d printers that can create firearms, and the fact that there are simply so many firearms in the US already that will essentially last forever with minimum upkeep, the future may be just as full of guns as ever.
Not to mention there will likely always be a community of enthusiasts. Just like 100 years ago, some people predicted no one would ever need to use horses in the future, but today, millions of people have horses. As noted in another HN article, today, there are more available models of fountain pen and ink than ever before, even though fountain pens were obsoleted many years ago.
So yes, I think it is very likely that some people will drive themselves to a shooting range with their vintage non-self driving car and shoot off some rounds.
There are plenty of compelling, imperative moral arguments I could make for meaningful gun control, but this isn’t really one of them and if anything it waters down the case.
Do you feel the individual's right to privacy should prevail over the public interest in monitoring for illegal activity? Then you'll have no issue building strong crypto products.
Drugs should be legalized and people should be allowed to grow their own supply? A entire family of products...
And yes, some people really do believe that cheap guns save lives and protect individual freedoms...
This has entrapment written all over it. It's impossible for a service provider to ascertain if his customer is really breaking the law from his email handle or from such conversations. He might simply be making an analogy or reductio ad absurdum. What now, I'm supposed to say, "no, my security product can't resist an attack from law enforcement" although all crypto and math experts say it should? It's like coercing a gun dealer to say his product can't possibly kill cops in any circumstance.
The prosecution will have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the providers were privy to the nature of their customer's business and conspired with them to hide illegal activities from law enforcement.
Obviously a salesperson is going to be as positive as possible and respond affirmatively to everything the person they are selling to says.
Even if the guy said: "we designed these phones specifically for international drug traffickers" that still does not prove anything because it is just a hypothetical to illustrate that the technology is robust in adversarial environments.
The whole thing is really very embarrassing for the FBI. They can't make any real cases and so they come up with this as an excuse.
Meanwhile, impact on real world crime is zero (or worse) because this just shows criminals, once again, that they cannot trust any centralized service or device and to either stay off electronics entirely or build your own in house.
>Phantom can also remotely wipe devices in the event they are seized by authorities.
>The RCMP also pretended that authorities had arrested an associate with incriminating evidence on the phone, and needed Phantom to wipe the device.
That seems to be actively participating in trafficking from the company, as well as potentially destroying evidence.
Mr. Ramos: "Yes, they can. They were designed specifically to do that"
Undercover: "Take em away boys."
Though, I imagine for a variety of reasons it's unwise to play phrasing ambiguity sales games with drug cartels. His first mistake was of course getting into a situation where it was possible to play these games with presumed cartel members.
Thanks for the link.
Unlike a burner phone, you wouldn’t constantly be throwing it away (just getting new SIMs every once in a while) so cheapness would not be the #1 priority—but it would still be #2 or #3, since this is still a whole 'nother phone you have in addition to the phone you usually use. And you’d want it to be ergonomic to text on, so a 1990s candybar dumbphone wouldn’t quite cut it. It wouldn’t need apps like a modern smartphone (other than maybe messaging apps.) And battery life would be important—it's often hard to find private time to charge a secret phone—so a big screen would be a drawback, not a positive.
Ultimately, I figured that an old Blackberry would be perfect for this use-case. Guess I deduced correctly.
An extreme example which is used for SMS/Voice spam: https://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/GPRS-sms-64-sims-mu...
Again, please correct me if I'm wrong.
I see no reason to reboot the phone. SIMs can be hot-swapped.
In that case, you probably also want to rotate IMEIs, right? I don't know if the feds are routinely considering it, but they could correlate all the SIMs by looking at the unchanging IMEI.
• your wife's lawyer in divorce-court, who would love to compel cell-tower IMEI logs, but has no legal grounds to do so
• your mother who you don't want to be made aware that you're a working as a prostitute
• your abusive partner or parent who you're trying to arrange an exit from
• or, the ever-present cloying example: your friend—who is very nosy and knows your regular phone's unlock code—but who you're trying to arrange a surprise party for
Basically, as a burner phone is to Tor, a side-piece phone is to a browser's Incognito Mode.
Unless people turn off the phone and remove the SIM before switching it should generate highly suspicious network traffic.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/hsbc-holdings-plc-and-hsbc-ba...
The Chickenshit Club: Why the Justice Department Fails to Prosecute Executives
I'm not so sure it applies in this case as I don't really see the corp in question as being big (relatively speaking).
To your point, this is basically what the book covers. It is the logical conclusion of both fiduciary duty and the overwhelming effect that strong legal representation has on the justice system. At this extreme, the legal representation outright prevents prosecution instead of simply affecting the outcome.
Ford's CEO isn't arrested when a mustang is used as a getaway car in a bank robbery, even though speed and acceleration are features they sell the product on that are clearly useful to an escaping bank robber. McDonald's CEO isn't arrested when a cartel hitman eats a Big Mac while waiting outside his target's house. When exactly is the line crossed? Is it when explaining how the features of the product are useful to a client who intends to engage in illegal activity?
> Crucially, the complaint alleges that Ramos and Phantom were not simply incidental to a crime, like Apple might be when a criminal uses an iPhone, but that the company was specifically created to facilitate criminal activity.
I'm genuinely curious what the legal basis for determining when selling a legal product with a legal function becomes illegal is. It can't be merely knowingly selling to a suspected criminal. Is it knowingly selling to a suspected criminal who you expect to use it to evade law enforcement? How is that to be established other than through dubious entrapment activities as seem to have been used here?
> “We made it—we made it specifically for this [drug trafficking] too,” Ramos told undercover agents, according to a transcript included in the complaint.
You can't say that you intended to make the device for legal uses if you explicitly tell an undercover cop you intended it to be used for illegal purposes. So to answer your question, if you openly confess that the intent of your device is to be used illegally, that's a smoking gun.
It's not even clear when the use of the product in this case becomes illegal. Merely using a secure device for encrypted communication is not illegal. If that communication involves planning criminal acts then presumably the parties communicating can be charged with conspiracy but since these were encrypted communications does evidence for that actually exist? Communication does not become criminal merely because it is engaged in by criminals, they have to actually be conspiring to commit a crime and in the case of non drug offenses they have to actually take steps to commit that crime in the US.
Car companies specifically design their cars to be able to exceed legal speed limits. Does that make them liable when drivers break speed limits?
They're not being charged with creating an illegal phone, they being charged with conspiracy to import a controlled substance. Making an encrypted phone is perfectly legal, it became a conspiracy when they agreed to tamper with evidence for a client who had already stated they intend to use their service for drug trafficking communications (which was explicitly acknowledged.) All they had to do was make it clear to their customers that they didn't want to know the details of what they were using the phones to discuss, and refuse to do business with anyone who mentions illegal activity to them.
>For one, this is the part that looks a lot like entrapment.
How so? The undercover agents asked if they could use the service to communicate about drugs (implying that's what they would use it for) and the company agreed. The agents then asked them to wipe a phone that had been captured by the police and the company knowingly tampered with evidence on their behalf. Merely providing someone with an opportunity to participate in a crime isn't entrapment.
Again from reading the complaint it looks like entrapment. Most of what they quote looks analogous to a car company saying their car is very fast and then an undercover cop asking if that means it's fast enough to outrun the police if they use it as a getaway vehicle. Confirming that factually yes it would be seems some way short of conspiracy. No "real" crime is committed in answering such questions truthfully. Creating a conspiracy charge out of those answers looks like a stretch to me.
This "conspiracy" charge is what Law Enforcement uses when they have nothing else.
If the facts, as presented in the article and linked complaint, hold up in court then the conspiracy charge is likely to stick and any claims made regarding entrapment will not be made by the defense because counsel for the defendant is unlikely to harbor a desire to be laughed at in court by a judge.
Given that you have not included links to support your own conclusions, the same could be said about your comment.
If you need links of supporting evidence I suggest you and parent poster try using Google. Easy to understand explanations will be available for you on the first page of hits.
Don't forget that someone can be arrested on a much weaker evidential and legal basis than being found guilty. Of course, the prosecutors interpret the law in their favour, just as the defence will do whenever possible.
The legal basis depends on the country.
But in general, that line is always crossed when you market your product for the purposes of facilitating criminal activity. Distancing yourself from the consequences of the illegal activities performed with your product becomes much more difficult. That he knew about, actively participated in and marketed the platform for drug trafficking was a large part of what damned the Silk Road op-- he couldn't (successfully) make the "b-b-but I was just running a website!" defense.
There's a behavioral aspect to it too though. The idea is one that you can sell a box of armor-piercing rounds to a civilian and he'll use them lawfully, to go shoot up some pesky armored deer or abandoned cars or something. But if you specifically sell him "cop killer"-branded bullets, you're giving him the idea that this is an acceptable use for the product. We don't want that in society.
“Attempt and conspiracy to import and distribute controlled substances” and “obstruction,” according to the complaint [1]. Creating an encrypted phone is probably legal. Creating an encrypted phone for drug traffickers is not. Intent matters to the law.
[1] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4406486-Vincent-Ramo...
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.
This case really highlights how destructive the drug war has been to individual rights. When you have a victimless 'crime' like this where all parties to the transactions are willing participants and there is no victim to complain to law enforcement then the only way for charges to be brought is entrapment, oppressive surveillance or encroaching on fourth amendment rights. The logical progression is to attack parties providing otherwise completely legitimate and legal private and secure communications.
Consider two knife makers. One sells cooking knives. The other sells similar knives and tells people they're designed for stabbing. (The handles may be made so lifting prints off them is intentionally difficult.) Two stabbings happen, one with each of their knives. The government may have a case against the latter knife maker in being party to the crime.
Trafficking drugs is illegal. (It is also far from victimless.) If you intentionally make devices to aid drug traffickers, and then confess that to a federal agent, the government probably has a case. I say all this as someone who believes in de-criminalising most recreational drugs.
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.
Selling drugs is victimless in the sense that there is no legal ''victim" bringing a complaint - both the seller and the buyer are generally willing participants in the transaction. This is why so many drug prosecutions must rely on stings, undercover cops, informants, surveillance, etc. This is not to say that nobody suffers any harm as a result of the drug trade.
In this particular complaint there is no victim and all the evidence comes from undercover cops and informants.
They are extremely careful with their marketing language, and I have never seen any reference to shooting another person without it being heavily couched in castle doctrine / home defense language. They're not out there marketing their wares as being better for hitmen.
If this company's phones were really being used by high level traffickers then the FBI (or someone) would have gone to them and asked for a back door.
Obviously this guy said no, and so they retaliated and made an example of him by setting him up on some b.s. charges. None of which would hold up, but he is facing a couple decades, so will probably plea out to some minor charge.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4406486-Vincent-Ramo...
I think aiding and abetting is the most convincing, but I don't have any formal legal experience.
That said, it may make authorities happy to think this might slow the production or sale of safer or more secure phones.
Multiple undercover agents, posing as drug traffickers looking to expand their operations, also met Ramos in Las Vegas in February 2017, the complaint continues.
“We made it—we made it specifically for this [drug trafficking] too,” Ramos told undercover agents, according to a transcript included in the complaint.
probably said something like that
They're just "adding context" aka begging the question; they're not censoring the word "shit."
Yeah, because people never stretch the truth when trying to make a sale
https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/4406486/Vincent-R...
- I purchased iPhone8 from the store using cash. I gave fake name to print out receipt.
- I purchased empty sim card from eBay with cash at $5 value
- Finally on my way back, I picked up $500 pre-paid card from Wallmart. The lady at checkout wanted my ID because as she said "the purchase is over $500 with cash" (I had few other items) but I complained that this is BS and she probably doesn't like my accent, and she let me go without authentication.
- I brought all this home when I have whole house covered with VPN from one of top 5 VPN providers (altho I connect thru USA - any connection from outside makes life much more complicated, like multiple verification screens etc)
- The sim card company website gave me some issues using prepaid card; but as I remembered that gift cards should not be used for ongoing charges, I just unchecked "autopay every month" and it went thru.
- I registered mail.com email address without phone # or optional recovery email
- I fired up new iPhone with new empty sim card. I went thru setup process using new email. Here it was harder. iTunes did not like my prepaid card. I had to use my VOIP app (not Google, an app I use from Netherlands) to call iTunes and complain. I think it was a matter of one flag because it took them five seconds. I had verified complete iTunes account with valid payment method on it.
- Of course I turned off as much localization/icloud/blahblah stuff I could
- I decided not to use my new phone and new number for incoming or outgoing numbers due to number matching techniques "they" use; instead I use a VOIP app to call my people.
- I did sign up to my regular mailbox but did it from BlueMail iPhone app, not the native one.
I wonder how hard it will be or how long it will take "them" to match me back...
Edit: altho this is my last "iteration" with regular phone. NExt one on my list is https://www.silentcircle.com/
Did you buy this from the Apple store? What precautions were taken to avoid their obvious & hidden cameras
> I purchased empty sim card from eBay with cash at $5 value
Now the dealer you bought said SIM from has your name, address, and email, plus some card details from PayPal.
> Finally on my way back, I picked up $500 pre-paid card from Wallmart. The lady at checkout wanted my ID because as she said "the purchase is over $500 with cash" (I had few other items) but I complained that this is BS and she probably doesn't like my accent, and she let me go without authentication.
Uhh, Walmart shares their security camera feeds with multiple private companies: http://fortune.com/2015/11/09/wal-mart-facial-recognition/
They may also be sharing them with law enforcement.
> I brought all this home when I have whole house covered with VPN from one of top 5 VPN providers (altho I connect thru USA - any connection from outside makes life much more complicated, like multiple verification screens etc)
So now your VPN provider is a failure point, as they can totally screw you over: https://invisibler.com/lulzsec-and-hidemyass/
Use Tor if you want (as close as your going to get to) bulletproof anonymity. Youtube even works over Tor!
> The sim card company website gave me some issues using prepaid card; but as I remembered that gift cards should not be used for ongoing charges, I just unchecked "autopay every month" and it went thru.
The cell carrier and anyone interested can do a Home Location Register lookup (aka HLR) and find out which tower and cell your phone is registered on. Worse yet, your carrier or MVNO can use certain E911 features to locate your phone down to a few hundred feet.
> I fired up new iPhone with new empty sim card. I went thru setup process using new email. Here it was harder. iTunes did not like my prepaid card. I had to use my VOIP app (not Google, an app I use from Netherlands) to call iTunes and complain. I think it was a matter of one flag because it took them five seconds. I had verified complete iTunes account with valid payment method on it.
Don't bet on the country of origin to protect you. Most VOIP providers do jack to protect your calls even part of the way in transit, and that call was definitely intercepted since it came a provider overseas: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/politics/bush-lets-us-spy-...
> Of course I turned off as much localization/icloud/blahblah stuff I could
Not that this will save you, these are essentially "user comfort" toggles that turn off features, but don't stop the data your looking to protect from leaking. Intel and AMD both do this too with Computrace and their various management engine implementations.
- I decided not to use my new phone and new number for incoming or outgoing numbers due to number matching techniques "they" use; instead I use a VOIP app to call my people.
So back to my prior point, since you picked a foreign VOIP carrier, your ensuring the NSA has all of your calls recorded!
- I did sign up to my regular mailbox but did it from BlueMail iPhone app, not the native one.
Apple puts much more of an emphasis on end user security than nearly any other company, which is part of why Siri is still garbage and their neural network/AI based offerings all center on operating on device. The built in mail app is likely more secure than BlueMail.
Apple store. Wear hat and somewhat darkening glasses.
> Now the dealer you bought said SIM
Sorry I mean BestBuy... you cant buy stuff from ebay with cash.
> Uhh, Walmart shares their security camera feeds with multiple private companies
Same story.. hat and somewhat dark glasses.
Thanks for other info, very informative!
HMA seems to be a joke. I can't find any bad news on ExpressVPN or NordVPN.
Most people want to be able to use their smartphone as a phone. I also don't see a device without any sort of camera being that popular.
B told Justice Janice Dillon that he sent a message to Kim on a Blackberry that had been cloned from one belonging to the UN associate.
http://vancouversun.com/news/crime/former-gangster-says-dhak...
Nonetheless, there's nothing preventing a system bus from reporting that a virtual device exists, even if there's no physical hardware to match. Besides, as soon as you plug a headset into the audio jack, the microphone becomes available.
When you help with some specific operation like drug trafficking you can probably limit amount of devices that you need to monitor by location. Then maybe deploy some zero cheaper zerodays there (or fivehundreddays, not everybody cares about the updates).
I agree that this is kind of paranoid talk. Maybe removing these parts does indeed help. If it does though, then I definitely wouldn't want to provide info about these modifications to the press.
- They could have stopped Afghan opium farmers.
- They could use airborne spectrometry to detect Colombian/Mexican crops.
- They could map out possible drug dealers in American land using their phone patterns alone.