The Dutch National High Tech Crime Unit (NHTCU), dedicated squad inside the Dutch National Police Agency aims to investigate advanced forms of cyber crimes, carried out investigation as well as constitute that the telephone build "PGPsafe" was selling customized BlackBerry as well as Android smartphones amongst the secure PGP-encrypted network to the "possible criminal goal users."
PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) is an opened upwardly root end-to-end encryption touchstone that tin hold out used to cryptographically sign emails, documents, files, or entire disk partitions inwards society to protect them from beingness spied on.
Selling custom security-focused encrypted phones does non involve whatsoever criminal offense itself, simply Dutch police describe convey discovered evidence, which indicates over the years such phones had been sold to organized criminals involved inwards assassinations, drug trafficking, coin laundering, armed robbery, as well as attempted murder.
Just concluding year, the Dutch police describe arrested the possessor of Ennetcom, a companionship that was also suspected of selling customized encrypted Blackberry Phones to criminals.
At that time, the police describe also seized Ennetcom servers based inwards the Netherlands as well as Canada, which incorporate information of encrypted communications belong to a large give away of criminals.
Later inwards March this year, the police describe had fifty-fifty managed to decrypt a give away of PGP-encrypted messages stored on the seized Ennetcom server as well as identified several criminals inwards an ongoing investigation.
In the latest case, the national Dutch police describe forcefulness Politie announced this Midweek that it had arrested 4 suspects, including 3 men from Amsterdam as well as 1 from Almere, due east of Amsterdam.
The Fiscal Information as well as Investigation Service (FIOD), a Dutch Anti-Fraud agency, along amongst the Public Prosecutor's Office, carried out raids at multiple places inwards the northern Dutch cities, including Amsterdam, Koggenland, Zandvoort as well as Zeewolde.
During raids, the police describe seized a menage worth 600,000 Euros, a "mansion" amongst an estimated value of 1.6 1000000 Euros, unopen to 2 Million Euros inwards cash, 13 vehicles, as well as hundreds of jail cellular telephone phones from telephone build "PGPsafe."
PGPsafe claims to sell: "The start PGP-provider which solely industrial plant amongst products amongst the "Highest Grade Encryption" qualification. Therefore, nosotros guarantee the privacy that you lot expect."
On ninth May, all PGPsafe users received a message on their telephone from the Dutch police describe maxim (translated version):
"This is the message from Dutch Police. Under the supervision from Ministery, Police convey started a large-scale criminal investigation into the providers of PGPSafe.net Blackberry as well as Android systems, also used past times you. The investigation also focuses on potential criminal goal users."According to the police, PGPsafe amongst over 40,000 registered customers sells PGP-encrypted Blackberry phones betwixt € 1,200 as well as € 1,500 each, as well as transactions to a greater extent than ofttimes than non took house through cash payments on the populace highway.
The Dutch police describe promise to solve nearly 34 criminal investigations inwards as well as unopen to the country, pending since 2014, past times decrypting PGP-encrypted messages stored on the servers of such PGP smartphone companies.
The Dutch regime are keeping a unopen picket on companies offering like encrypted smartphones those are beingness abused past times criminals as well as terrorists.
We convey reached out to PGPsafe for a comment as well as volition update this floor when nosotros require heed back.
