QResear.ch

#21251963 at 2024-07-20 14:03:06 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #37: EVERYTHING IS AT STAKE Edition

#36 - Part 26
Australian Politics and Society - Part 10
>>20964628 Malcolm Turnbull urges world leaders to follow his example: stand up to Donald Trump - Malcolm Turnbull has blasted Donald Trump as a 'volatile, narcissistic gaslighter', urging world leaders to follow his own example and stand up to Mr Trump should he return to the White House next year. Mr Turnbull, whose term as prime minister overlapped with Mr Trump's presidency until 2018, wrote in the prestigious journal Foreign Affairs that "character, courage and candour may be the most important aid [foreign leaders] can render to the United States in a second age of Trump". "There has never been such an effective and relentless gaslighter," Mr Turnbull wrote, referring to the former Republican president, who remains the favourite to win against Joe Biden in November despite his conviction for election interference in New York last week. Mr Turnbull recounted his famous phone call with a newly elected Mr Trump in early 2017, where the prime minister sought to obtain assurances the new Trump administration would honour a deal to struck the former president Barack Obama to take some of Australia's undocumented arrivals. "On the call, I told Trump that Australia expected the United States to stick to its word. Trump was furious, raging that the deal was a terrible one, that it would kill him politically, that Obama had been a fool to do it," Mr Turnbull wrote. "It was daunting to be yelled at by the president of the United States, but I stood my ground. By the end of the call, Trump had, with great reluctance, agreed to go along with it".
>>20964719 Malcolm Turnbull: How the World Can Deal With Trump - Advice for Leaders Facing the Potential Return of "America First" - "In this year of major elections around the world, none is more consequential than that in the United States on the first Tuesday in November. Polling suggests Donald Trump will enter the White House again in January 2025. If he does, he will return to office perhaps no wiser but certainly more experienced and more convinced than ever of his own exceptional genius. More ominously, he will be determined to rectify in his second term what he insists was the major failing of his first: that both his own advisers and Washington officialdom got in his way. Like most people, Trump is often wrong. Unlike most people, however, he is never in doubt. A powerful narcissistic self-belief has given him the strength to defy not just his many enemies but even reality itself. For four years, he has denied the outcome of the 2020 election and persuaded most of his party, and millions of Americans, to agree with him. There has never been such an effective and relentless gaslighter. A Trump returned to the White House, convinced of his own genius, and with the evidence of an election win to prove it, will be surrounded by more yes men and sycophants than ever. In that environment, who will be prepared to tell him what he doesn't want to hear? The leaders of the countries that are the United States' friends and allies will be among the very few who can speak truthfully to Trump. He can shout at them, embarrass them, even threaten them. But he cannot fire them. Their character, courage, and candor may be the most important aid they can render to the United States in a second age of Trump." - Malcolm Turnbull, Prime Minister of Australia from 2015 to 2018 - foreignaffairs.com
>>20969901 Operation Ironside: How biggest sting in history brought down world's toughest criminals - It was March 2020, the start of the Covid pandemic, and like half the planet, Australia's most wanted gangster Hakan Ayik was coming to grips with meeting work colleagues online via Zoom. The prolific drug smuggler was sitting in the cafe of the Kings Cross Hotel that he owns and runs in the Turkish city of Istanbul, talking about how to turbocharge his illicit business, flogging encrypted phones. The phones and their encrypted platform, known as AN0M, were proving popular with international drug cartels and money-laundering syndicates, and Ayik wanted to maximise profits. Three other men were in the meeting, and one of them, identified only as Afgoo, was the global head of the AN0M business. Ayik, who had fled Sydney more than a decade earlier and had managed to stay a step ahead of law-enforcement ever since, had no idea that every detail of the meeting was being monitored by police and the FBI. And he didn't know Afgoo was the man who secretly sold the AN0M platform to law enforcement and was now operating as a confidential informant to the FBI.

#21251945 at 2024-07-20 14:00:22 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #37: EVERYTHING IS AT STAKE Edition

#36 - Part 19
Australian Politics and Society - Part 3
>>20921946 Ukraine pleaded for help from Australia six months ago. It hasn't received a reply - Ukraine has appealed directly to Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong for an urgent shipment of Australian coal to help meet its energy needs as Russia bombards its power plants with missile and drone attacks. The Eastern European nation lodged an official request with the government in December for a supply of coal but has yet to receive a response, leading officials to become increasingly worried a shipment may not arrive in time for the European winter. In a letter to Wong sent on May 6, Ukraine's ambassador to Australia Vasyl Myroshnychenko said that "events over the last five months have increased Ukraine's need for energy security and the assistance of its allies in that regard". "The stark reality is that no power plant in Ukraine has been exempt from Russian targeting or not sustained [damage], and this is having direct impact on Ukraine's people and the quality of their lives," he wrote, adding that Russia had targeted Ukrainian power plants, oil refineries and heating facilities. "You would appreciate that the need for energy security, including ensuring Ukraine's remaining hydro-thermal generation capacity, has increased as a result of the most recent wave of attacks, and I therefore again ask for Australia's consideration."
>>20921983 Operation Ironside: Aussies at heart of global criminal plot smashed by cops - Two Australians at the heart of a global plot to help crime gangs communicate on encrypted devices have pleaded guilty, three years after the scheme was smashed in the police sting of the century. Sydney pair Edwin Kumar and Osemah Elhassen - who distributed the AN0M devices without realising they were being secretly monitored by law enforcement - are the first of 17 foreign nationals charged by the FBI to admit to their role in the conspiracy. It marks a major breakthrough in the world-first investigation, spearheaded by the Australian Federal Police, in which 27 million intercepted messages helped police allegedly foil murder plots and block a multibillion-dollar drug trade involving the Mafia, bikies and South American cartels. It can also be revealed US authorities have arrested two other alleged device distributors - Dragan Nikitovic and Miwand Zakhimi - in the past six months as they continue to round up those allegedly behind the app that its creators bragged was "designed by criminals for criminals".
>>20926912 Video: Trio of rapists on the Andrew Giles visa leniency list - A trio of child rapists are among the growing list of pedophiles and sex offenders allowed to remain in the country under Andrew Giles's call for greater tolerance for foreign offenders with ties to Australia, as the Immigration Minister refuses to say if he will intervene in any of the visa approvals. Abdul Wahab Trad, a 45-year-old Lebanese citizen who permanently relocated to Australia in 2013 escaped deportation in March over his 2020 rape of a 13-year-old girl after the Administrative Appeals Tribunal found that the man's ties to Australia weighed heavily in favour of revoking the cancellation of his visa. His case is one of dozens identified by The Australian in which the AAT's decision has been shaped by Mr Giles's Direction 99. The direction's biggest change was to make the "strength, nature and duration of an individual's ties to Australia" a primary consideration for the tribunal when considering appeals against the cancellation of visas. Since the direction was handed down in January 2023, dozens of convicted non-citizens - including rapists, drug traffickers, pedophiles and repeat domestic violence perpetrators - have avoided being kicked out of the country after successfully arguing to the AAT that they had ties to Australia. That cohort includes Sudan-born Emmanuel Saki, who was charged over a stabbing murder in Queensland weeks after the AAT agreed to revoke the cancellation of his visa.

#21251290 at 2024-07-20 12:19:45 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #36: BADGE OF HONOR Edition

#36 - Part 26
Australian Politics and Society - Part 10
>>20964628 Malcolm Turnbull urges world leaders to follow his example: stand up to Donald Trump - Malcolm Turnbull has blasted Donald Trump as a 'volatile, narcissistic gaslighter', urging world leaders to follow his own example and stand up to Mr Trump should he return to the White House next year. Mr Turnbull, whose term as prime minister overlapped with Mr Trump's presidency until 2018, wrote in the prestigious journal Foreign Affairs that "character, courage and candour may be the most important aid [foreign leaders] can render to the United States in a second age of Trump". "There has never been such an effective and relentless gaslighter," Mr Turnbull wrote, referring to the former Republican president, who remains the favourite to win against Joe Biden in November despite his conviction for election interference in New York last week. Mr Turnbull recounted his famous phone call with a newly elected Mr Trump in early 2017, where the prime minister sought to obtain assurances the new Trump administration would honour a deal to struck the former president Barack Obama to take some of Australia's undocumented arrivals. "On the call, I told Trump that Australia expected the United States to stick to its word. Trump was furious, raging that the deal was a terrible one, that it would kill him politically, that Obama had been a fool to do it," Mr Turnbull wrote. "It was daunting to be yelled at by the president of the United States, but I stood my ground. By the end of the call, Trump had, with great reluctance, agreed to go along with it".
>>20964719 How the World Can Deal With Trump - Advice for Leaders Facing the Potential Return of "America First" - "In this year of major elections around the world, none is more consequential than that in the United States on the first Tuesday in November. Polling suggests Donald Trump will enter the White House again in January 2025. If he does, he will return to office perhaps no wiser but certainly more experienced and more convinced than ever of his own exceptional genius. More ominously, he will be determined to rectify in his second term what he insists was the major failing of his first: that both his own advisers and Washington officialdom got in his way. Like most people, Trump is often wrong. Unlike most people, however, he is never in doubt. A powerful narcissistic self-belief has given him the strength to defy not just his many enemies but even reality itself. For four years, he has denied the outcome of the 2020 election and persuaded most of his party, and millions of Americans, to agree with him. There has never been such an effective and relentless gaslighter. A Trump returned to the White House, convinced of his own genius, and with the evidence of an election win to prove it, will be surrounded by more yes men and sycophants than ever. In that environment, who will be prepared to tell him what he doesn't want to hear? The leaders of the countries that are the United States' friends and allies will be among the very few who can speak truthfully to Trump. He can shout at them, embarrass them, even threaten them. But he cannot fire them. Their character, courage, and candor may be the most important aid they can render to the United States in a second age of Trump." - Malcolm Turnbull, Prime Minister of Australia from 2015 to 2018 - foreignaffairs.com
>>20969901 Operation Ironside: How biggest sting in history brought down world's toughest criminals - It was March 2020, the start of the Covid pandemic, and like half the planet, Australia's most wanted gangster Hakan Ayik was coming to grips with meeting work colleagues online via Zoom. The prolific drug smuggler was sitting in the cafe of the Kings Cross Hotel that he owns and runs in the Turkish city of Istanbul, talking about how to turbocharge his illicit business, flogging encrypted phones. The phones and their encrypted platform, known as AN0M, were proving popular with international drug cartels and money-laundering syndicates, and Ayik wanted to maximise profits. Three other men were in the meeting, and one of them, identified only as Afgoo, was the global head of the AN0M business. Ayik, who had fled Sydney more than a decade earlier and had managed to stay a step ahead of law-enforcement ever since, had no idea that every detail of the meeting was being monitored by police and the FBI. And he didn't know Afgoo was the man who secretly sold the AN0M platform to law enforcement and was now operating as a confidential informant to the FBI.

#21251242 at 2024-07-20 12:11:29 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #36: BADGE OF HONOR Edition

#36 - Part 19
Australian Politics and Society - Part 3
>>20921946 Ukraine pleaded for help from Australia six months ago. It hasn't received a reply - Ukraine has appealed directly to Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong for an urgent shipment of Australian coal to help meet its energy needs as Russia bombards its power plants with missile and drone attacks. The Eastern European nation lodged an official request with the government in December for a supply of coal but has yet to receive a response, leading officials to become increasingly worried a shipment may not arrive in time for the European winter. In a letter to Wong sent on May 6, Ukraine's ambassador to Australia Vasyl Myroshnychenko said that "events over the last five months have increased Ukraine's need for energy security and the assistance of its allies in that regard". "The stark reality is that no power plant in Ukraine has been exempt from Russian targeting or not sustained [damage], and this is having direct impact on Ukraine's people and the quality of their lives," he wrote, adding that Russia had targeted Ukrainian power plants, oil refineries and heating facilities. "You would appreciate that the need for energy security, including ensuring Ukraine's remaining hydro-thermal generation capacity, has increased as a result of the most recent wave of attacks, and I therefore again ask for Australia's consideration."
>>20921983 Operation Ironside: Aussies at heart of global criminal plot smashed by cops - Two Australians at the heart of a global plot to help crime gangs communicate on encrypted devices have pleaded guilty, three years after the scheme was smashed in the police sting of the century. Sydney pair Edwin Kumar and Osemah Elhassen - who distributed the AN0M devices without realising they were being secretly monitored by law enforcement - are the first of 17 foreign nationals charged by the FBI to admit to their role in the conspiracy. It marks a major breakthrough in the world-first investigation, spearheaded by the Australian Federal Police, in which 27 million intercepted messages helped police allegedly foil murder plots and block a multibillion-dollar drug trade involving the Mafia, bikies and South American cartels. It can also be revealed US authorities have arrested two other alleged device distributors - Dragan Nikitovic and Miwand Zakhimi - in the past six months as they continue to round up those allegedly behind the app that its creators bragged was "designed by criminals for criminals".
>>20926912 Video: Trio of rapists on the Andrew Giles visa leniency list - A trio of child rapists are among the growing list of pedophiles and sex offenders allowed to remain in the country under Andrew Giles's call for greater tolerance for foreign offenders with ties to Australia, as the Immigration Minister refuses to say if he will intervene in any of the visa approvals. Abdul Wahab Trad, a 45-year-old Lebanese citizen who permanently relocated to Australia in 2013 escaped deportation in March over his 2020 rape of a 13-year-old girl after the Administrative Appeals Tribunal found that the man's ties to Australia weighed heavily in favour of revoking the cancellation of his visa. His case is one of dozens identified by The Australian in which the AAT's decision has been shaped by Mr Giles's Direction 99. The direction's biggest change was to make the "strength, nature and duration of an individual's ties to Australia" a primary consideration for the tribunal when considering appeals against the cancellation of visas. Since the direction was handed down in January 2023, dozens of convicted non-citizens - including rapists, drug traffickers, pedophiles and repeat domestic violence perpetrators - have avoided being kicked out of the country after successfully arguing to the AAT that they had ties to Australia. That cohort includes Sudan-born Emmanuel Saki, who was charged over a stabbing murder in Queensland weeks after the AAT agreed to revoke the cancellation of his visa.

#20969907 at 2024-06-05 11:15:08 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #36: BADGE OF HONOR Edition

>>20969901

2/2

Cox, who runs his own company 404 Media, spent 10 years covering the encrypted phone industry through his previous role with Vice Media's Motherboard. He has revealed that Lithuania was the third-party country that helped Australia and the US find a way to legally store the millions of messages and provide them to the FBI.

He said Lithuania agreed to store the messages on secure servers within its boundaries, and, under a mutual legal assistance treaty, sent them to the US on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays for the FBI to process.

Messages taken from AN0M devices within the US were stripped out of the message bundles as the FBI did not have approval for a domestic wire tap, and Lithuania was able to do what Australia wasn't able to - provide the messages to a foreign agency.

The AFP played a key role in the AN0M sting - known locally as Operation Ironside - after working with the FBI on the 2018 take-down of Phantom Secure.

An Australian tech expert working for the AFP, known in Cox's book as CIN325, developed a backdoor entry into the AN0M platform which allowed police to read and copy the messages as they were being sent.

Cox reveals how CIN325 met Afgoo in a hotel suite overseas, "geeking out'' in a corner over the details of how to develop the backdoor into AN0M.

He goes into amusing detail about how the AFP and FBI worked 14-hour days developing AN0M, living on takeaway food and at one point, drinking two bottles of grocery store whiskey as they sat around the edge of the hot tub with their feet in the bath.

He also reveals how the FBI was intimately involved in the AN0M business, at one stage flying 1000 phones into locations on an FBI jet to ensure all criminals eager to get their hands on a phone were able to access one.

This immediate access was something Ayik had identified in the Zoom meeting in Istanbul in March 2020.

"It goes back to efficiency and getting the product out there,'' he tells his criminal associates.

"Look at McDonald's, they go and get the burgers out there. You're not waiting. That's why people go there.''

Cox reveals that the assassination of a low-level criminal in Sweden named Sascha had been planned over AN0M, two weeks before Swedish police were given access to the AN0M messages.

Australian police had been deeply concerned about such a scenario playing out here but were able to act on any threats to life identified.

Cox reveals AN0M was shut down in June 2021 just as it risked collapsing under the weight of its own popularity and size.

Crooks, including Ayik, had got their hands on a black box that allowed the phones to be set up without needing to be programmed by Afgoo, meaning law enforcement started to lose control of who was registering as an AN0M user. A portal was also established which accelerated the sign-up rate of AN0M users.

With more than 12,000 devices active across the criminal underworld, law enforcement eventually pulled the pin in June 2021, resulting in thousands of ?arrests worldwide, including 392 arrests in Australia.

Dark Wire: The Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever, by Joseph Cox, published by Public Affairs.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/how-biggest-sting-in-history-brought-down-worlds-toughest-criminals/news-story/a65263e373de4e2d52a0e2ed6b8c978e

#20969901 at 2024-06-05 11:14:03 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #36: BADGE OF HONOR Edition

>>20921983
Operation Ironside: How biggest sting in history brought down world's toughest criminals

ELLEN WHINNETT - JUNE 4, 2024

1/2

It was March 2020, the start of the Covid pandemic, and like half the planet, Australia's most wanted gangster Hakan Ayik was coming to grips with meeting work colleagues online via Zoom.

The prolific drug smuggler was sitting in the cafe of the Kings Cross Hotel that he owns and runs in the Turkish city of Istanbul, talking about how to turbocharge his illicit business, flogging encrypted phones. The phones and their encrypted platform, known as AN0M, were proving popular with international drug cartels and money-laundering syndicates, and Ayik wanted to maximise profits.

Three other men were in the meeting, and one of them, identified only as Afgoo, had dialled in, and appeared on Ayik's laptop. Afgoo was the global head of the AN0M business.

Ayik, who had fled Sydney more than a decade earlier and had managed to stay a step ahead of law-enforcement ever since, was new to Zoom. "It's crystal clear,'' Ayik commented to Afgoo and the two other men, adding: "Zoom is amazing, isn't it.''

What's really amazing is that Ayik had no idea that every detail of the meeting was being monitored by police and the FBI. And he didn't know Afgoo was the man who secretly sold the AN0M platform to law enforcement and was now operating as a confidential informant to the FBI.

The details are contained in a compelling new book by investigative tech journalist Joseph Cox, which is being released this week in the US. The book, Dark Wire, is being translated into several ?European languages, and is under development by Netflix as a film.

Dark Wire is the first book to delve into the extraordinary global sting carried out by the FBI and Australian Federal Police, in which 28 million messages exchanged by criminals on AN0M were intercepted and copied by the police, resulting in thousands of arrests worldwide.

It contains some eye-popping new details about the extraordinary sting of the century, including that Ayik knew Afgoo for several years before they embarked on the AN0M venture.

Afgoo - identified only by the handle or nickname he used on the AN0M platform - previously worked as a seller of encrypted phones for Canadian company Phantom Secure.

Cox describes him as the "tech expert'' who Ayik first consulted about whether he too should put his trust into Phantom Secure.

While it had previously been revealed by police that Ayik was a key influencer and distributor of AN0M phones, and that a confidential source had sold AN0M to the FBI in return for $US180,000, it was not known that Ayik and Afgoo were old associates.

The revelation heaps further pressure on Ayik, who remains in a Turkish prison after being arrested in November when Turkish police rounded up 42 foreigners accused of criminality on Turkish soil, including Ayik's Australian associates Erkan Dogan, Baris Tukel, Jimmy Awaijan, and Melbourne model-turned bikie boss Hasan Topal

Ayik, who renounced his Australian citizenship and is a Turkish citizen, is unlikely to be extradited to Australia or the US, where he is wanted on racketeering charges relating to AN0M. He faces local charges in Turkey.

Cox also reveals in his book that the collapse of two other encrypted phone companies popular with the criminal underworld, Encrochat and Sky, may not have been the coincidence law enforcement originally implied.

Encrochat was hacked by ?European police in 2020, and Sky in 2021, leading to police raids against those who had used the messaging platforms to organise drug deals and other criminal activity. The fall of the two platforms drove users onto AN0M - where the AFP and FBI were monitoring and collecting the messages sent across the globe.

"Initially when I started, I believed it was just a nice, happy accident,'' Cox said of the downfall of Europe-based Encrochat and Canadian company Sky.

"But the more people I spoke to, including the European officials I spoke to, there's a Dutch one in there, he explicitly phrases it as a master plan. And I think that's one of the biggest revelations of the book.

"These operations weren't conducted in silos, or as a vacuum. The Americans were talking to the Europeans about much of their plans. Not everything, it was bit by bit. Enough for people to understand, 'OK, we're going to hack Sky, you're going to indict, and then the users were probably going to go to AN0M'.''

(continued)

#20921983 at 2024-05-27 10:22:16 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #36: BADGE OF HONOR Edition

Operation Ironside: Aussies at heart of global criminal plot smashed by cops

Two Australians have entered guilty pleas amid new revelations police are still rounding up those connected to a trojan horse app "designed by criminals for criminals".

Tom Minear - May 27, 2024

Two Australians at the heart of a global plot to help crime gangs communicate on encrypted devices have pleaded guilty, three years after the scheme was smashed in the police sting of the century.

Sydney pair Edwin Kumar and Osemah Elhassen - who distributed the AN0M devices without realising they were being secretly monitored by law enforcement - are the first of 17 foreign nationals charged by the FBI to admit to their role in the conspiracy.

It marks a major breakthrough in the world-first investigation, spearheaded by the Australian Federal Police, in which 27 million intercepted messages helped police allegedly foil murder plots and block a multibillion-dollar drug trade involving the Mafia, bikies and South American cartels.

Kumar's plea agreement revealed how he told his co-conspirators: "I'm AN0M Australia and look after Australia ... I have an entire country to look after."

"Welcome to Team Australia, this team is solid and we will conquer Australia ... Nothing will stop us," he said in another message less than a month before the plot came crashing down.

It can also be revealed US authorities have arrested two other alleged device distributors - Dragan Nikitovic and Miwand Zakhimi - in the past six months as they continue to round up those allegedly behind the app that its creators bragged was "designed by criminals for criminals".

Kumar was arrested in Australia in 2021 and extradited to the US in April last year, shortly before Elhassen was extradited from Colombia. Their guilty pleas to racketeering conspiracy charges were accepted last week by the US District Court for California's Southern District.

Both Kumar and Elhassen distributed AN0M devices "to criminal end-users" between October 2019 and June 2021, according to their plea agreements, while knowing they would be used to facilitate the trafficking of drugs including cocaine and methamphetamine.

At the outset of the plot, Kumar sent a message to Hakan Ayik - one of Australia's most wanted men until his arrest last year and an alleged AN0M administrator - saying he was "touching base" about obtaining an encrypted device for Elhassen.

Elhassen later focused on distributing and setting up devices in Colombia, the world's cocaine capital, writing in one message: "I am anom colombia."

Kumar dealt with hundreds of devices in Australia and spoke to Zakhimi, a citizen of the Netherlands, about creating "the ultimate (AN0M) user guide".

Elhassen and Kumar sent multiple messages that were intercepted by authorities about drug trafficking, with Kumar selling and setting up devices for a gang that shipped 156 kilograms of pseudoephedrine - a methamphetamine precursor - from India to Australia in 2020.

Both men also admitted they had remotely deleted content from AN0M devices that were seized by police, obstructing law enforcement operations, and that they had laundered drug trafficking profits including through cryptocurrency.

They are expected to be sentenced in July, and while both face a maximum of 20 years in prison, prosecutors indicated in court filings that they would seek for them to be sentenced at the "low end of the advisory guideline range recommended by the government".

More than 12,000 AN0M devices were used by at least 300 criminal syndicates operating in some 100 countries before a stunning two-day operation three years ago in which more than 500 people were arrested worldwide, including at least 100 in Australia.

Device distributors like Elhassen and Kumar charged fees of about $1700 every six months and provided technical support to organised crime gangs seeking to hide their dealings from law enforcement agencies that had secretly commandeered the AN0M app.

https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/truecrimeaustralia/aussies-at-heart-of-global-criminal-plot-smashed-by-cops/news-story/6c1118c7862722f234253875400bd710

#19821958 at 2023-10-29 04:29:29 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #32: YOU ARE NOT ALONE IN THIS FIGHT Edition

#32 - Part 4
Australian Politics and Society - Part 4
>>19562094 Video: Ukraine's soldiers plead for Anthony Albanese to give them Hawkei vehicles despite faults - Ukrainian soldiers fighting on the frontline have pleaded for Aus?tralia to supply them with faulty Hawkei light armoured patrol ?vehicles after repeated requests have been stonewalled by the ?Albanese government. At a secret training base in the Donetsk Oblast region in Ukraine's east, near the site of some of the fiercest fighting of the war, The Weekend Australian shared the back of an Australian-made Bushmaster with soldiers keen to see more help in the "fight for democracy". While the Bushmasters have been warmly welcomed, Anthony Albanese has rejected desperate calls from Kyiv to supply Ukraine with Australian-built Hawkei vehicles, citing "a range of reasons".
>>19570662 'Threat-to-life messages': 39 men charged as part of global police sting appear in court - Almost 40 Victorian men charged as part of a global police sting that cracked open an encrypted app have faced court as fresh details of Operation Ironside were aired in a courtroom for the first time. Accused men and their lawyers filled six rows on Monday in the Melbourne Magistrates' Court, where the police case against the men was tested for the first time. Australian Federal Police digital forensic examiner Keith Fell said he was tasked with examining phones that had the encrypted AN0M application installed. Officers had infiltrated the app over about three years. Fell said while the devices looked like mobile phones, the AN0M part of the device could only be accessed through a password-controlled calculator app. Two codes could be used, he said, one that would allow a user to access the encrypted service and another that would wipe the phone. He said one setting also allowed the user to set a time when messages were automatically deleted. "It's unique; it's nothing I've come across before," Fell said.
>>19575766 Potent $1.5 billion upgrade to Australia's maritime surveillance with manned and unmanned aircraft - Australia will purchase a fourth long-range Triton drone for maritime surveillance, despite the US Navy recently halting production of the expensive unmanned platform which critics warn is vulnerable to enemy attack. The contentious American acquisition is part of a $1.5 billion boost to the RAAF being unveiled on Tuesday that includes upgrades to the existing P-8A Poseidon fleet, allowing the patrol aircraft to eventually fire anti-ship missiles up to 1,000km. Under the Poseidon upgrade program, the Department of Defence expects the first of its 14 Boeing-made aircraft to receive enhancements to anti-submarine warfare, maritime strike and intelligence collection capabilities from 2026. The entire fleet is expected to be completed by 2030.
>>19581594 Climate scientists and Pacific activists call on Australia to ramp up ambitions ahead of UN summit - Movers and shakers in the fight against climate change are gathering for the United Nation's Climate Ambition Summit in New York, while climate scientists and Pacific activists call on Australia to ramp up its own ambitions. The summit comes as the Australia Institute has published a full-page ad in the New York Times calling on the Australian government to halt "over 100 new coal and gas projects" in the pipeline. The open letter, signed by over 200 scientists and experts, called on Australia to accelerate climate action, "not climate annihilation". The institute's director, Dr Richard Denniss, is attending the UN climate summit and said Australia "wants to have it both ways" when it came to climate leadership and fossil fuels. "On the one hand, we want the world to support our bid to host a COP," he said, referring to the UN Climate Change Conference. "But at the same time, we're ignoring the UN and indeed, our Pacific neighbours' calls on us to stop expanding fossil fuels."
>>19581607 Australia to support Ukraine at UN's highest court - Australian officials will take a stand in support of Ukraine at the United Nations' highest court as the Balkan country challenges Russia's claims its invasion was carried out to prevent genocide. Days after Russian forces invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Kyiv filed a case to the International Court of Justice alleging Russian leaders were abusing international law by using false claims of genocide in eastern Ukraine to justify its invasion. Russian representatives have continued to accuse Ukraine of committing genocide. Foreign Minister Penny Wong says Russia is in breach of the UN charter, which protects the sovereignty and territorial integrity of every nation. Officials from 32 countries are expected to deliver interventions in support of Ukraine at The Hague's Peace Palace. Solicitor-General Stephen Donaghue will deliver Australia's intervention on Wednesday night (AEST) where he will argue the court has jurisdiction to hear the case.

#19570662 at 2023-09-18 10:02:18 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #32: YOU ARE NOT ALONE IN THIS FIGHT Edition

>>19320818 (pb)
>>19404456 (pb)
'Threat-to-life messages': 39 men charged as part of global police sting appear in court

Erin Pearson - September 18, 2023

Almost 40 Victorian men charged as part of a global police sting that cracked open an encrypted app have faced court as fresh details of Operation Ironside were aired in a courtroom for the first time.

Accused men and their lawyers filled six rows on Monday in the Melbourne Magistrates' Court, where the police case against the men was tested for the first time.

Australian Federal Police digital forensic examiner Keith Fell said he was tasked with examining phones that had the encrypted AN0M application installed. Officers had infiltrated the app over about three years.

Fell said while the devices looked like mobile phones, the AN0M part of the device could only be accessed through a password-controlled calculator app.

Two codes could be used, he said, one that would allow a user to access the encrypted service and another that would wipe the phone.

He said one setting also allowed the user to set a time when messages were automatically deleted.

"It's unique; it's nothing I've come across before," Fell said.

Those charged as part of the sting include senior Comancheros figure Mark Buddle, who is accused of being involved in a transnational criminal syndicate that operated out of Hong Kong and Turkey and who allegedly imported $40 million of cocaine into Melbourne in May 2021.

Buddle returned to Victoria in August 2022 after six years abroad and remains in custody at Barwon Prison.

Thirty-eight others are facing charges including trafficking drugs, dealing in the proceeds of crime and possessing firearms and other weapons.

Of those charged, eight remain in custody and appeared in court remotely on Monday from places including Barwon and Port Phillip prisons.

Eight witnesses are expected to give evidence over the coming month, including a person who acted as the conduit between the AFP and their "human source".

Acting AFP Superintendent Robert Dzaja was involved in Operation Ironside for 18 months from January 2020, when the operation was classified and not widely known. He told the court that while the general intent was to run an encrypted communication platform that allowed investigators to capture and gain evidence, the intention was for the platform to largely remain a secret.

By March 2021, though, it became a priority for the entire operation, he said. The operation had allowed officers to read intercepted messages from AN0M devices in real time.

This, he said, included "threat-to-life messages".

Dzaja said that when Australian authorities learnt of potential hits overseas, though, they were not permitted to hand over "protected information" to other countries.

He agreed there ended up being so many devices internationally that the AFP found it hard to keep up with monitoring them all. As the operation grew, he said, translators had to be called in to help with data collection.

In June 2021, the AFP said it had stopped 21 planned underworld killings in Melbourne and infiltrated drug networks across the country as part of an international investigation using encrypted message technology.

At the time, it was revealed Australian police had partnered with the FBI for a three-year operation, dubbed the "sting of the century".

It followed the take-down in 2018 of encryption service Phantom Secure, which had 14,000 users in Australia. Authorities, police said, then moved to infiltrate AN0M just before the product was due to be released to the criminal market.

As the operation concluded, in Victoria alone police raided 37 properties and arrested 32 people while also seizing more than a tonne of illicit drugs, luxury cars, cash, guns and gold bullion at places including Sydenham, Footscray, Glenroy, Elwood and Port Melbourne.

Australia-wide, more than 220 people were arrested. About 3.7 tonnes of drugs, $45 million in cash and 104 weapons were also seized in the operation, which involved more than 4000 police.

The committal hearing before magistrate Simon Zebrowski continues.

https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/threat-to-life-messages-39-men-charged-as-part-of-global-police-sting-appear-in-court-20230918-p5e5lm.html

#19487490 at 2023-09-04 09:54:45 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #32: YOU ARE NOT ALONE IN THIS FIGHT Edition

#31 - Part 7
Australian Politics and Society - Part 7
>>19367975 Kevin Rudd says he will never apologise for his 2007 climate change warning - Kevin Rudd has revived his declaration that climate change is the greatest moral challenge of our time, saying he would never apologise for the warning he issued in 2007 even though it doomed his prime ministership when he abandoned his signature carbon pricing scheme. The US ambassador, who unveiled a climate pact between Australia and California with Governor Gavin Newsom on Wednesday, said he was "ridiculed" for his comments at the time. "I make no apology for saying it then and I make no apology for repeating it now, because it is," Dr Rudd said.
>>19367987 Kevin Rudd AC Tweet: Proud to join @CAGovernor @GavinNewsom in Sacramento today for the signing of a new landmark climate MoU between Australia and California. This MoU will enhance cooperation in areas including clean transportation, energy, climate-friendly business and R&D.
>>19367987 Q Post #2782 - [Example CA] - https://calmatters.org/articles/commentary/gavin-newsoms-keeping-it-all-in-the-family/amp/? - What 'family' runs CA? They are all connected. Wealth-Power-Influence - [RIGGED] - The More You Know.... - Q - https://qanon.pub/#2782 - https://qalerts.pub/?q=newsom - https://qalerts.pub/?q=california
>>19368006 U.S. Embassy Australia Tweet - https://twitter.com/USEmbAustralia/status/1691583564310306947 - (Durham boat - Go Matildas)
>>19368006 Q Post #3800 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durham_boat - Anons found the subtle hint dropped in the beginning. Think Durham start. Think 'Q' start. You have more than you know. Q - https://qanon.pub/#3800
>>19397621 Family Court judge rules father's gender non-conformity 'confused' his children - A Family Court judge has determined that a father's refusal to conform with traditional gender norms left his three children "confused" and encouraged them to "question their gender identity" after they all began identifying as non-binary, ruling the two youngest children will not be permitted to see their ?father for an extended period. The matter regarded the breakdown of a 20-year relationship between a mother and a ?father, who identifies as male but occasionally wears gender non-conforming clothes, including a dress to his middle child's first day of school. Justice Kylie Beckhouse earlier this month ruled the two youngest children, known pseudonymously as Riley, 8, and Taylor, 13, will not be allowed to see their father for the next four months, after which period they will spend time with him on Sundays. The eldest child, Jamie, 16, who is taking puberty blockers and wishes to undergo a mastectomy once he completes his HSC, will live with both parents in accordance with his wishes.
>>19404456 AN0M accused Edwin Kumar asks FBI to give him names and messages from encrypted app - An Australian man accused of providing encrypted AN0M devices to people who used them to organise drug trafficking is asking prosecutors to give him details of every message sent on every phone he is accused of providing. The case against Edwin Harmendra Kumar, being heard in the US, has revealed fascinating details of the inner workings of Operation Ironside, the police sting of the century, built around the encrypted app AN0M. Mr Kumar, who was extradited from Sydney to the US earlier this year to face racketeering (RICO) charges, is seeking details of all users and all messages sent via the devices prosecutors say he provided or serviced. He is also seeking any reports of drug transactions allegedly involving him directly, or any end-user who allegedly used a device he had distributed or serviced.
>>19417641 Australia-California: A climate partnership made in la-la land - "Last week, Australian ambassador to the US Kevin Rudd and California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a memorandum of understanding in Sacramento on climate change. It should have been called a memorandum of waffle, as both governments jointly promised to do precisely nothing. After ploughing through 1600 words of waffle, the reader learns the MOU "does not create any legally binding rights or obligations and creates no legally recognisable or enforceable rights or remedies, legal or equitable, in any forum whatsoever". Whatever agreements California and Australia make won't make a scrap of difference to the global climate, given the near entirety of additional increases in carbon dioxide emissions now arise in India and China." - Adam Creighton - theaustralian.com.au

#19487485 at 2023-09-04 09:53:43 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #32: YOU ARE NOT ALONE IN THIS FIGHT Edition

#31 - Part 5
Australian Politics and Society - Part 5
>>19297988 United States Air Force 'mission planning' and operations centre to be built in Darwin - A new US Air Force "mission planning" and operations centre will be built in Darwin, as part of $630 million in American spending across the top end over the next two to three years. The "Squadron Operations Facility" in Darwin will add to its growing array of military assets in the north, raising fears Australia may be locked into any future military conflict between China and the US.
>>19303272 Alexander Downer Tweet: Had a drink with friends yesterday where I met Papadopoulos in 2016. They've put up this plaque!! - https://twitter.com/AlexanderDowner/status/1687518177016631298
>>19314910 Don't ban paying cyber ransoms, ex-US spy chief warns Australia - A former US National Security Agency director says Australia should not impose a blanket ban on paying cyber ransoms but instead adopt a risk-based approach that considers a set of key criteria. Retired Admiral Michael Rogers, who headed the NSA and led United States Cyber Command from 2014 to 2018 under presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, also called for a shift in thinking on cyberattacks. "This is what I used to tell the two presidents, 'Sir, if the metric you're going to use is anytime we have a significant penetration that is a failure, then you are going to be incredibly frustrated'," Mr Rogers told The Australian Financial Review.
>>19314910 Q Post #585 - TRUST Adm R. He played the game to remain in control. Q - https://qanon.pub/#585
>>19320818 The US and Sweden have put a bounty on the head of alleged AN0M gangster Maximilian Rivkin - A $7.6m bounty has been placed on the head of a fugitive Swedish gangster who targeted Australia's drug market and is a key lieutenant of Australia's most wanted man, Hakan Ayik. News of the reward offered for the arrest of Maximilian Rivkin comes as another of the 17 men indicted over the encrypted app AN0M, Seyyed Hossein Hosseini, is extradited to the US, taking to five the number of international alleged gangsters now facing the US justice system on racketeering charges. The app, which was pushed by the likes of Australian drug kingpin Hakan Ayik, was marketed as a secure way to avoid law enforcement, but was in fact a Trojan horse app being run and monitored by the FBI and Australian Federal Police. While 17 people were indicted over running the criminal enterprise behind the app, more than 1300 people were charged globally with a number of crimes as a result of the sting.
>>19321039 Video: Fireball that lit up Melbourne night sky was most likely debris from Russian rocket - A large flaming object that lit up Melbourne's sky overnight is thought to be debris from a Russian rocket used to send a satellite into space. Victorians captured videos showing a bright fireball travelling across the night sky late on Monday, close to midnight. Social media posts indicate it was seen from Melbourne's CBD as well as outer suburbs such as Sunbury and Mornington. Residents in regional Victoria and South Australia also reported seeing the flashes of light. The Australian Space Agency said that the flashes of light were likely the remnants of a Russian Soyuz-2 rocket re-entering Earth's atmosphere.
>>19326780 Trump's potential return to White House up to American people, says Kevin Rudd - The Australian ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd, says it is up to the American people whether Donald Trump returns to the White House - an outcome he previously said would "fray" support for the US alliance in Australia. The former Australian prime minister said on Wednesday that US politics was "a complex beast" and he was focused on keeping on good terms with both sides of the aisle, including former Trump officials. Prior to his appointment as ambassador, which took effect earlier this year, Rudd called Trump "the most destructive president in history". Rudd told Guardian Australia before the 2020 election that if Trump were re-elected, "the overall fabric of domestic political support in this country and among other American allies around the world will begin to more fundamentally fray".
>>19326786 Kevin Rudd Tweet (27 Feb 2022): Donald Trump is a traitor to the West. Murdoch was Trump's biggest backer. And Murdoch's Fox Television backs Putin too. What rancid treachery. - https://archive.ph/gbMyl

#19487338 at 2023-09-04 08:47:58 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #31: MAGIC SWORD - IN THE FACE OF EVIL Edition

#31 - Part 7
Australian Politics and Society - Part 7
>>19367975 Kevin Rudd says he will never apologise for his 2007 climate change warning - Kevin Rudd has revived his declaration that climate change is the greatest moral challenge of our time, saying he would never apologise for the warning he issued in 2007 even though it doomed his prime ministership when he abandoned his signature carbon pricing scheme. The US ambassador, who unveiled a climate pact between Australia and California with Governor Gavin Newsom on Wednesday, said he was "ridiculed" for his comments at the time. "I make no apology for saying it then and I make no apology for repeating it now, because it is," Dr Rudd said.
>>19367987 Kevin Rudd AC Tweet: Proud to join @CAGovernor @GavinNewsom in Sacramento today for the signing of a new landmark climate MoU between Australia and California. This MoU will enhance cooperation in areas including clean transportation, energy, climate-friendly business and R&D.
>>19367987 Q Post #2782 - [Example CA] - https://calmatters.org/articles/commentary/gavin-newsoms-keeping-it-all-in-the-family/amp/? - What 'family' runs CA? They are all connected. Wealth-Power-Influence - [RIGGED] - The More You Know…. - Q - https://qanon.pub/#2782 - https://qalerts.pub/?q=newsom - https://qalerts.pub/?q=california
>>19368006 U.S. Embassy Australia Tweet - https://twitter.com/USEmbAustralia/status/1691583564310306947 - (Durham boat - Go Matildas)
>>19368006 Q Post #3800 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durham_boat - Anons found the subtle hint dropped in the beginning. Think Durham start. Think 'Q' start. You have more than you know. Q - https://qanon.pub/#3800
>>19397621 Family Court judge rules father's gender non-conformity 'confused' his children - A Family Court judge has determined that a father's refusal to conform with traditional gender norms left his three children "confused" and encouraged them to "question their gender identity" after they all began identifying as non-binary, ruling the two youngest children will not be permitted to see their ?father for an extended period. The matter regarded the breakdown of a 20-year relationship between a mother and a ?father, who identifies as male but occasionally wears gender non-conforming clothes, including a dress to his middle child's first day of school. Justice Kylie Beckhouse earlier this month ruled the two youngest children, known pseudonymously as Riley, 8, and Taylor, 13, will not be allowed to see their father for the next four months, after which period they will spend time with him on Sundays. The eldest child, Jamie, 16, who is taking puberty blockers and wishes to undergo a mastectomy once he completes his HSC, will live with both parents in accordance with his wishes.
>>19404456 AN0M accused Edwin Kumar asks FBI to give him names and messages from encrypted app - An Australian man accused of providing encrypted AN0M devices to people who used them to organise drug trafficking is asking prosecutors to give him details of every message sent on every phone he is accused of providing. The case against Edwin Harmendra Kumar, being heard in the US, has revealed fascinating details of the inner workings of Operation Ironside, the police sting of the century, built around the encrypted app AN0M. Mr Kumar, who was extradited from Sydney to the US earlier this year to face racketeering (RICO) charges, is seeking details of all users and all messages sent via the devices prosecutors say he provided or serviced. He is also seeking any reports of drug transactions allegedly involving him directly, or any end-user who allegedly used a device he had distributed or serviced.
>>19417641 Australia-California: A climate partnership made in la-la land - "Last week, Australian ambassador to the US Kevin Rudd and California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a memorandum of understanding in Sacramento on climate change. It should have been called a memorandum of waffle, as both governments jointly promised to do precisely nothing. After ploughing through 1600 words of waffle, the reader learns the MOU "does not create any legally binding rights or obligations and creates no legally recognisable or enforceable rights or remedies, legal or equitable, in any forum whatsoever". Whatever agreements California and Australia make won't make a scrap of difference to the global climate, given the near entirety of additional increases in carbon dioxide emissions now arise in India and China." - Adam Creighton - theaustralian.com.au

#19487331 at 2023-09-04 08:45:05 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #31: MAGIC SWORD - IN THE FACE OF EVIL Edition

#31 - Part 5
Australian Politics and Society - Part 5
>>19297988 United States Air Force 'mission planning' and operations centre to be built in Darwin - A new US Air Force "mission planning" and operations centre will be built in Darwin, as part of $630 million in American spending across the top end over the next two to three years. The "Squadron Operations Facility" in Darwin will add to its growing array of military assets in the north, raising fears Australia may be locked into any future military conflict between China and the US.
>>19303272 Alexander Downer Tweet: Had a drink with friends yesterday where I met Papadopoulos in 2016. They've put up this plaque!! - https://twitter.com/AlexanderDowner/status/1687518177016631298
>>19314910 Don't ban paying cyber ransoms, ex-US spy chief warns Australia - A former US National Security Agency director says Australia should not impose a blanket ban on paying cyber ransoms but instead adopt a risk-based approach that considers a set of key criteria. Retired Admiral Michael Rogers, who headed the NSA and led United States Cyber Command from 2014 to 2018 under presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, also called for a shift in thinking on cyberattacks. "This is what I used to tell the two presidents, 'Sir, if the metric you're going to use is anytime we have a significant penetration that is a failure, then you are going to be incredibly frustrated'," Mr Rogers told The Australian Financial Review.
>>19314910 Q Post #585 - TRUST Adm R. He played the game to remain in control. Q - https://qanon.pub/#585
>>19320818 The US and Sweden have put a bounty on the head of alleged AN0M gangster Maximilian Rivkin - A $7.6m bounty has been placed on the head of a fugitive Swedish gangster who targeted Australia's drug market and is a key lieutenant of Australia's most wanted man, Hakan Ayik. News of the reward offered for the arrest of Maximilian Rivkin comes as another of the 17 men indicted over the encrypted app AN0M, Seyyed Hossein Hosseini, is extradited to the US, taking to five the number of international alleged gangsters now facing the US justice system on racketeering charges. The app, which was pushed by the likes of Australian drug kingpin Hakan Ayik, was marketed as a secure way to avoid law enforcement, but was in fact a Trojan horse app being run and monitored by the FBI and Australian Federal Police. While 17 people were indicted over running the criminal enterprise behind the app, more than 1300 people were charged globally with a number of crimes as a result of the sting.
>>19321039 Video: Fireball that lit up Melbourne night sky was most likely debris from Russian rocket - A large flaming object that lit up Melbourne's sky overnight is thought to be debris from a Russian rocket used to send a satellite into space. Victorians captured videos showing a bright fireball travelling across the night sky late on Monday, close to midnight. Social media posts indicate it was seen from Melbourne's CBD as well as outer suburbs such as Sunbury and Mornington. Residents in regional Victoria and South Australia also reported seeing the flashes of light. The Australian Space Agency said that the flashes of light were likely the remnants of a Russian Soyuz-2 rocket re-entering Earth's atmosphere.
>>19326780 Trump's potential return to White House up to American people, says Kevin Rudd - The Australian ambassador to the US, Kevin Rudd, says it is up to the American people whether Donald Trump returns to the White House - an outcome he previously said would "fray" support for the US alliance in Australia. The former Australian prime minister said on Wednesday that US politics was "a complex beast" and he was focused on keeping on good terms with both sides of the aisle, including former Trump officials. Prior to his appointment as ambassador, which took effect earlier this year, Rudd called Trump "the most destructive president in history". Rudd told Guardian Australia before the 2020 election that if Trump were re-elected, "the overall fabric of domestic political support in this country and among other American allies around the world will begin to more fundamentally fray".
>>19326786 Kevin Rudd Tweet (27 Feb 2022): Donald Trump is a traitor to the West. Murdoch was Trump's biggest backer. And Murdoch's Fox Television backs Putin too. What rancid treachery. - https://archive.ph/gbMyl

#19404463 at 2023-08-22 09:54:47 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #31: MAGIC SWORD - IN THE FACE OF EVIL Edition

>>19404456

2/2

"If the authorities were to access ANOM's server of 193.27.15.41 in ROMANIA which is a third world country that may state they take privacy seriously ... they could easily infiltrate their Offshore Romanian Server and install special hardware devices on those servers without ANOM's knowledge,'' the prescient blog warned.

"Authorities could completely infiltrate every users devices as well as their operations and worse of all authorities would have the ability to decrypt and intercept their messages.''

Weeks later, after the AN0M take-down was finalised, it was revealed the app had been sold to the FBI by a tech-savvy criminal seeking a lighter sentence over other criminal matters involving an earlier encrypted app known as Phantom Secure.

A member of the Australian Federal Police developed the key that allowed the messages to be decrypted in real time, and the FBI's confidential source helped get AN0M devices - stripped back mobile phones - out into the criminal underworld.

The documents revealed the messages were routed through iBot servers, and blind carbon copies were secretly being taken of every message that was sent.

In documents filed in the District Court in the Southern District of California, lawyers acting for Mr Kumar, Mr Dmitrienko and Mr Hosseini noted that European country had sent the messages, unread, in batches to the FBI every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Their lawyers argued the prosecution needed to provide details of the third-party country's involvement in the sting, as they intended to explore the legality of the operation, send investigators to that country to interview witnesses, and potentially seek to have the messages suppressed.

"That third-party country agreed, and the FBI helped arrange for a computer server to be placed in that country to intercept the message data,'' the documents noted.

"Thereafter, without ever reviewing the contents of the messages, the third-party country provided the data to United States law enforcement multiple times per week.

"By the government's own admission, most of the allegedly inculpatory evidence in this case came from and is contained within those intercepted messages.''

People in Australia, New Zealand, Turkey, The Netherlands, Spain, Germany and Britain have been charged as a result of evidence obtained through AN0M messages but no Americans have been charged.

The court documents go some way to explain why, suggesting the government believed such interceptions there could be in breach of American laws.

"Given domestic constitutional and statutory constraints on electronic interceptions, the "FBI geo-fenced the U.S., meaning that any outgoing messages from a device with[in] [the] US ... would not have any communications on the FBI iBot server" and would not be reviewed by U.S. law enforcement,'' the documents state, citing responses from investigators.

The document states the third country sent data to the FBI right up until its local court order expired on June 7, 2021.

"This data comprises the encrypted messages of all of the users of AN0M with a few exceptions (eg the messages of approximately 15 AN0M users in the U.S. sent to any other AN0M device are not reviewed by FBI),'' it notes.

"[The FBI] have translated the messages (where necessary and where translations are available) and have catalogued more than 20 million messages from a total of 11,800 devices ... located in over 90 countries.''

Mr Kumar and his co-accused have advised the court they intend to retain investigators in the European country to search for documents and witnesses to provide "first-hand information'' about AN0M's administration.

"The defence would be beyond remiss to rely on the government's "official" story, without conducting an independent investigation,'' the lawyers said in their affidavit.

"After all, "the ten most terrifying words in the English language may be, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help you,' they said, quoting a precedent court case, Garcia-Aguilar v. United States District Court, 2008.

The challenge to AN0M's operations in the US comes at the same time a group of 66 Australians accused of mainly drug offences as a result of the AN0M sting have teamed up to challenge the validity of the technology used. The case, known informally as AN0M 66, is listed for a committal hearing before a magistrate in Sydney in September.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/AN0M-accused-edwin-kumar-asks-fbi-to-give-him-names-and-messages-from-encrypted-app/news-story/ef5272c1953ab03cd0bb49737d253f0b

https://qresear.ch/?q=AN0M

https://qresear.ch/?q=ANOM

#19404456 at 2023-08-22 09:52:10 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #31: MAGIC SWORD - IN THE FACE OF EVIL Edition

>>19320818
AN0M accused Edwin Kumar asks FBI to give him names and messages from encrypted app

ELLEN WHINNETT and LIAM MENDES - AUGUST 21, 2023

1/2

An Australian man accused of providing encrypted AN0M devices to people who used them to organise drug trafficking is asking prosecutors to give him details of every message sent on every phone he is accused of providing.

The case against Edwin Harmendra Kumar, being heard in the US, has revealed fascinating details of the inner workings of Operation Ironside, the police sting of the century, built around the encrypted app AN0M.

Mr Kumar, who was extradited from Sydney to the US earlier this year to face racketeering (RICO) charges, is seeking details of all users and all messages sent via the devices prosecutors say he provided or serviced.

He is also seeking any reports of drug transactions allegedly involving him directly, or any end-user who allegedly used a device he had distributed or serviced.

"In the government's view, Mr Kumar's role in the RICO conspiracy was to distribute the AN0M devices to end-users, manage and receive subscription fees, and provide technical support,'' an application by his lawyers state.

"The government further alleges that, in doing so, Mr Kumar knew or had reason to know [the end-users he worked with] participated in illegal activities, including international drug trafficking and money laundering."

The application notes US authorities had claimed that Mr Kumar had, in August and September 2020, set up several devices for end-users of AN0M who later co-ordinated "a shipment of 156 kilograms of methamphetamine precursors from India to Sydney, Australia".

"On February 25, 2021, a conversation between end-users to whom Kumar had supplied devices included co-ordination of a shipment of 6kg,'' the lawyer said the prosecution had claimed.

"On March 1, 2021, Kumar engaged in a conversation with a co-defendant to co-ordinate the purchase of 'rack of[f] the DW,' or cocaine off the dark web, and its later sale in Sydney, Australia," the FBI further alleges.

In a related case, Mr Kumar and two co-accused are demanding the US Department of Justice name the European country which secretly helped the FBI and the Australian Federal Police intercept more than 28 million messages sent on the AN0M app.

The app was marketed to the underworld as a secure way of communicating but was in fact a Trojan horse being run by the FBI and Australian Federal Police, who secretly obtained copies of every message that was sent.

Mr Kumar and his two co-accused, part of the group of 17 men indicted in the US on racketeering charges related to the distribution of the app, have advised they intend to fight the charges on the basis that US law does not allow them to be convicted of conspiring with a government agent or informer.

They are also seeking the name of the anonymous third country which helped the US and Australia pull off one of the world's greatest stings and resulted in around 1000 people globally being charged with serious crimes including drug trafficking, money-laundering and conspiracy to murder.

"The (US) government admits it created the AN0M service at the heart of this case with a single goal: convincing criminals to use its encrypted phones, which the FBI could secretly monitor through a backdoor written into the software,'' the application by Mr Kumar, Seyyed Hossein Hosseini and Alexander Dmitrienko, states.

"But because of the stringent constitutional and statutory requirements that such a program would trigger domestically within the United States, the government needed an international workaround. Using a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT), the government asked an unidentified, third-party country in Europe to intercept the messages and then provide the data directly to the FBI.''

The name of the third country which hosted an iBot server that harvested the messages, forwarding them to US, has never been revealed, although prosecutors have confirmed it was a member of the European Union.

Weeks before the AN0M sting was revealed in June 2021, when police across Europe and Australia conducted multiple raids and charged hundreds of people, an anonymous cyber security expert wrote a blog post where he claimed AN0M was interacting with a server in the Romanian capital of Bucharest.

Romania is a member of the EU. The blogger also wrote that AN0M was interacting with servers which were located in countries which were part of the Five-Eyes intelligence agreement - the US, Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

"With ANOM I was able to locate all of their PROXY servers including their MAIN servers with minimal ease, all operating within the 5 eyes alliance,'' the cyber expert claimed.

(continued)

#19320821 at 2023-08-08 11:10:30 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #31: MAGIC SWORD - IN THE FACE OF EVIL Edition

>>19320818

2/2

The State Department said Rivkin was charged in the US with "international racketeering conspiracy involving drug trafficking and money laundering''.

"This joint reward offer re?inforces US efforts to disrupt and deter transnational criminal activity globally and to build a global coalition to address synthetic drug threats,'' it said.

"Transnational organised crime and illicit drug trafficking threaten economic prosperity and challenge the stability of governments and societies around the world. The US stands with our allies against transnational organised crime and its associated violence across the globe.''

Announcing the reward in June, on the second-year anniversary of the AN0M sting being make public, the State Department said Rivkin, who used the aliases Maximillan Rivkin, Milos Jankovic and the nicknames Maximilan, Malmo, Teamsters, Microsoft and Max, was one of several people whose "criminal conversations'' had been uncovered since AN0M was infiltrated in 2018.

"From December 2020 through the spring of 2021, the FBI shared copies of Rivkin's criminal conversations with the Swedish Police Authority, which implicated Rivkin in participating in a murder conspiracy, drug trafficking conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy, and kidnapping conspiracy,'' it said.

As international law enforcement continues to close in on those exposed by the AN0M sting, one of Rivkin's associates, Seyyed Hossein Hosseini, is believed to have been extradited to the US.

A resident and citizen of The Netherlands, he is accused of being a distributor of the AN0M app and devices.

Under Operation Ironside, the AFP read and copied more than 28 million messages from the AN0M platform between 2018 and 2021, after the FBI bought the app from a tech-savvy drug dealer.

The world-first operation, dubbed the sting of the century, is being challenged in the courts, with a new motion filed in the US on behalf of three of the AN0M 17, including Australian man Edwin Harmendra Kumar, who was extradited early this year.

A team of lawyers has asked a judge in the Southern District of California to reveal the unnamed European country the AN0M messages were routed through.

In Sydney, a group of 66 people accused of mainly drug offences as a result of the AN0M sting have teemed up to challenge the validity of the technology used.

The case, known informally as AN0M 66, is listed for a committal hearing before a magistrate in Sydney in September.

A similar challenge in South Australia's Supreme Court ended in April with a judge ruling the technology underpinning Operation Ironside was used legally.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/the-us-and-sweden-have-put-a-bounty-on-the-head-of-alleged-AN0M-gangster-maximilian-rivkin/news-story/1a92d24061aa3cf4d1e55bf458bd1de9

https://www.state.gov/maximilian-rivkin/

https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Reward-Poster-for-Maxmilian-Rivki-June-2023-Accessible-060623.pdf

https://qresear.ch/?q=AN0M

https://qresear.ch/?q=ANOM

#19320818 at 2023-08-08 11:08:46 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #31: MAGIC SWORD - IN THE FACE OF EVIL Edition

The US and Sweden have put a bounty on the head of alleged AN0M gangster Maximilian Rivkin

ELLEN WHINNETT - AUGUST 7, 2023

1/2

A $7.6m bounty has been placed on the head of a fugitive Swedish gangster who targeted Australia's drug market and is a key lieutenant of Australia's most wanted man, Hakan Ayik.

News of the reward offered for the arrest of Maximilian Rivkin comes as another of the 17 men indicted over the encrypted app AN0M, Seyyed Hossein Hosseini, is extradited to the US, taking to five the number of international alleged gangsters now facing the US justice system on racketeering charges.

The US State Department and the Swedish Police Authority jointly offered a $US5m reward for information leading to the arrest of Rivkin, a Serbian-born Swedish citizen whose last known location was Turkey.

In a statement, the department said it was offering the reward for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of Rivkin for "conspiring to participate in or attempting to participate in trans?national organised crime.

"Specifically, Rivkin was administrator and influencer of an encrypted communication service used by criminals worldwide. His communications on the platform implicated him in several nefarious activities, including his alleged participation in drug trafficking, money laundering, murder conspiracy and other violent acts,'' the statement said.

"This reward offer is being announced jointly with the Swedish Police Authority, who charged Rivkin with narcotics smuggling and trafficking.''

The 40-year-old Rivkin was named on a US grand jury indictment unsealed in June 2021 and accused of being part of a criminal enterprise running the app.

He was also reportedly caught bragging via the app about his capacity to service the drug market in Australia, with de-encrypted texts reportedly released by Swedish police showing him boasting "I have a line to Australia" and "I am now with the biggest people in the world".

The app, which was pushed by the likes of Australian drug kingpin Hakan Ayik, was marketed as a secure way to avoid law enforcement, but was in fact a Trojan horse app being run and monitored by the FBI and Australian Federal Police. While 17 people were indicted over running the criminal enterprise behind the app, more than 1300 people were charged globally with a number of crimes as a result of the sting.

Five of the alleged AN0M 17 have been extradited to the US to face charges on the original indictment, and another four men are in custody in their home countries, including two in Australia. Eight people remain on the run, including Rivkin, Ayik and two other Australians believed to be hiding out in Turkey, Baris Tukel and Erkan Dogan.

(continued)

#18422504 at 2023-02-28 05:29:19 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #27: THEY ARE IN FULL BLOWN PANIC MODE Edition

#27 - Part 4
Australian Politics and Society - Part 4
>>18166750 Hundreds of thousands told they can 'swap the date' and work Australia Day - Hundreds of thousands of workers across the public and private sectors will be given the option to work on Australia Day instead of celebrating the public holiday as the national debate intensifies about the appropriateness of celebrating the 1788 arrival of the first fleet
>>18166822 Operation Ironside: Australian and Kiwi 'sting of the century' arrests - Former Sydney man Osemah El Hassen and New Zealand citizen Shane Ngakuru arrested as the FBI chase down the global group they allege was responsible for administering, distributing and marketing the encrypted devices and platform known as AN0M, widely used in the criminal underworld
>>18166827 US-accused Edwin Harmendra Kumar kept in Aussie jail since 2021 - A man wanted in the US to face racketeering charges has spent 19 months in jail in Australia despite facing no local charges, as his extradition application drags on - Sydney man Edwin Harmendra Kumar was arrested and remanded in custody on June 7, 2021, after a global sting by the Australian Federal Police and the FBI using the trojan horse encrypted app AN0M
>>18166835 Australia to buy 40 UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters from United States to replace troubled Taipan fleets - The Australian Army will ditch its European-made Taipan helicopter fleet early, with Labor confirming they will be replaced by a multi-billion-dollar purchase of American-made Black Hawks
>>18166844 Australian soldiers deployed to UK to train everyday Ukrainians, like bakers and hairdressers - Australian soldiers will be deployed this week to train everyday Ukrainians - like pastry chefs and taxi drivers - in a bid to bolster Kiev's defence as Russia's war rages on
>>18173359 New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern to resign - Jacinda Ardern has stunned New Zealanders by announcing she will step down as the nation's prime minister within weeks and will not contest the upcoming election
>>18173359 Prime Minister Anthony Albanese Tweet: Jacinda Ardern has shown the world how to lead with intellect and strength. She has demonstrated that empathy and insight are powerful leadership qualities. Jacinda has been a fierce advocate for New Zealand, an inspiration to so many and a great friend to me.

>>18173359 Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews Tweet: Through a pandemic, a terrorist attack and an eruption, Jacinda led with a kindness which came to define her Prime Ministership. A real leader, with so much to be proud of.
>>18180137 OPINION: Jacinda Ardern reminds us that kindness and strength are not mutually exclusive - Prime Minister Anthony Albanese - theage.com.au
>>18180152 New Zealand PM Ardern announces resignation, recognized for her role in ties with China - Wang Qi - globaltimes.cn
>>18180190 Alice Springs mayor Matt Paterson calls for federal police, ADF assistance amid crime crisis - The mayor of Alice Springs has called for the army or federal police to be deployed to the outback town to assist with a prolonged and frequently violent crime crisis
>>18180217 NT Police Minister Kate Worden visits Alice Springs amid crime crisis - Police Minister Kate Worden has called on liquor retailers to come together to stamp out the "black market" secondary supply of alcohol seen as a root cause of crime in Alice Springs
>>18180264 Opposition Leader Peter Dutton calls for the federal government to take urgent action in Alice Springs, where a prolonged and frequently violent crime crisis has taken hold - The Northern Territory town has been battling against a spike in theft, assaults and anti-social behaviour, which has seen a surge in home robberies and property crime
>>18180306 Elders ready to intervene in Alice - The Albanese government has rejected pleas to send federal police to stem the wave of violent crime engulfing Alice Springs, as Aboriginal elders in remote communities plan their own emergency intervention to remove young troublemakers from town
>>18185491 Mutual admiration as billionaire Gates meets PM Albanese in Sydney - Billionaire Bill Gates had never met Anthony Albanese before Saturday, but he thought he'd drop in on the Australian prime minister to talk vaccines, energy and climate change - Gates, who is in the country with his foundation and representatives from his company, Breakthrough Energy, has made it his mission to ensure world leaders are ready for the next pandemic

#18166829 at 2023-01-18 09:00:42 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #27: THEY ARE IN FULL BLOWN PANIC MODE Edition

>>18166827

2/2

Ms Khan said that Mr Kumar's family were "very concerned about his situation and it is hoped that there will be a decision soon".

A spokesperson for the Attorney-General's Department said Mr Kumar had been arrested in response to the US's provisional arrest request on June 7, 2021.'

Former attorney-general Michaelia Cash formally accepted the US's extradition request for him on July 27, 2021.

Mr Kumar then consented to his extradition in November 2021, a matter that was noted before a magistrate at Downing Centre Local Court in Sydney.

The department said the next formal step in the process was for Mr Dreyfus to make a "surrender determination'' in relation to Mr Kumar.

That decision has not yet been made.

"It would not be appropriate to comment on the specifics of Mr Kumar's circumstances due to privacy and confidentiality obligations,'' the spokesperson said.

"However, as a matter of standard extradition practice, to comply with procedural fairness obligations, even if a person consents to their surrender, the Attorney-General's Department provides the person with an opportunity to make submissions regarding their surrender.

"It may then become necessary to seek views on those submissions from the relevant country, and if necessary, to give the person concerned a further opportunity to respond.

"This can take some time to complete.''

Mr Kumar's father, Bob, told The Australian that authorities "haven't got anything" on his son, and he was hopeful the matter would progress this year.

"It's very hard to predict what's going to happen, but the way things are, we can't do much," Bob Kumar said.

"Just because he knows people, some of them (the co-accused) were his schoolmates; they went to the same school together.

"All I can say (is) they didn't find anything.''

The FBI indictment alleges that 17 men - including seven Australians but no Americans - were "leaders, members and associates of a criminal organisation'' known as the AN0M Enterprise, whose "members were engaged in acts involving drug-trafficking, money-laundering and obstruction of justice".

The men have all been charged with 1970s-era anti-mafia RICO offences.

Mr Kumar is charged with one count of conspiracy to engage in a racketeer-influenced and corrupt organisation (RICO conspiracy), in violation of Title 18, United States Code, section 1962 (d).

He is accused of being a distributor of the AN0M devices, with the FBI alleging that "distributors co-ordinate groups of agents of the AN0M Enterprise devices, ?receive payments for ongoing subscription fees (minus personal profit) back to the parent company, and provide second-level technical support. The distributors can also remotely delete and reset devices''.

The FBI alleges that the purpose of the AN0M Enterprise was to "create, maintain, use and control a method of secure communication to facilitate the importation, exportation and distribution of illegal drugs into Australia, Asia, Europe and North America, including the United States and Canada, and to launder the proceeds of such drug-trafficking conduct''.

The indictment further alleges the AN0M Enterprise sought to obstruct law enforcement's investigations of such activities.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/usaccused-edwin-harmendra-kumar-kept-in-aussie-jail-since-2021/news-story/8d6f5dee517e1d9f5a14c0c5117a5a2c

#18166827 at 2023-01-18 08:59:52 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #27: THEY ARE IN FULL BLOWN PANIC MODE Edition

>>18153870
>>18166822
US-accused Edwin Harmendra Kumar kept in Aussie jail since 2021

ELLEN WHINNETT and LIAM MENDES - JANUARY 17, 2023

1/2

A man wanted in the US to face racketeering charges has spent 19 months in jail in Australia ?despite facing no local charges, as his extradition application drags on.

Sydney man Edwin Harmendra Kumar was arrested and remanded in custody on June 7, 2021, after a global sting by the Australian Federal Police and the FBI using the trojan horse encrypted app AN0M.

In November 2021, the 35-year-old agreed to be surrendered to the US to face a racketeering conspiracy charge, which if proven, could land him a 20-year stretch in a US jail.

But his case has still not been ?finalised, after Mr Kumar asked Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus not to extradite him, despite ?earlier agreeing to the surrender application.

Negotiations between his legal team, Australia's Attorney-?General's Department, and US authorities about his likely conditions in US custody have led to his case continuing into 2023.

Mr Kumar, also known as Edwin Harmendra Valentine, has been held in custody since his arrest, including long stretches in solitary, and has been denied bail by the courts. He is currently in Parklea prison in Sydney.

"Mr Kumar has been in prison in Australia for some 19 months, in very difficult circumstances waiting to learn whether he will be extradited to the United States,'' his lawyer Sarah Khan told The Australian.

"He is an Australian citizen and has never been to the US, apart from a short holiday with his family when he was a young child.

"The US extradition request is based on alleged crimes committed in Sydney, Australia. It is inappropriate that Mr Kumar should be taken to the US to face trial in the circumstances.''

Ms Khan said it was "noteworthy that (to our knowledge) no US citizen has been charged in the US for these or other AN0M-related offences".

"On legal advice, Mr Kumar has conceded that he is eligible for surrender to the US under the Extradition Act 1988," she said.

"But it remains a matter for the discretion of the commonwealth Attorney-General whether he will be surrendered. Mr Kumar has asked the Attorney-General in January 2022 to exercise this discretion to allow him to stay in Australia despite the US request.''

(continued)

#18166824 at 2023-01-18 08:58:22 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #27: THEY ARE IN FULL BLOWN PANIC MODE Edition

>>18166822

2/2

AN0M was touted as a secure, encrypted communications device, which was distributed only in the criminal underworld and could be remotely wiped.

In fact it was being secretly run and monitored by the Australian Federal Police and the FBI.

The sting of the century, known as Operation Ironside, was exposed in June 2021, when police across the globe moved on people accused of using the app, arresting more than 1400 people and seizing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of drugs, cash, houses, cars and weapons.

Seven Australians were among the 17 men alleged to have been part of what the FBI called the AN0M Enterprise, and are wanted on indictment alleging they were either administrators, distributors, or influencers who encouraged others to use the app.

Four of the Australians are in custody, and none have been extradited to the US.

Mr El Hassen is believed to still be held in Colombia. A second Australian man, Edwin Harmendra Kumar, 35, has agreed to be surrendered but his extradition case remains stalled in Sydney, and he has been in custody for 18 months.

A third Australian, whose details have been suppressed by the courts, also remains in Australia.

And a fourth man, Shane Geoffrey May, who authorities originally said was believed to be residing in Indonesia, was arrested in South Australia in August.

Mr May, 47, was charged with 31 counts of money laundering and trafficking large commercial quantities of drugs - separate charges to the AN0M case.

He remains in custody, and police prosecutors have advised the courts in South Australia that an agreement had been reached between Australian and US ?authorities that no Australians would be extradited to the US until any domestic matters were ?finalised and any jail terms ?completed.

Three other accused Australian members of the enterprise remain listed by the FBI as "fugitive".

Mr Ayik, Baris Tukel and Erkan Yusef Dogan, who is believed to be a relative of Mr Ayik's, are all hiding out in Turkey.

While they had believed they were safe from extradition, Turkey has recently begun deporting people wanted internationally on crime and terrorism charges, including Australians Mark Buddle, Tony Haddad and Neil Prakash, and authorities believe the net may be closing on the three alleged AN0M gangsters.

In July, a spokeswoman for the US Attorney's Office in the Southern District of California, which is prosecuting the AN0M matters, said neither Mr El Hassen nor Mr Kumar were in US custody.

The spokeswoman declined in November and December to provide an update on any of the 17 men named on the AN0M indictment.

The first person on the indictment extradited to the US was UK citizen Aurangzeb "Bobby'' Ayub, who had been residing in The Netherlands.

Mr Ayub first appeared in a court of the Southern District of California on March 21 where he entered a plea of not guilty, and later that month was released on a $100,000 bond and ordered to wear a GPS tracking device.

Mr Ngakuru, who was deported from Thailand in October, is also in the hands of US authorities.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/australian-and-kiwi-sting-of-the-century-arrests/news-story/57e42e0b8f527dd31fcdfdc1e23bbc31

#18166822 at 2023-01-18 08:57:47 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #27: THEY ARE IN FULL BLOWN PANIC MODE Edition

>>18153870
Operation Ironside: Australian and Kiwi 'sting of the century' arrests

ELLEN WHINNETT and LIAM MENDES - JANUARY 16, 2023

1/2

An Australian man living in ?Colombia and a New Zealander with links to Australia have been arrested on an indictment alleging they were part of a 17-man criminal enterprise running encrypted underworld app AN0M.

Former Sydney man Osemah El Hassen and New Zealand citizen Shane Ngakuru were arrested as the FBI continues to slowly chase down the global group they allege was responsible for administering, distributing and marketing the encrypted devices and platform known as AN0M, widely used in the criminal underworld.

All 17 are indicted on US racketeering charges, which carry 20-year jail terms.

Mr El Hassen is a relative of Lebanese-based Hamzi El Hassen, an associate of the man accused of being a key AN0M mastermind, former Comanchero bikie figure and Australia's most wanted man, Hakan Ayik, who is on the run in Turkey.

He was arrested by the Colombian National Police in Bogota in July 2021, but does not yet appear to have been extradited to the US to face the charges on the indictment.

In August 2021, Colombian police issued a statement in Spanish that advised: "Colombia's Attorney-General, the police DIJIN investigative unit and Interpol co-ordinated operations last month to capture Osemah Elhassen, an Australian citizen wanted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) based on charges filed in the Southern District of California.

"Colombia's Attorney-General indicated that Elhassen is wanted for belonging to a transnational drug trafficking network active in Europe, Asia and South America.

"The International Affairs ?Directorate of the Colombian prosecutor's office, through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ?informed the United States ?embassy about the capture of ?Osemah Elhassen for the purposes of formalising the extradition request within the term established by law,'' the statement concluded.

Mr El Hassen - named on the indictment as Osemah Elhassen - is accused of being a distributor of the AN0M devices.

Shane Ngakuru, another alleged distributor, is a New Zealand citizen who was residing in the tourist town of Phuket in Thailand, and was arrested in October.

He is a close relative of Duax Ngakuru, the international supreme commander of the Comanchero, who is a close friend of Mr Ayik.

On Monday, The Australian revealed authorities were closing in on Mr Ayik and Duax Ngakuru and it was heavily rumoured the Comanchero boss had been arrested in Turkey. Duax Ngakuru is not accused of involvement in the AN0M enterprise.

Shane Ngakuru, 43, was arrested by Royal Thai Police outside a shopping centre in Bangkok, where police allege he was fleeing after discovering a warrant had been issued for his arrest.

At a press conference, Central Investigative Bureau Police Lieutenant General Jiraphop ?Phuridech alleged Mr Ngakuru was a member of the Comanchero Motorcycle Club, who had arrived in Thailand in 2020 and had been running a tattoo parlour, restaurant and fitness centre with his Thai wife.

He said Mr Ngakuru had overstayed his visa, and had been deported to the US.

(continued)

#18153874 at 2023-01-16 08:55:01 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #27: THEY ARE IN FULL BLOWN PANIC MODE Edition

>>18153870

2/2

While the men, and other associates who form the Aussie Cartel, had enjoyed relative freedom to operate in recent years, Turkish authorities have begun cracking down on international gangsters trying to shelter there. The deportation of Buddle, followed by deportation to Australia of alleged gangster Tony Haddad and alleged Islamic State terrorist Neil Prakash, have made the Australian bikies nervous they too could be deported.

It has also caused significant tension among Australian members of the Comanchero, who are being forced to choose sides and declare loyalty to either Buddle, in jail in Victoria, or Ngakuru.

New Zealand has an arrest warrant out for Ngakuru, and Interpol has issued a red notice for him. His cousin, Shane Ngakuru, a fellow member of the Comanchero, was recently arrested in Thailand and will face trial in New Zealand.

Duax Ngakuru's wife, Reynee, lives in Dubai with the couple's four children in a wealthy enclave known as The Lakes, where houses sell for millions of dollars. The family left Australia for Dubai in 2011.

Her husband lives in Turkey, but is known to have travelled to party hotspots Cancun in Mexico and Ibiza in Spain, with Ayik, prior to international Covid lockdowns.

Duax Ngakuru is thought to have renounced his Australian citizenship, but retained his New Zealand citizenship. The Australian Federal Police lists him as a "high-value target'' and his recent elevation to international commander of the Comanchero has brought increased scrutiny from policing agencies.

Police allege he has been involved in importing tonnes of illicit drugs into Australia over the past decade, and that he has links to South American, Southeast Asian, European and Canadian crime syndicates involved in the wholesale manufacture and supply of illicit drugs.

He is thought to have amassed wealth in excess of $100m.

In 2021, the AN0M app captured a conversation between Ngakuru and another AN0M user in New Zealand, known by the handle "new i.d selectlove'', discussing an incident where Buddle had a run-in with a group of British tourists in Dubai after a young man slapped Buddle's wife, Mel Ter Wisscha, on the bottom.

Ngakuru expressed support for Buddle's decision to leave Dubai and head for Turkey, saying the Comanchero would "win the war'' against the AFP if he could make it to Turkey.

The other AN0M user praises Ngakuru's ability to stay under the radar and avoid media attention.

Ngakuru responds by reflecting on his decision to move from Australia and New Zealand to Turkey, saying: "Yeah hard place to operate that's why I love it over these ways Good life there but hard to be a crook and get away with murders Lol".

Shane Ngakuru, Hakan Ayik and Erkan Dogan are among the 17 men indicted by the FBI on racketeering charges over the AN0M app, which was touted as a secure encrypted platform where criminals could communicate safe from the prying eyes of law enforcement.

However, in what has become known as the sting of the century, the app was actually run by the FBI and monitored by the AFP, which copied and read more than 28 million messages sent over it, resulting in thousands of arrests across the globe.

Ayik was used by law enforcement to promote the app, not knowing it was actually a trojan horse that gave police access to a vast amount of information relating to money laundering, drug smuggling and murder.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/net-closing-on-drug-kingpin-and-comanchero-bikie-boss-mate/news-story/43264c1adc4de8dc2d7a9fc2ef564394

#18153870 at 2023-01-16 08:53:53 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #27: THEY ARE IN FULL BLOWN PANIC MODE Edition

Net closing on drug kingpin and Comanchero bikie boss mate

ELLEN WHINNETT - JANUARY 16, 2023

1/2

Authorities are closing in on the international drug-smuggling operations of Australia's most wanted man, Hakan Ayik, and his offsider, the global boss of the ?Comanchero outlaw motorcycle gang, in Turkey.

Rumours swirled on Sunday that Duax Ngakuru - a New Zealand-born, Australian-raised drug smuggler recently elevated to international supreme comman?der of the Comanchero - had been detained by Turkish police.

Ayik and Ngakuru, who met in high school in Sydney, were photographed together outside the Kings Cross Hotel in Istanbul, which is owned by Ayik and operates as the headquarters of the Aussie Cartel, a group of Australian drug smugglers and gangsters linked to the Comanchero.

The previously unseen photograph, a selfie, was taken by Ayik in 2020 and posted on the encrypted AN0M app, which was being secretly monitored by police.

AFP assistant commissioner Nigel Ryan warned it was only a matter of time before police caught up with those hiding offshore and running criminal cartels targeting Australia.

"Organised crime figures who think they can fly under the radar in another country, while they continue to make money from trafficking dangerous drugs into Australia, should realise they have a real and genuine problem,'' he told The Australian.

"Countries around the world have indicated to the AFP they are taking action against people using or thinking of using their countries as a safe haven.

"Turkey is a regional leader in the fight against transnational serious organised crime groups, and among numerous law enforcement agencies of other countries working with the AFP through our international network to create a hostile environment for groups with Australian links.

"This co-operation includes intelligence sharing on an unprecedented level, joint targeting operations and actively working to identify people in those countries who seek to exploit Australian communities.''

The Australian can reveal Ngakuru and another exiled ?Comanchero, Ray Cilli, are trying to locate the multimillion-dollar assets of jailed former comrade Mark Buddle, as an international leadership struggle engulfs the outlaw motorcycle gang.

Ngakuru stepped into the leadership vacuum at the top of the Comanchero hierarchy after Buddle was deported from Turkish-controlled Northern Cyprus last year.

International law enforcement sources said Ayik was the puppetmaster pulling the strings of former high school buddy Ngakuru, who declared himself supreme commander of the Comanchero following Buddle's deportation to Australia, where he is facing charges alleging he was involved in smuggling $40m worth of cocaine into Melbourne in 2021.

Ngakuru and Ayik, a Turkish-Australian who renounced his Australian citizenship in a so-far successful bid to avoid extradition to Australia, remain close, consorting together in Turkey.

However, Ayik has expressed concern about Ngakuru's activities in Asia, taking to AN0M to complain to his nephew, Erkan Dogan, about Ngakuru's plans to travel to Thailand.

In correspondence on AN0M, seen by The Australian, Ayik snapped a photo of Ngakuru seemingly engrossed in his phone, and sent it to Dogan. The photo appears to have been taken at a dinner in 2019 in Turkey.

Ayik sent the message to Dogan, saying: "He made a comment that he's off to Phuket tomorrow while he's on a good wicket. I didn't know how to take that What good wicket are you talking about you dumb f..k."

Dogan replied, "Let them do their thing We'll do ours".

Ayik replied to his nephew: "We don't need them cuz we know who our team are'', with three emojis of fingers crossed, hands in prayer and a thumbs up.

Dogan told Ayik: "We don't need them and we don't want these pieces of ...", ending with an emoji of a pile of excrement.

Law enforcement sources said the correspondence came at a time when Ayik, who considers himself in control of the Australian drug market, was upset to have been left out of a drug-smuggling operation in 2019.

(continued)

#18046062 at 2022-12-31 08:42:44 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #27: THEY ARE IN FULL BLOWN PANIC MODE Edition

#26 - Part 3
Australian Politics and Society - Part 3
>>17481876 Australia training preps F-35 pilots for long-range battles that could end in dogfight - During Pitch Black drills in Australia's Northern Territory, U.S. and Australian pilots are honing the skills they need to carry out long-range missile strikes
>>17481941 Video: Darwin nightclub bouncer Hayden Summers found guilty of causing serious harm to US marine
>>17487810 MRF-D 22 Ground Combat Element Integrates into 1st Brigade to Enhance Combined Littoral Lethality
>>17487954 Chris Bowen Tweet: The Biden Administration and Albanese Government are working closely together on climate policy. Always great to compare notes with the President's Special Envoy on Climate, @JohnKerry @ClimateEnvoy
>>17487954 Q Post #4196 - THE SHADOW PRESIDENCY. THE SHADOW GOVERNMENT. Why did [Hussein] shadow POTUS re: [F] trips? Why did [Kerry] shadow POTUS re: Iran? Why did [Kerry] shadow POTUS re: [CLAS 1-99]?.....INSURGENCY. IRREGULAR WARFARE. THE GREATEST POLITICAL SCANDAL IN HISTORY. What are they trying to prevent? Who are they trying to protect? Q
>>17499234 Ukraine's pitch to Australia: Use our army as your guinea pig - Ukraine has launched a bold bid for its army to be used as a "guinea pig" for cutting-edge Australian military technology as it seeks to gain a crucial battlefield advantage over Vladimir Putin's Russian forces.
>>17499314 Speaker rules against referring Scott Morrison to privileges committee over claims he misled parliament on his secret self-appointment to jointly administer several portfolios
>>17499342 Real-life Squid Game horror spills over into Australia - The wealthy family of the sadistic overlord behind South Korea's real-life Squid Game - now living in Australia - is expected to face legal action from survivors after an official inquiry revealed that 657 inmates were killed in the "Brothers Home" house of horrors
>>17504306 East Timorese leader flies to Australia for critical talks - East Timor's President Jose Ramos-Horta is scheduled to arrive in Australia for a state visit as negotiations over lucrative gas resources reach a critical stage for his impoverished nation
>>17504317 Tributes flow for Queensland medic Jed Danahay killed in Ukraine, hailed a hero by ambassador to Australia

>>17504368 US Coast Guard: Cairns visit a success with Australia's important allies - Officers have given a rare behind-the-scenes look onboard the first US Coast Guard vessel of its kind to dock at Cairns. Why it's here and the intriguing thing crew love most about the city
>>17508757 Operation Ironside: Alleged drug kingpin Mostafa Baluch joins legal challenge which could result in evidence gathered during ANOM police operation being ruled inadmissible
>>17508776 Mostafa Baluch joins AN0M challenge as lawyers consider fighting search warrants - More than 50 alleged AN0M criminals are pushing toward a landmark legal challenge they hope could derail the police case against them
>>17513286 Mark Latham accuses NSW Labor MP Anna Watson of getting drunk at parliament bar and trying to drive home
>>17515448 Q Post #100 - Who is the Queen of England? How long in power? With power comes corruption. What happened to Diana? What did she find out? Why was she running? Who did she entrust to help her flee? What was the cover? Why is this relevant? Why now?
>>17517472 Video: Public holiday announced for September 22 to honour Queen - Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced there will be a one-off public holiday to honour the Queen's death on Thursday September 22 - Sky News Australia
>>17519348 Video: Americans mark 21st anniversary of September 11, 2001 terror attacks - For the 21st time, Americans have marked the anniversary of their country's deadliest terror attacks - September 11, 2001 - 7NEWS Australia
>>17526513 MRF-D Trains in Every Clime and Place - Marine Rotational Force-Darwin (MRF-D) 22 participated in Australian led courses that will enhance their ability to conduct operations in every clime and place
>>17526520 King Charles proclaimed monarch of Australia, New Zealand - King Charles was officially proclaimed head of state of both Australia and New Zealand at ceremonies on Sunday, September 11 2022 in the nations' capitals
>>17526532 U.S. Embassy Australia Tweet: Our Embassy fence is lined with hundreds of flags to mark the 21st anniversary of the attacks on 9/11. Placing these flags each year is one way our community comes together to commemorate this solemn day and remember the nearly 3,000 lives lost, including those of 10 Australians.

#17453402 at 2022-08-28 06:51:51 (UTC+1)
Q Research Australia #25: My Koala Hates Spam Too Edition

#25 - Part 5
Australian Politics and Society - Part 5
>>16944074 Video: Independent MP Monique Ryan tells Liberal MPs to 'put their masks on' while asking about Covid in parliament
>>16944084 Video: Greens Senator Lidia Thorpe labels Queen 'coloniser' in parliamentary oath
>>16944097 Victorian crossbench MP Fiona Patten launches bid to compel religious hospitals to provide abortions - The Reason Party leader will introduce a bill into state parliament that would remove the right of hospitals that receive any taxpayer funding to refuse to offer reproductive health services and voluntary assisted dying due to "corporate conscientious objection"
>>16944105 U.S. Embassy Australia Tweet: Ambassador Kennedy met today with Solomon Islands High Commissioner Robert Sisilo to thank the Solomon Islands government for hosting the U.S. delegation for the upcoming 80th anniversary of the Battle of Guadalcanal. The U.S. is committed to our partnership with Solomon Islands.
>>16944234 U.S. Air Force Tweet: .@Whiteman_AFB Airmen are bringing the (B-2) Spirit every day while on a Bomber Task Force deployment at Royal Australian Air Force Base Amberley, Australia. Our Airmen are conducting training & missions alongside Allies in support of a free and open Indo-Pacific. @PACAF
>>16948498 Marine Rotational Force - Darwin Facebook Post: (r/t 9 News Darwin) Video: Exercise Koolendong has come to an end after three weeks of war games. It's part of a push to build stronger defence relationships between Australia and the U-S.
>>16954710 Urgent review of Australia's defence ordered as security threats grow - Defence Minister Richard Marles will call in two external experts to conduct the snap review while the government considers pivotal decisions on nuclear submarines, a fleet of guided-missile destroyers and plans to build a bigger army
>>16954803 Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to address Australia - The Australian National University (ANU) community and Australians will have the rare opportunity to hear from His Excellency Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine, in a sold-out address, Wednesday 3 August
>>16954805 Zelensky hails Australia's support for Ukraine - "I am very thankful to Anthony Albanese government who made significant systematic support to our country, which includes full-scale military and humanitarian assistance, sanctions against Russia…..and even the coal for Ukrainian energy"
>>16954809 'You can't just sympathise': Zelensky calls on more support to fight tyranny - "A lot of Australians are helping us a lot and render humanitarian assistance - please don't forget about it, please continue."

>>16954818 Video: Special Address by President Zelenskyy - Hear directly from His Excellency President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine, in this special virtual event - ANU TV
>>16954824 Video: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy answers questions from Australian students - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is addressing students and faculty at the Australian National University in Canberra. In the event, opened by former Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, President Zelenskyy will answer questions posed by university students - ABC News (Australia)
>>16954891 U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Tweet: #USINDOPACOM Commander Adm. John C. Aquilino visits @AusAirForce in Amberly, (Australia). #FreeAndOpenIndoPacific #FriendsPartnersAllies
>>16954894 U.S. Indo-Pacific Commander, Admiral John C. Aquilino, Visits Royal Australian Air Force Base Amberley
>>17068815 AN0M: lawyers challenge encrypted messaging app used by AFP in global crime sting - A year after app's unveiling questions have been raised about legal grounds on which messages intercepted and warrants used
>>17068852 Russian billionaire Alexander Abramov sues Foreign Minister Penny Wong over 'reputation harm'
>>17068857 Penny Wong walks out on Russia's Sergey Lavrov - Penny Wong has walked out of the East Asia Summit during Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov's address to the regional foreign ministers meeting in Phnom Penh, in protest at Moscow's invasion of Ukraine
>>17069077 Marine Rotational Force - Darwin Facebook Post: Video: KOOLENDONG 22. #MRFD #usmc #armystrong #usaf #ADF #Lethality #JointForce #FreeandOpenIndoPacific U.S. Marine Corps video by Corporal Emeline Molla.
>>17381367 'I will continue killing foreigners': soldier who shot dead unarmed Australians treated as 'returning hero' by Taliban - Hekmatullah, who killed three Australian soldiers, is living in a heavily protected luxury Kabul home after being freed from prison
>>17381386 'Do you want your children dead?': widow stands up to Cambodia evil - Bou Rachana can still hear the threat against the life of her children hanging in the air - a threat made openly on Australian soil by ?visiting Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen

#17453398 at 2022-08-28 06:50:49 (UTC+1)
Q Research Australia #25: My Koala Hates Spam Too Edition

#25 - Part 4
Australian Politics and Society - Part 4
>>16841313 Atheist Senate president Sue Lines wants Lord's Prayer 'gone' - New Senate president Sue Lines says she would like to see the longstanding tradition of reading the Lord's Prayer at the start of each sitting day "gone", as she prepares to put her mark on the chamber by warning senators she'll be tougher on those who demean their colleagues
>>16931166 Labor rules out push to end reading of Lord's Prayer in Senate - Labor's Senate leadership team says the reading of the Lord's Prayer at the start of each sitting day should continue, contradicting their colleague and the chamber's new president, Sue Lines, who declared she'd like it "gone"
>>16931188 Rainbow light plans for Shrine of Remembrance draw criticism - A planned rainbow illumination of the Shrine, to honour gay and queer military members, has been criticised as "a gay billboard"
>>16931205 PDF: Watchdog finds Premier 'immersed' in 'red shirts' - Victoria's ombudsman has concluded Daniel Andrews was "involved and immersed" in the "red shirts" election campaign, but found no evidence he was aware of the $388,000 rort that funded Labor's army
>>16931212 Victorian Ombudsman Deborah Glass releases report on Labor Party's 'red shirts rorts', won't refer case to IBAC
>>16931225 School history 'teaching national shame to our children', a new Centre for Independent Studies report claims - British analyst Joanna Williams has charged into Australia's culture wars, blaming a black-armband view of history for the rise in identity politics among young Australians
>>16931225 PDF: Teaching National Shame: History and citizenship in the school curriculum - Joanna Williams, Centre for Independent Studies - July 28, 2022
>>16931266 Monkeypox declared disease of 'national significance' in Australia
>>16931272 Graphite miner Syrah lands loan with Biden administration - Melbourne-based mining company Syrah Resources has secured a $US102 million ($146 million) loan from the United States government to expand production of graphite, one of the key ingredients needed to make electric car batteries
>>16931316 U.S. Embassy Australia Tweet: This evening Ambassador Kennedy laid a wreath at the Australian War Memorial to pay her respects to the Australian and United States' service members who have fought and died for freedom and stability in the Indo-Pacific and around the world. Lest we forget

>>16931322 U.S. Embassy Australia Tweet: This week Ambassador Kennedy met with and expressed her thanks to Australian Coastwatchers who helped rescue her father, President John F. Kennedy, and his patrol torpedo boat crew who were stranded in the Pacific during the Second World War.
>>16931322 U.S. Embassy Australia Tweet: "I owe personal gratitude to an (Australian) Coastwatcher & two Solomon Islander scouts who saved my father's life. These men represent the best of their generation and are an amazing example of the bonds of the #USwithAUS alliance" Ambassador Kennedy said
>>16931326 Ambassador Caroline Kennedy's Meeting with Australian Coastwatchers at the Australian War Memorial - U.S. Embassy and Consulates in Australia - July 28, 2022
>>16936324 'We are seeking a momentous change': Albanese reveals Voice referendum question - Australians will be asked if they support an alteration to the Constitution to enshrine an Indigenous Voice to parliament
>>16936337 Calls to review transgender treatment for kids after British Tavistock Clinic is closed - Australian gender clinics are under fresh scrutiny and face calls for an independent review of their prescription of puberty blockers to teenagers
>>16936347 Australian Federal Police to share coding of AN0M app used in Operation Ironside arrests
>>16936422 Western Australia Police Force: Five Eyes Conference - Western Australia Police Force and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) have co-hosted law enforcement representatives from the "Five Eyes" nations of the United States of America (USA), Canada, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Australia
>>16936440 Warfighting exercise strengthens US partnership - More than 2200 personnel from the Australian Defence Force (ADF) and US Armed Forces recently conducted Exercise Koolendong 2022, a combined arms littoral combat scenario across northern Australia
>>16937456 Video: Shrine of Remembrance ditches rainbow light plan after receiving threats, abuse - Managers at the Shrine of Remembrance have cancelled plans to illuminate the landmark in rainbow colours after staff received threats and abuse ahead of an exhibition celebrating the service of LGBTQ veterans
>>16940874 US Strategic Command Tweet: #RIMPAC2022 = 26 nations, 38 surface ships, 4 submarines, 9 national land forces, more than 30 unmanned systems, approximately 170 aircraft & more than 25,000 personnel. (1) shared purpose. Ensure the safety of sea lanes & the security of the world's interconnected oceans.

#17068815 at 2022-08-06 08:04:08 (UTC+1)
Q Research Australia #25: My Koala Hates Spam Too Edition

>>16936347
AN0M: lawyers challenge encrypted messaging app used by AFP in global crime sting

A year after app's unveiling questions have been raised about legal grounds on which messages intercepted and warrants used

Josh Taylor - 5 Aug 2022

The legality of the encrypted app AN0M, which Australian federal police used to run a global crime sting, is being challenged in the courts a year after its highly publicised unveiling.

In the 12 months since the AFP and FBI let the world know they were behind an encrypted phone known as AN0M, it has led to 340 alleged offenders being charged in Australia with 1,011 offences. The number of arrests globally is over 1,000.

An AN0M device wasn't a phone you could walk into a store and buy. You had to know someone who would sell it to you, and it cost $1,700 for the handset, with a $1,250 annual subscription. That money, unbeknown to the buyers, went to law enforcement agencies operating the app, and capturing every message.

The phone couldn't make calls or browse the internet, but users could open the phone's calculator, and enter a specific sum to be launched into a secret messaging app.

It was in this app that law enforcement agencies were able to intercept 19.7m messages between 2018 and 2021 that led to the hundreds of arrests globally, as part of what the AFP dubbed Operation Ironside.

Since the initial fanfare from the AFP and FBI, questions have been raised about the legal grounds on which the messages were intercepted and the warrants used.

This has led to the legality being challenged directly in Australian courts, as the cases of those arrested as part of Operation Ironside begin to get under way.

A lawyer acting for one of those arrested told a court in Sydney in June that up to 30 people who were charged based on messages in the app were set to question experts about how the messages were stored and then provided to the AFP. Those matters will be heard in a Sydney local court in September.

"There is a growing opinion among a number of very senior defence barristers in this state, and in other states, that the authorisation obtained was not sufficient and the evidence may not be legally obtained," lawyer Elie Rahme reportedly told the supreme court.

In South Australia, Michael Abbott QC, acting for one of two men before the SA supreme court, reportedly alleged the operation was illegal.

"There is serious illegality to what the AFP was doing on their own and with the help of the FBI," he said.

"Under what law of Australia were the AFP allowed to act?"

Justice Sandi McDonald said last week specialists working for three men charged as part of the sting will be able to access the source code for the app in "controlled and secure conditions".

According to Vice, which has reportedly obtained the source code for the app, law enforcement were able to intercept every single message over the app via a blind carbon copy function that passed on every message sent over the app to another account.

Guardian Australia understands it is expected lawyers will question whether the right warrants were obtained for the operation. Warrants were obtained under the Surveillance Devices Act, but lawyers believe the warrants potentially should have been obtained under the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act.

"This is stuff that simply was never contemplated by law enforcement when they were setting up this legislation in parliament, because it's something other than tapping onto a telephone," Rick Sarre, professor of law and criminal justice at the University of South Australia, said. "And it's quite something different from simply looking at metadata."

The Law Council of Australia president, Tass Liveris, said while the council supports disrupting organised crime and recognises the need to modernise investigatory functions, it is important there are appropriate oversight mechanisms and legislative checks on how electronic surveillance is undertaken by law enforcement.

"In our view, a fundamental redesign of electronic surveillance laws are needed, rather than incremental amendments in the nature of patching specific issues identified through operational activities," he said.

An AFP spokesperson said it would not be appropriate to comment while the matter is before the courts.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/aug/05/AN0M-lawyers-challenge-encrypted-messaging-app-used-by-afp-in-global-sting

#16936347 at 2022-07-30 04:03:38 (UTC+1)
Q Research Australia #25: My Koala Hates Spam Too Edition

Australian Federal Police to share coding of AN0M app used in Operation Ironside arrests

Claire Campbell - 29 July 2022

Experts for alleged criminals charged in one of Australia's biggest criminal sting operations will be given access to the coding of a messaging app built by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) to catch those allegedly involved in organised crime.

The specialists are working for three men charged by police who were working on Operation Ironside.

Those specialists will be given access to the source code for the encrypted messaging platform AN0M but only under "controlled and secure conditions", Justice Sandi McDonald said in the South Australian Supreme Court on Friday.

A year ago - in one of the most-significant policing operations in Australia's history - Operation Ironside saw thousands of police across multiple agencies execute hundreds of search warrants, arrest more than 200 people and seize more than 100 guns, tonnes of drugs and $45 million in cash.

The sting was only possible because the AFP was able to intercept millions of messages through AN0M, an encrypted communication platform that enabled users to send messages, photos, videos and voice clips.

AN0M - which began operating in August 2018 - was a subscription-based service and users could only obtain a handset from a distributor of AN0M devices.

While users could change their name or username on the AN0M platform, they could not change the unique serial number linked to the handset which allowed communication to be traced back to their device.

It was shut down in June 2021.

Questions over AFP's processes

Lawyers for three Adelaide men charged with drug trafficking offences as part of Operation Ironside are seeking to have the communication obtained through the AN0M platform excluded as evidence in the case against them.

As part of that challenge, lawyers issued a subpoena for the source code of the encrypted messaging service from the AFP as well as 50 other categories of documents.

There are similar legal challenges interstate.

However, the AFP asked the Supreme Court of South Australia to set aside the subpoena, claiming there was no legitimate forensic purpose and some of the documents were subject to public interest immunity and legal professional privilege.

Defence counsel told the court that there were legitimate forensic purposes, citing failures by the AFP to obtain warrants under the Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act and questions around the invalidity of the undercover operation, the reliability of the communication through AN0M and the legality of the conduct of the AFP and FBI.

Judge calls for documents to be shared

Justice McDonald said the prosecution case against one of the alleged drug traffickers - who allegedly had drugs and firearms concealed in specially-built panels and an esky on his ute - relied on messages exchanged through the encrypted communication network, AN0M, and it was "at least arguable" that there was a legitimate forensic purpose for the AFP to hand over some of the documents and materials.

As part of the process, Justice McDonald said, the AFP had made concessions to allow experts engaged by the defendants to inspect the source code for the AN0M handset and the "iBot" collection service "under controlled and secure conditions".

Justice McDonald said the AFP would also comply with subpoenas requiring production of all manuals, user and technical guides on how the AFP used the AN0M platform during Operation Ironside.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-29/police-to-share-coding-of-AN0M-app/101281212

#16701659 at 2022-07-10 01:17:08 (UTC+1)
Q Research Australia #25: My Koala Hates Spam Too Edition

#23 and #24 - Part 3
Australian Politics and Society - Part 3
>>16399563 Video: 'I've stepped up' Australian soldier declares from Ukrainian front line while fighting against Russia
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>>16403557 Radio Svoboda Tweet: The Armed Forces are trying to gain a foothold in Severodonetsk and prepare for counter-offensive operations. They were assisted by units of foreigners from around the world, who voluntarily formed a separate special unit and are fighting on the side of Ukraine.
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>>16408480 Video: Man who struck police horse and threw traffic bollard at officer during Melbourne lockdown protests pleads guilty
>>16408493 Video: Operation Ironside - Australian Federal Police targeting Italian mafia figures in next phase of 'AN0M' probe, using intelligence gained from a secret app planted on the mobile phones of organised criminals

>>16408509 Australian Federal Police issue crack down on Mafia-style crime families - Police are conducting a nationwide sting to crack down on Italian organised crime families they believe are pulling the strings of bikie gangs
>>16408568 Marine Rotational Force - Darwin Facebook Post: Video: SOUTHERN JACKAROO 22 - "There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them" -Winston Churchill - On the day we remember the brave Soldiers at Normandy, we look to strengthen our alliances around the world in support of freedom, and to stand against tyranny.
>>16413315 AFP intel aids global crackdown - Australian Federal Police helping hunt down Italian organised crime syndicates in Europe with intelligence gathered through the Trojan horse mobile phone app, 'AN0M'
>>16413332 Queensland man charged over impersonating Australian Federal Police commissioner Reece Kershaw, importing 500 counterfeit AFP badges
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>>16413391 NASA launching three rockets from Arnhem Space Centre in the Northern Territory, June 26 to July 12 2022
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>>16418526 Labor must not torpedo crucial submarine plan - Peter Dutton, Leader of the Federal Opposition - theaustralian.com.au
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#16701658 at 2022-07-10 01:16:47 (UTC+1)
Q Research Australia #25: My Koala Hates Spam Too Edition

#23 and #24 - Part 2
Australian Politics and Society - Part 2
>>16356341 Video: Alexander Downer on Australia's Spy Agencies - ABC Australia Q+A
>>16366776 Video: New Liberal Party leader Peter Dutton vows to target 'forgotten Australians'
>>16366805 Video: David Littleproud elected to lead the Nationals in opposition after post-election leadership vote
>>16366975 Video: Lawyers in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide move to subpoena the source code for the encrypted AN0M app - Lawyers representing alleged bikie chiefs, mafia members and drug kingpins are mounting legal challenges to the software at the heart of Operation Ironside - the encrypted AN0M app
>>16367044 U.S. Embassy Australia Tweet: Memorial Day - Each year on the last Monday of May, Americans honor the men and women who have lost their lives in military service. We express our deepest gratitude for the courageous Americans who have given their lives in service to the United States. #MemorialDay
>>16367044 Q Post #1350 - If America falls, the World falls. God bless our brave fighting men & women. They deserve our deepest gratitude. Through their strength, and the millions of united Patriots around the World, we will succeed in this fight. Peace through strength. Now comes the pain. Q
>>16372011 Californian Fairytales: what Google, Facebook and Netflix told the Australian Tax Office - michaelwest.com.au
>>16372849 Video: Anthony Albanese promises to lead more inclusive government in first speech to Labor caucus
>>16373206 Arthur Sinodinos, Australia's Ambassador to the United States Tweet: This Memorial Day, we join our American friends in paying tribute to the lives & legacies of those who made the ultimate sacrifice in serving their country & we honour their courage. - Sunrise over Iwo Jima Memorial photo, Marine Corps War Memorial - gordonklau instagram
>>16373206 Australian Embassy, USA Tweet: The Embassy is closed today, Monday 30 May in observance of #MemorialDay. If you are an Australian citizen requiring consular assistance at this time, please call the Consular Operations Center in Canberra from the US on +61 2 6261 3305. - Sunrise over Iwo Jima Memorial photo, Marine Corps War Memorial - gordonklau instagram

>>16379313 US President Joe Biden says New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's leadership 'critical' as US tackles mass shootings
>>16379319 Bridging submarine 'capability gap' is top priority in defence, says Australia's new Defence Minister Richard Marles
>>16379329 Bec Judd takes Bayside crime fight to Daniel Andrews - Businesswoman Bec Judd has declared she won't be silenced when it comes to standing up for her Brighton community over escalating crime
>>16384764 Five Eyes Chiefs of Defence Hold Talks in London - UK hosting Chiefs of Defence from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States over three days of events in London
>>16384775 Biden gives Bubs a big thumbs up on baby formula delivery - US President Joe Biden thanks Australian infant formula maker Bubs Australia as the first batch of Bubs' product gets ready to land into the hands of desperate American parents late next week
>>16384827 Kevin Rudd: I don't believe Peter Dutton regrets walking out on the Apology to the Stolen Generations - Kevin Rudd - canberratimes.com.au
>>16390567 Australian Federal Police train team of digital technology sniffer dogs to target child abuse operations and terrorism perpetrators
>>16390587 Inside Bubs Australia's US formula mission and the call with POTUS
>>16395696 Australian PM honours Queen Elizabeth amid renewed republican debate - Anthony Albanese renames Canberra's Aspen Island to Queen Elizabeth II Island, describing it as a "fitting salute" to the monarch
>>16399548 Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has set up an agency to monitor Victorians - Explosive documents reveal Daniel Andrews has set up a "deeply disturbing" Big Brother-style data agency to monitor how we think, feel and spend

#16655161 at 2022-07-07 08:33:22 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #24: TRUMP CARD COMING Edition

#23 - Part 3
Australian Politics and Society - Part 3
>>16399563 Video: 'I've stepped up' Australian soldier declares from Ukrainian front line while fighting against Russia
>>16403519 Anthony Albanese, Joko Widodo agree to strengthen ties during Indonesia visit
>>16403557 Australian injured on Ukraine frontline - An Australian man who joined the Ukraine foreign legion has been injured on the war's frontline, coming under fire during some of the fiercest fighting in Sievierodonetsk
>>16403557 Radio Svoboda Tweet: The Armed Forces are trying to gain a foothold in Severodonetsk and prepare for counter-offensive operations. They were assisted by units of foreigners from around the world, who voluntarily formed a separate special unit and are fighting on the side of Ukraine.
>>16403563 Video: The Foreign Legion entered Severodonetsk. Fighting for the city continues - Radio Svoboda Ukraine
>>16403575 Google ordered to pay John Barilaro $715,000 over 'vulgar' YouTube videos made by comedian Jordan Shanks
>>16403591 Bilderberg: World's most secretive group meets in Washington without a single Australian among the attendees
>>16408454 Federal Court orders Twitter to release information on controversial @PRGuy17 account - The Federal Court has ordered Twitter to release information that could reveal the identity of the person behind a high-profile political account that attracted large audiences during the pandemic with its pro-lockdown and pro-Labor commentary
>>16408480 Video: Man who struck police horse and threw traffic bollard at officer during Melbourne lockdown protests pleads guilty
>>16408493 Video: Operation Ironside - Australian Federal Police targeting Italian mafia figures in next phase of 'AN0M' probe, using intelligence gained from a secret app planted on the mobile phones of organised criminals

>>16408509 Australian Federal Police issue crack down on Mafia-style crime families - Police are conducting a nationwide sting to crack down on Italian organised crime families they believe are pulling the strings of bikie gangs
>>16408568 Marine Rotational Force - Darwin Facebook Post: Video: SOUTHERN JACKAROO 22 - "There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them" -Winston Churchill - On the day we remember the brave Soldiers at Normandy, we look to strengthen our alliances around the world in support of freedom, and to stand against tyranny.
>>16413315 AFP intel aids global crackdown - Australian Federal Police helping hunt down Italian organised crime syndicates in Europe with intelligence gathered through the Trojan horse mobile phone app, 'AN0M'
>>16413332 Queensland man charged over impersonating Australian Federal Police commissioner Reece Kershaw, importing 500 counterfeit AFP badges
>>16413349 Delil Alexander, suspected Islamic State terrorist and dual Australian-Turkish citizen has Australian citizenship returned after High Court strikes down key section of Citizenship Act
>>16413391 NASA launching three rockets from Arnhem Space Centre in the Northern Territory, June 26 to July 12 2022
>>16415735 AFP warns Five Eyes Law Enforcement Group that foreign governments are supporting organised crime in Australia
>>16418526 Labor must not torpedo crucial submarine plan - Peter Dutton, Leader of the Federal Opposition - theaustralian.com.au
>>16418564 Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw warns Five Eyes about hostile governments
>>16418573 Police probe into Chinese money laundering syndicate headquartered in Australia - Australian law enforcement agencies, in partnership with officials from the United States and Canada, have also compiled intelligence that suggests Chinese companies and brokers are supplying the vast majority of precursor chemicals used to make illicit drugs on the Australian market

#16655159 at 2022-07-07 08:32:43 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #24: TRUMP CARD COMING Edition

#23 - Part 2
Australian Politics and Society - Part 2
>>16356341 Video: Alexander Downer on Australia's Spy Agencies - ABC Australia Q+A
>>16366776 Video: New Liberal Party leader Peter Dutton vows to target 'forgotten Australians'
>>16366805 Video: David Littleproud elected to lead the Nationals in opposition after post-election leadership vote
>>16366975 Video: Lawyers in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide move to subpoena the source code for the encrypted AN0M app - Lawyers representing alleged bikie chiefs, mafia members and drug kingpins are mounting legal challenges to the software at the heart of Operation Ironside - the encrypted AN0M app
>>16367044 U.S. Embassy Australia Tweet: Memorial Day - Each year on the last Monday of May, Americans honor the men and women who have lost their lives in military service. We express our deepest gratitude for the courageous Americans who have given their lives in service to the United States. #MemorialDay
>>16367044 Q Post #1350 - If America falls, the World falls. God bless our brave fighting men & women. They deserve our deepest gratitude. Through their strength, and the millions of united Patriots around the World, we will succeed in this fight. Peace through strength. Now comes the pain. Q
>>16372011 Californian Fairytales: what Google, Facebook and Netflix told the Australian Tax Office - michaelwest.com.au
>>16372849 Video: Anthony Albanese promises to lead more inclusive government in first speech to Labor caucus
>>16373206 Arthur Sinodinos, Australia's Ambassador to the United States Tweet: This Memorial Day, we join our American friends in paying tribute to the lives & legacies of those who made the ultimate sacrifice in serving their country & we honour their courage. - Sunrise over Iwo Jima Memorial photo, Marine Corps War Memorial - gordonklau instagram
>>16373206 Australian Embassy, USA Tweet: The Embassy is closed today, Monday 30 May in observance of #MemorialDay. If you are an Australian citizen requiring consular assistance at this time, please call the Consular Operations Center in Canberra from the US on +61 2 6261 3305. - Sunrise over Iwo Jima Memorial photo, Marine Corps War Memorial - gordonklau instagram

>>16379313 US President Joe Biden says New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's leadership 'critical' as US tackles mass shootings
>>16379319 Bridging submarine 'capability gap' is top priority in defence, says Australia's new Defence Minister Richard Marles
>>16379329 Bec Judd takes Bayside crime fight to Daniel Andrews - Businesswoman Bec Judd has declared she won't be silenced when it comes to standing up for her Brighton community over escalating crime
>>16384764 Five Eyes Chiefs of Defence Hold Talks in London - UK hosting Chiefs of Defence from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States over three days of events in London
>>16384775 Biden gives Bubs a big thumbs up on baby formula delivery - US President Joe Biden thanks Australian infant formula maker Bubs Australia as the first batch of Bubs' product gets ready to land into the hands of desperate American parents late next week
>>16384827 Kevin Rudd: I don't believe Peter Dutton regrets walking out on the Apology to the Stolen Generations - Kevin Rudd - canberratimes.com.au
>>16390567 Australian Federal Police train team of digital technology sniffer dogs to target child abuse operations and terrorism perpetrators
>>16390587 Inside Bubs Australia's US formula mission and the call with POTUS
>>16395696 Australian PM honours Queen Elizabeth amid renewed republican debate - Anthony Albanese renames Canberra's Aspen Island to Queen Elizabeth II Island, describing it as a "fitting salute" to the monarch
>>16399548 Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has set up an agency to monitor Victorians - Explosive documents reveal Daniel Andrews has set up a "deeply disturbing" Big Brother-style data agency to monitor how we think, feel and spend

#16413318 at 2022-06-08 10:30:52 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #23: HOUSE OF CARDS Edition

>>16413315

2/2

The AFP first signalled in December it would be targeting Italian organised crime and the people who enabled its drug-smuggling and money-laundering, including allegedly corrupt officials, aviation and port workers, lawyers and accountants, as part of phase two of Operation Ironside. Police identified 160 immediate targets in Australia.

Mr Ryan confirmed that drug overlord Ayik, who has since changed his name to Joseph Reis, remained a top priority target, along with former Sydney man Mark Buddle,

A dual Turkish-Australian citizen from Sydney, Ayik last year renounced his Australian citizenship while hiding out in Turkey, as Turkish authorities are reluctant to extradite their citizens.

Bikie heavyweight Buddle is thought to be hiding out in Cyprus and setting himself up as a global leader of the Comanchero motorcycle gang.

"They're still on our radar, they are still No 1,'' Mr Ryan said of Ayik and Buddle. "Obviously a lot of the issues we have in Australia are born of the fact that a lot of our targets are offshore and they're attacking Australia from offshore.

"Those people are still our priority targets and hopefully we can have them continually destabilised, as they are now.''

The Italian organised crime groups in Australia are working closely with outlaw motorcycle gangs, with bikies distributing drugs across the country, collecting money and providing the enforcement and violence required to keep discipline.

The mafia figures sit behind the bikies and let them carry out the dirty work, and assume the risk.

The Australian revealed on Tuesday that police had identified 51 Italian organised crime clans operating in Australia, of which at least 14 were 'Ndrangheta clans.

"The Italians have been able to fly under the radar for many, many years,'' Mr Ryan said.

"They are flooding Australia with illicit drugs. They are pulling the strings of Australian outlaw motorcycle gangs who are behind some of the most significant violence in our communities.

"Multimillion dollars a day are being laundered in Australia on behalf of illicit drug syndicates that try to conceal their source of wealth.''

The AFP is analysing more than 28 million messages sent on the encrypted AN0M platform by members of the underworld, who wrongly believed it was safe from the eyes of law enforcement. In fact, it was being run and monitored by the AFP and FBI, giving police specific information about who was behind some of the ?nation's largest drug hauls.

Of messages obtained by police, Mr Ryan said most "involved Italian organised crime and outlaw motorcycle gangs, particularly the Comanchero.''

They revealed the mafia had a significant footprint in South Australia and several regional areas, including Griffiths in NSW.

"This is really a warning to Italian organised crime that they are on our radar,'' Mr Ryan said, adding the AFP was "re-prioritising'' its investigations to focus on money-laundering.

"The AFP is working with Italian, US, Spanish and Brazilian authorities to begin severing the significant power of the 'Ndrangheta,'' he said.

"This next phase will be long and challenging, but the AFP is up to the challenge. And we need to be.

"If we don't cut off the head and tail of organised crime, we face living in a very different Australia.

"I want to underscore that the AFP targets criminal syndicates - not countries, or ethnic groups.

"The 'Ndrangheta is a criminal syndicate ... responsible for serious crime across the world.''

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/mafia-members-so-entrenched-in-australia-they-fly-under-the-radar-afp/news-story/88a55eae8a8364deaf8d872fd31aee98

#16413315 at 2022-06-08 10:28:56 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #23: HOUSE OF CARDS Edition

>>16366975
>>16408493
AFP intel aids global crackdown

The Australian Federal Police is helping hunt down Italian organised crime syndicates in Europe, with intelligence gathered through the Trojan horse app AN0M.

ELLEN WHINNETT - June 7, 2022

1/2

The Australian Federal Police is helping hunt down Italian organised crime syndicates in Europe, with intelligence gathered through the Trojan horse app AN0M handed to authorities targeting mafia groups overseas.

AFP Assistant Commissioner crime command Nigel Ryan confirmed police had provided 54 intelligence briefs to international law enforcement agencies to ?assist in the investigation and prosecution of several high-level criminals.

Police refused to say in which countries targets of the intelligence were residing but it's thought several European police forces that worked closely with the AFP in the original Operation Ironside busts in June 2021 were working off AFP intelligence.

Europol and the FBI both confirmed last year that Italian organised crime figures were among the more than 800 people arrested globally when the AN0M busts went down.

"The AFP has developed 54 target packages for our inter?national partners who are using this intelligence to take further ?action against alleged offenders in their own countries,'' Mr Ryan said. "This global takedown in organised crime was enabled because of the dedication of the AFP, the FBI and our key partners.''

More than 12,000 AN0M devices were in use when police pulled the plug on the covert sting operation, with the majority in Australia, New Zealand, Germany, The Netherlands, Spain and Serbia.

More than 300 devices were also active in Italy.

The AFP used two "influencers'' to spruik the devices to their alleged underworld associates.

One was Hakan Ayik, the Australian drug kingpin and Comanchero bikie associate who is now hiding out in Turkey.

The other was a man in Australia whom police allege is a member of an Italian organised crime family. He is before the courts on significant charges and his details are not able to be reported.

The AFP has embarked on a renewed push to target Italian organised crime in Australia, particu?larly the Calabrian mafia, or 'Ndrangheta, who are responsible for more than 70 per cent of the global supply of cocaine, and who are washing billions of dollars in ?illegal wealth through the economy every year.

Under the coverage of mass Italian migration to Australia, the mafia has become so entrenched in the Australian community that people don't know their neighbours are involved in organised crime.

Mr Ryan on Tuesday said the 'Ndrangheta had been operating in Australia since the 1920s, staying off law enforcement's radar by living "modest lives in modest houses'.'

They had successfully concealed their illicit wealth by funneling money through legitimate construction, catering and agricultural businesses.

"They had intentionally kept a low profile and avoided shows of wealth or power as they quietly laundered their profits through their seemingly legitimate businesses.

"It's entirely possible that ?people can be living next door to members of the 'Ndrangheta without knowing,'' Mr Ryan said.

(continued)

#16408493 at 2022-06-07 11:35:21 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #23: HOUSE OF CARDS Edition

>>16366975
AFP targeting Italian mafia figures in next phase of AN0M probe

Mark Reddie - 7 June 2022

Intelligence gained from a secret app planted on the mobile phones of organised criminals has revealed the Italian mafia is "pulling the strings" of bikie gangs responsible for recent violence in Australia.

The Australian Federal Police is investigating 51 Italian organised crime clans - including 14 from the 'Ndrangheta - as well as 5,000 members living across NSW, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia.

Investigators have accused them of working closely with Middle Eastern crime gangs, Asian triads and South American cartels to smuggle tonnes of illegal drugs into the country.

"They are pulling the strings of outlaw motorcycle gangs who are behind some of the most significant violence in our communities," AFP Assistant Commissioner Nigel Ryan said.

"They are responsible for 70 to 80 per cent of the world's cocaine and they are flooding Australia with illicit drugs."

Assistant Commissioner Ryan said millions of dollars in dirty money was being washed through the economy each day.

"They funnel their illegitimate wealth into their legitimate construction, agricultural and catering businesses," he said.

"This is really a warning to Italian organised crime that they are on our radar."

The AFP has managed to compile a family tree of the mafia from data obtained from Operation Ironside.

It was a three-year undercover sting in which authorities infiltrated the phones of organised crime figures through an encrypted app, called ANOM.

Criminals were convinced to use the messaging service through word of mouth in the underworld, believing it was secure and off the police radar.

Little did they know that the 25 million messages sent on the platform were being closely monitored by the AFP and FBI.

Since authorities revealed the truth about AN0M a year ago, 383 alleged Australian criminals have been charged with more than 2,340 offences.

Italian mafia bosses are now the next major target - with the AFP operation also involving US, Spanish, Brazilian and Italian authorities.

"Unfortunately they invested in the wrong technology when they invested in the ANOM app," Assistant Commissioner Ryan said.

"Unleashing this next phase will be long and challenging but the AFP is up to the challenge.

"If we don't cut off the head and tail of organised crime then we face living in a very different Australia."

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-07/afp-target-italian-mafia-ndrangheta-activities-in-australia/101131092

#16366975 at 2022-05-30 09:22:19 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #23: HOUSE OF CARDS Edition

Lawyers in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide move to subpoena the source code for the encrypted AN0M app

Lawyers representing alleged bikie chiefs, mafia members and drug kingpins are mounting legal challenges to the software at the heart of Operation Ironside - the encrypted AN0M app.

Mitch Mott - May 30, 2022

Adelaide lawyers are mounting legal challenges to the software at the heart of the international crime sting Operation Ironside, which used the encrypted AN0M platform to intercept millions of messages before the app was shut down in June last year.

If successful, the legal move threatens to derail more than 100 cases before South Australian courts, as well as others interstate.

Defence counsel for South Australians arrested as part of the operation are leading the way, along with colleagues in Sydney and Melbourne, to subpoena the source code behind the encrypted app.

The lawyers argue that there is no way a court could be satisfied that what police said were decrypted messages from the app matched what had been typed in.

The Australian Federal Police and the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions (CDPP) are fighting to prevent the release of the source code - invoking immunity and arguing it would not be in the public interest.

It is the latest in a string of legal manoeuvres aimed at discrediting millions of intercepted messages, which police allege show conspiracies to murder as well as the trafficking of vast quantities of drugs.

In South Australia, a challenge to the validity of the warrants used to intercept the messages is expected to be heard by the Supreme Court later this year.

In NSW, top appeals silk Bret Walker SC has been retained by a consortium of around 30 Operation Ironside accused who are also seeking to challenge the warrants.

Those challenges are aimed at the admissibility of large collections of messages which might have been intercepted unlawfully.

However, the latest tactic is aimed at the very origin of the messages - the AN0M platform itself.

It is understood the source code is likely to not even be in Australia, but rather be in the possession of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the US.

Last week, Adelaide lawyer Dominic Agresta told the Adelaide Magistrates Court he would be seeking to challenge the legality and functioning of the AN0M platform.

Mr Agresta represents several Ironside accused whose charges range from conspiracy to commit murder, to the trafficking of huge quantities of cannabis and methamphetamine, both in South Australia and interstate.

Representing one of his clients, whose name is suppressed, Mr Agresta asked the court for a temporary stay of the prosecution and for the man to be released on bail because of the federal authorities refusal to hand over various documents, including the source code.

He said he, along with other defence counsel in Melbourne and Sydney, had requested disclosure of various documents from both the AFP and CDPP, including details of the inner workings of the AN0M app.

"The answer charge date is looming and we want these documents in relation to an application which could be made on that day," he said.

"Effectively we are challenging the very basis for the AN0M application itself and these documents go to that.

"There has been a refusal to hand over details of the functioning of the app. We say we need those details because without them how can this court be satisfied that the decrypted messages are an accurate reproduction of the encrypted messages."

John Clover, for the CDPP, said Mr Agresta and other lawyers needed to issue subpoenas to the AFP.

"It is the AFP's claim of immunity and they need to be bought in as a party," he said.

"Various documents have been identified as having potential relevance but also fall under claims of immunity.

"Just because they have potential relevance, not actual relevance, does not flow that it is exculpatory or helpful to (the accused)."

Claiming privilege over information allows a person or organisation to prevent it being presented to other parties in legal proceedings.

Public interest immunity is a type of privilege that is usually invoked by a government when it argues that disclosure of the information would do more harm than good.

Magistrate John Wells adjourned the hearing for a full argument and to allow the AFP to prepare its case against the release of the source code.

https://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/lawyers-in-melbourne-sydney-and-adelaide-move-to-subpoena-the-source-code-for-the-encrypted-AN0M-app/news-story/85c90469ec244c83e267679f0027e3d4

#14019841 at 2021-06-30 06:17:36 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #16 - INFILTRATION NOT INVASION Edition

#16 - Part 3
Australian Politics and Society - Part 3
>>13855012 Video: Organised crime dealt 'heavy blow', says PM, after global police sting cracks open 'encrypted' app, AN0M
>>13855034 Video: Operation Ironside: AFP, FBI take down mafia, bikie members in 'sting of the century'
>>13855171 Operation Ironside Part 1: How Australian Federal Police and the FBI busted organised criminals on AN0M app
>>13855187 Operation Ironside Part 2: 96 seconds that saw the Australian criminal underworld implode under Operation Ironside
>>13855206 Operation Ironside Part 3: Criminal 'influencers' who took the AFP and FBI bait by using the AN0M app
>>13855451 Japanese troops join US, Aust forces in Darwin for military exercises
>>13855659 Video: Operation Ironside: Inside the operation that busted the Anom criminal network wide open - Terry Goldsworthy
>>13862138 FBI, Europol, AFP react to global take down of mafia, bikie members in 'sting of the century'
>>13869260 Scott Morrison set to go to Washington later this year for Quad talks with US, India & Japan
>>13869348 Push for Hezbollah terrorism listing gains boost from ASIO
>>13877053 Scott Morrison eyes September trip to US to mark ANZUS anniversary
>>13877062 Queen to make rare appearance at G7 summit before meeting with Scott Morrison

>>13877073 Video: Australia welcomes more US troops at naval bases - 9 News Australia
>>13877087 Video: Push to boost number of US marines in the Top End - Sky News Australia
>>13877358 Home Affairs boss Mike Pezzullo wants to tackle cybercrime like the British Navy fought pirates
>>13877365 'This is what bad looks like': Major company ignored Australia's cyber spy agency after hack - Australian Signals Directorate director-general Rachel Noble
>>13889054 Video: Scott Morrison holds historic meeting with US President Joe Biden, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson at G7 summit
>>13890952 High Commissioner to the UK George Brandis Tweet: Today, the Prime Minister visited St Illogan Cemetery to lay a wreath for the 8 Australians remembered there. You can learn their stories here - http://bit. ly/3gffqPm
>>13901857 Video: arrested - Latest chapter in the Friendly Jordies (Jordan Shanks) vs. John 'Bruz' Barilaro legal battle - friendlyjordies
>>13907688 Scott Morrison raises the alarm about escalating cyber attacks with British intelligence chiefs
>>13907733 'A new dawn': Australia and Britain agree on historic trade deal
>>13907765 New federal laws introduced to protect people from extreme online abuse, trolls
>>13907815 Japanese Ambassador YAMAGAMI Shingo Tweet: Great to exchange candid views with Defence Minister @PeterDutton_MP on how to further strengthen (Japan and Australia) defence cooperation.
>>13915005 Scott Morrison, Boris Johnson agree in-principle to free trade deal

#13862138 at 2021-06-09 07:52:42 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #16 - INFILTRATION NOT INVASION Edition

>>13855012
FBI, Europol, AFP react to global take down of mafia, bikie members in 'sting of the century'

The FBI and Europol have revealed more details of the massive crime bust that has gripped the world and dealt a blow to organised crime.

Matt Young - JUNE 9, 2021

1/2

The FBI and Europol have revealed more details of the massive crime bust that dealt a significant blow to organised crime gangs in just 24 hours.

In a press conference overnight, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said that along with the Australian Federal Police (AFP), authorities had had "turned the tables" on criminals and criminal organisations after fooling them to use a covert encrypted app.

Across 16 countries, more than 800 suspects have been nabbed, eight tons of cocaine caught and more than $48 million recovered, officials confirmed.

Europol, including members of the Dutch National Police (Politie) and the Swedish Police Authority (Polisen), bragged they had carried out "one of the largest and most sophisticated law enforcement operations to date in the fight against encrypted criminal activities".

They warned that "serious criminals wrongly believe that they can operate anonymously and out of sight of the police and that they cannot be caught".

Operation Ironside was formed three years ago as a collaboration between the AFP and the FBI to bring down underworld figures.

Internationally, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Lithuania, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom (including Scotland), and the United States joined Australia.

Nationally, the AFP said in a statement the intelligence led to the arrest of 224 suspects on more than 526 charges.

Also seized in Australia were 3.7 tonnes of drugs, 104 weapons, $44,934,457 million in cash, and assets expected to run into the millions of dollars.

"More arrests are expected domestically and offshore under a co-ordinated global response connected to Operation Ironside," the statement warned.

Calvin Shivers, assistant director of the FBI's Criminal Investigation Division, said the sting, dubbed Operation Trojan Shield by the FBI and Europol, involved more than 9000 police officer across 16 countries.

Of those, more than 4000 members from the AFP and state and territory police were involved in the Australian operation.

"Criminals and criminal organisations often use encrypted platforms to shield their illicit activity from law enforcement," Mr Shivers said.

"These platforms help criminals facilitate and co-ordinate drug trafficking, violent assaults, murders, public corruption, money laundering, many other crimes that are committed throughout the world.

"Through Operation Trojan Shield the FBI and our international law enforcement partners from across the globe were able to turn the tables on criminal organisations and gain access to their communications in order to disrupt their criminal activity."

Hundreds of alleged offenders were tricked into communicating via AN0M, an encrypted app designed by police which grew to service more than 1000 encrypted devices in over 300 criminal syndicates operating in more than 100 countries, including Italian organised crime, outlaw motorcycle gangs, and international drug trafficking organisations.

Users communicated in 45 languages on the app, according to officials, conversing about contract killings, drugs, and much more.

"Over the last 18 months, the FBI provided criminal organisations in over 100 countries encrypted devices that allowed us to monitor their communications," Mr Shivers said.

"There were a number of things that resulted from this. Not only have we heard about the number of arrests and number of seizures but there were over 100 threats to life that were mitigated.

"To give you an idea of the magnitude of our penetration, we were actually able to see photographs of hundreds of tonnes of cocaine that were concealed in shipments of food, we were able to see hundreds of kilos of cocaine that were concealed in canned goods."

(continued)

#13855213 at 2021-06-08 08:21:15 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #16 - INFILTRATION NOT INVASION Edition

>>13855210

3/3

By April 2021, Ironside - the humble investigation which started out with just three AFP agents officers - had become a monster in size, as thousands of investigators and specialists joined its ranks and police from every mainland state, along with New Zealand, were brought in to bring it to a close.

Ironside's senior investigating officer, Detective Superintendent Des Appleby, says the AFP had been witnessing plots to import drugs, murder other criminals or harm their families over drug debts, and extensive money-laundering and drug manufacturing and shared intelligence with other agencies more than 1000 times.

"We have helped other police forces solve a number of murders and other serious crimes along the way,'' he says.

Appleby says the impact on organised crime in Australia would be profound.

"I personally think particularly with the Comanchero motorcycle gang it will hopefully wipe them out. The Lone Wolfs the same thing. Other organised crime figures,'' he says.

"It will shatter their confidence in encrypted devices.''

He said those who had been using AN0M and didn't get rounded up by police this week would know it was just a matter of time until they did.

By May, the operation had become so large that for the first time in the AFP's history, almost the entire force was dedicated to the operation. Detectives were ready to pounce and unmask the underworld's biggest players as the FBI prepared to shutdown AN0M on June 7.

"For a long time we were like a minnow in the whole market - but when you look at the opportunities - the minnows could catch the big fish,'' Commander Boudry says.

The sheer size of the take-down is expected to put significant pressure on Australia's judicial system, clogging up the courts and making a number of lawyers rich.

Officials from the Australian Border Force, Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission, the Australian Taxation Office, Australian Securities and Investments Commission and state and territory police will also be hard-pressed to keep up with the caseload.

Kirsty Schofield, the Commander of Investigations in New South Wales, said an enormous amount of work was needed to examine what was found during the searches and to compile briefs of evidence in court.

"I really think this is going to see us working for the next few years,'' she says.

Boudry had the final word for those caught out by Operation Ironside.

"Well, we got you on this one,'' he says.

"The (AFP) Commissioner (Reece Kershaw) talks about outsmarting criminals - and we've done that here.

"We ... have people who are capable of extraordinary things. Technically capable and who understand the environment in which they work. These people were able to put those two things together and truly outsmart the criminals.''

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/national/part-3-criminal-influencers-who-took-the-afp-and-fbi-bait-by-using-the-AN0M-app/news-story/71b52a8d766dd157de4f211423a61b77

#13855210 at 2021-06-08 08:19:50 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #16 - INFILTRATION NOT INVASION Edition

>>13855206

2/3

Australian investigators were able to draw links between people and groups who they'd previously thought were enemies.

They got the first ever unfiltered look at which gangs and individuals were secretly working together.

They discovered underworld heavyweights who had never been on their radar.

And they finally got evidence on long-term targets they'd never quite been able to pin.

But the pressure was intense. Over nearly three years Ironside captured 25 million messages.

They intervened only when an imminent threat to life was identified: Gaughan's "red line" was ever present - Ironside could not allow someone to die.

The AFP immediately tipped off the relevant state or territory police force about any apparent threat and local officers swung into action but never knew where the information had come from.

The digital surveillance collections unit developed artificial intelligence system to read, prioritise and alert investigators to the criminality and threats occurring in the millions of messages.

Training the police computers to identify the threats to life wasn't straightforward.

Artificial intelligence can easily pick out the word "kill.''

But while humans would recognise a misspelling such as "kll,'', a machine might not.

Then there was slang, swearing, and foreign languages.

And the curious language of "criminalise" - the shorthand that crooks use between themselves.

And it wasn't just what they said in messages, but the tone.

"We were doing things like sentiment analysis. Is this (message) positive, is this negative, is there an imminent threat there, what are the criminal themes?'' Supt Nelson said.

"There was not only the technical challenge on how do we facilitate access, collection, decryption of this data but then how do we deal with the sheer volume of criminality that's occurring on here?''

One ace up the sleeves of investigators was the trust users had in the platform.

It meant they had abandoned their usual code and were speaking directly, naming names and placing orders for drugs in specific amounts and dollar values.

"They speak openly on them but I think they naturally have their own coded language,'' Supt Nelson says.

"This is this concept of criminalise. And they're probably not even conscious they're doing it half the time.

"They could talk with their mates about multi-ton imports and things like that, but at the same time they use a language which is not conducive to, say, picking up Google translate or Google talk and using those big data analytics platforms that have been built around smart speakers."

Apart from trust, police had something else working in their favour.

Their targets were "all very arrogant blokes" who were certain they were one step ahead of law enforcement.

"They think they are bulletproof and it won't happen to them,'' Gaughan said.

And just as Apple refined its iPhone, AN0M evolved to give the users what they wanted.

And that included smaller, and newer phones.

"AN0M succeeded because we understood our market and had a better product than our competitors," Inspector Matt Walls, manager of day to day operations of digital collections, said.

"We knew from the start we had features that would appeal to the crooks. But the real trick was that we had the ability to really "listen" to our customers in a way our competitors couldn't, so we were able to evolve the product to maintain our advantage," he said.

"The users spoke about wanting smaller, newer phones and like magic AN0M pivoted to newer, smaller phones almost overnight," he said.

(continued)

#13855206 at 2021-06-08 08:18:47 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #16 - INFILTRATION NOT INVASION Edition

>>13855171
Part 3: Criminal 'influencers' who took the AFP and FBI bait by using the AN0M app

Aussie cops convinced "influencers" who could get others to use the AN0M app where their secret networks were finally exposed.

Ellen Whinnett - June 8, 2021

1/3

INFLUENCERS AND EMOJIS

Some mainstream products have the Kardashians. Others are promoted by impossibly gorgeous models or the biggest names in world sport.

Like any decent 21st century product, AN0M needed one hell of a marketing strategy - complete with celebrity endorsement.

These influencers, though, were unlikely to be on a red carpet any time soon.

With their Silicon Valley hats on, the international team realised organic growth and spreading the devices through the underworld via word of mouth from authentic criminal sources, was crucial to success.

They identified "influencers'' - prominent members of the underworld - who they believed would be influential in getting other crooks to switch to AN0M.

One of those influencers was on Australian shores - let's call him Mafia Man.

Police allege he was a senior member of the feared 'Ndrangheta. Others were selected as they had strong links to a who's who of global mayhem - Comanchero, Hells Angels and Lone Wolf bikies, South American drug cartels and Albanian organised crime.

Another influencer was Hakan Ayik, the former Sydney bikie who had fled to Turkey a decade ago, and who police believed was directing and organising drug imports worth hundreds of millions of dollars into Australia and other countries.

In the words of Gaughan, AN0M was "being sponsored by a couple of really good crooks who are basically saying that it's impregnable''.

Or, as AFP Superintendent Jared Taggart said: "It's like having the Rock sponsoring your gym."

Police haven't explained how they got the first devices to Ayik and Mafia Man.

It was slow at first - just five devices were placed into the market to test the waters - but police allowed their business to grow organically.

"We weren't actively out there pushing these, we were simply meeting a demand,'' Nelson says.

On October 31, 2018, the first messages between criminals came in.

The Operative was sitting at his desk in the bunker when he saw them.

"It was very exciting and extremely satisfying,'' he said.

"Messages from that first day indicated significant domestic criminality. This to me, was success.

"Little did I know how little sleep for the next three years I was about to have.''

WHAT AFP, FBI FOUND IN CRIMS' ENCRYPTED NETWORK

By infiltrating encrypted messages, the Ironside team had pulled off the impossible.

Now they faced the hard part.

First they had to collect the messages, work out which ones were about serious crime.

Then they had to operationalise it - turn mountain of messages and leads into evidence that could be used to prosecute hundreds of people in Australia and thousands globally.

As months went by, the number of devices grew - by operation's end there would be more than 1000 in Australia and 10,000 worldwide - and the messages being decrypted by the police piled up.

In the last two weeks of April, 2020, there were 42,000 messages decoded.

Two months later EncroChat went down after European police located its servers and managed to hack into it.

SKY ECC was taken down in March this year after also being compromised by law enforcement.

In the final two weeks of April 2021, 2.67 million messages were intercepted.

The criminality they revealed was eye-popping - drug-trafficking on an enormous scale, money-laundering, extortion, violence, assaults, fraud and corruption.

Mafia. Bikies. Asian and European organised crime gangs.

The devices were in the hands of foreign hardened crooks in up to 20 countries, from New Zealand to the Netherlands.

(continued)

#13855198 at 2021-06-08 08:16:37 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #16 - INFILTRATION NOT INVASION Edition

>>13855193

3/3

One of AN0M's special features was a remote access kill switch - a promise that all data would be remotely wiped if police got hold of one of the devices and cracked into the app.

Subscribers paid a monthly fee for the privilege of a remote wipe, with no idea their cash was going straight back into the FBI's pockets

Handset and subscription packages each cost between $1500 and $2500.

It is not illegal to have encrypted apps on your phone.

Millions of law-abiding Aussies use mainstream apps such as WhatsApp or Signal every day.

But those Aussies usually have a mainstream telco provider and provide identification to purchase their handsets and phone plans.

AN0M buyers and those using other shady encrypted platforms through custom-stripped handsets did not provide identification, operated only under false names or handles, often used SIM cards routed through other countries, and generally tried to remain anonymous.

That is where resellers - grey marketeers hiding behind flashy aliases who were the same people who had been selling Phantom Secure handsets - came in.

Police wanted the device to appear completely authentic, so they plugged into the reseller market, which they already knew from criminal investigations.

"Criminals generally purchased the encrypted device from underground resellers ... They would usually have to know someone that was already using a device to place an order,'' The Operative says.

Once one crook in a network had a device, he would often order more for his associates so they could communicate.

Sometimes devices were paid for in cash while other preferred to pay in cryptocurrency, mainly Bitcoin.

The app would be activated, usually by the reseller, after access codes requested from the AN0M administrators, were entered.

If The Operative and his offsiders had ventured into the private sector, they could have made a fortune in Silicon Valley.

But bringing down organised crime meant far more to them than making a motza for someone else's start-up.

"If you talk to the guys, they're all invested in the actual mission,'' the AFP's Commander of Covert and Technical Operations, Doug Boudry says.

"In private industry they would be earning someone else a lot of money - here in the AFP what they're doing is actually having a tangible effect. Not only for themselves but for their families and the community.

"The other things is they're hunters by nature. They like going after the bad guys. There is something fun in that. There is a sense of belonging to something when you're going after the criminals.''

https://www.couriermail.com.au//news/national/part-2-96-seconds-that-saw-the-australian-criminal-underworld-implode-under-operation-ironside/news-story/c33c4b3658e135cc607eefa605a0eaa2

#13855193 at 2021-06-08 08:15:09 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #16 - INFILTRATION NOT INVASION Edition

>>13855187

2/3

The plan came off because of a group of like-minded and passionate people from the FBI and AFP worked together and stuck at it, The Operative says.

"We each took a little bit of the problem away and worked on whether the idea could work. There was a technical piece: Accessing and decoding the messages. There was a legal piece, and a management piece.

"The AFP took responsibility for the technical piece, the FBI took the management piece and both agencies worked on the legal piece."

In the early days, Nelson, The Investigator and The Operative mostly worked the operation alone, often at night and after hours, backed up by the AFP's tech and digital experts.

They had to convince the AFP hierarchy that it would work, that they could manage the volume of messages that would come in if it was successful, and that they'd be able to pick up any immediate threats to life caught in the communications.

They also had to make sure the platform couldn't be hacked by commercial competitors and looked authentic enough to trick criminals into embracing it.

And they had to work out how to get it into their hands.

Gaughan signed the Major Controlled Operation authorisation on September 25, 2018, which lay the groundwork for police to covertly infiltrate crime networks.

He remained anxious about the potential for a threat to life to be made on a device, but be buried under the mountain of messages, and not picked up by police until it was too late.

That was his "red line".

"Ultimately, if someone got killed and we had a device and we later found out, I would have pulled the plug on it,'' he recalls.

"A red line for me would have been, 'Boss, we've found this text message, it relates to this hit that's occurred in blah, we missed it'. I would have said, 'we're done', because that's just too high risk.

But for now, it was all systems go.

The AFP's National Operations State Service Centre generated a list of possible names for the operation.

One was Operation Ironside.

The Investigator grabbed it, seeing the linkage to the Viking Bjorn Ironside.

"The Vikings were determined and ruthless in fighting whatever they went up against,'' he says.

They had the approvals. Now they had to make it work.

HUNTERS AND COLLECTORS

To catch crooks, the Ironside team had to think like crooks - but act like a dotcom start-up.

Police couldn't just start planting devices fitted with AN0M and expect an immediate front pocket ride with the underworld.

New and some struggling platforms were emerging after Phantom Secure offering better devices with better encryption and privacy features, including EncroChat out of Europe, and Sky ECC, out of North America.

To win customers, AN0M had to be a cutting-edge product that offered users everything they wanted in a device and more.

But to make sure nobody ended up dead, it had to be able to read its customers minds and interpret whether their messages were harmless or heinous.

The handsets were a mobile phone stripped of its normal functions. They could not send emails, make calls, find maps or do Google searches.

The app was pre-loaded and hidden behind a seemingly-innocent calculator icon.

Once the user typed a secret access code into the calculator, the app would open.

As well as end-to-end encryption of messages, it distorted voice messages as a further layer of anonymity.

(continued)

#13855187 at 2021-06-08 08:13:58 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #16 - INFILTRATION NOT INVASION Edition

>>13855171
Part 2: 96 seconds that saw the Australian criminal underworld implode under Operation Ironside

This is the moment Australian Federal Police created the AN0M app - a Trojan horse that could expose criminals and their networks.

Ellen Whinnett - June 8, 2021

1/3

96 SECONDS THAT SMASHED THE UNDERWORLD

The Operative was sitting on the couch in the loungeroom of his Canberra home, doing what he did most nights - working on AN0M.

He had two mobile phones and a laptop propped up on his knees and he was sending encrypted messages backwards and forwards between the two phones via the app.

Then, on the laptop in front of him, appeared the words of the messages he'd been sending himself.

The Operative dryly recalls that "one of the most exciting times for me was when we proved the concept that we could collect encrypted messages and decrypt them from the platform''.

"Phone here, phone there, my laptop here. I sent a message to that phone and I could see the encrypted messages come up on the computer,'' he said.

He videoed the moment with yet another phone, showing the messages pinging backwards and forwards between the two phones and scrolling down, unencrypted, on the laptop.

The Operative sent it off to all his colleagues.

The 96-second clip, which would later be shown to the AFP top brass, inadvertently also captured The Operative's bare feet.

"I had to sell this to the executive - like, this is possible, we can do this,'' The Operative says, defending his feet cameo on the basis "it was like 10pm at night''.

His colleagues were thrilled with the development - and grateful that at least he had his pants on.

"And he sent us the video and it's like, 'yeah, we like your bare feet, it's a nice touch','' Nelson says.

To an untrained eye, it's hard to square off how the decryption works - the video shows some of the messages are identical on each phone, but other words on the laptop screen.

But The Operative and The Investigator knew what they'd done, as did Nelson.

Access, decrypt, and collect.

Despite his technical wizardry, The Operative is not a formally trained computer engineer.

"My whole law enforcement agency career has been around legally accessing criminal communications. I would not call myself a tech compared to the people I work with in Digital Surveillance, but ... to the operational members of the AFP, I am a tech,'' he says.

However, he worked closely with the tech experts and specialists within in the AFP's digital surveillance collection unit on the plan.

"The real magic of Ironside was the work that three members from the Digital Surveillance Collection area did in rebuilding a server that collected and decrypted the communications,'' The Operative says.

The Investigator too was no tech expert, with "nil qualifications'' in technical design but decades of experience investigating organised crime, and working out how the criminal networks operated.

"I relied heavily on The Operative and Rob Nelson and the wider Digital Surveillance Collection (unit) - they are the experts. In fact they are world leaders,'' he said.

"There is no one on this planet with the expertise and knowledge that The Operative has. His technical expertise, especially in how these devices operated and the market they operated within, coupled with his experience working in and understanding of the organised crime environment, placed him in a unique and highly specialised position. Without him we wouldn't have got to first base.''

(continued)

#13855179 at 2021-06-08 08:11:40 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #16 - INFILTRATION NOT INVASION Edition

>>13855175

3/3

The Investigator and The Operative were keen for the green light and not afraid to push their case with the boss.

"The Investigator was bugging me from day one,'' Gaughan says.

"He's a pretty excitable young fella, I've known him since ... before he joined the cops. He was very enthusiastic about the fact that there was this opportunity.

"I think for them it was pretty clear cut that we needed to take it."

Gaughan wanted more information about the plan and told the pair to "cool your heels a bit, let's think about it".

"I asked them to go to do a fair bit of homework. This one was a good idea I thought, but I just needed to make sure.''

Police were worried that clues to serious impending crimes such as murders could be picked up on AN0M, but be missed in the blizzard of communications.

"I was concerned ... to ensure when the text messages started flying around that we had the ability to actually deal with ones that were threats to life, deal with the ones that were involved in drugs,'' Gaughan says.

Artificial intelligence would need to be developed "to ensure that we actually didn't miss opportunities" and "people didn't die.''

Police would later intercept and foil what they allege were least 20 threats to life, including five separate execution plots on two organised crime families, as well as a bikie planning the drive-by shooting of a rival.

While Gaughan was mulling the formal advice on the proposal, The Investigator and The Operative commandeered a large, windowless office at the bottom of the Edmund Barton Building - AFP Headquarters - in Canberra.

They called it the bunker, and along with their computers, brought in something a bit less hi-tech - a whiteboard.

To remind them of their mission, The Investigator wrote across the top a quote from the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, whose ancient diaries had become a basis for modern-day stoic philosophy.

"The obstacle becomes the way,'' it said.

The pair would treat encrypted communications not as a hurdle to their investigation of organised crime, but as an opportunity.

Police had been involved in a technical arms race with the underworld for years.

Encrypted platforms like Phantom Secure had given criminals the upper hand and left law enforcement "blind".

"The competitive advantage we had with telecommunications intercepts, that was literally just taken away from us,'' The Investigator says.

"That really tilted the field massively back in their favour.

"What we wanted to achieve was killing Phantom Secure and turning their ability to securely communicate in that way off overnight. An advanced objective which we didn't achieve was - could there be a way for us to get to content?

"We used to say, 'that's the dream'. If you can see what they are communicating about then that wrestles that advantage back to law enforcement.''

Just a few weeks later came the breakthrough they'd been waiting for.

https://www.couriermail.com.au//news/national/part-1-how-australian-federal-police-and-the-fbi-busted-organised-criminals-on-AN0M-app/news-story/bca13688529774462c5f450ca5662d78

#13855175 at 2021-06-08 08:10:45 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #16 - INFILTRATION NOT INVASION Edition

>>13855171

2/3

The FBI already had a suitable device in the final stages of development and testing, known as AN0M.

But it was the Aussies who believed they could give it the magic - the technological ability to, in real time read, hear, and copy the messages as they were sent.

The pair returned to Australia and embarked on a plan so wildly ambitious and unorthodox it read like the makings of a movie script.

They were going to work with the FBI on a platform that looked just like any other encrypted device, but better. The FBI would set up a legitimate business to run it. Together, they would plant handsets fitted with a hidden encrypted message app, provide the website which ran it, and the servers to host it.

Their customers would be international drug traffickers, bikies, Mafia figures, Asian crime gangs and South American drug cartels. Then they would use the messages to bring them to justice.

The Operative has worked in accessing and monitoring criminal communications for law enforcement for 16 years, including five with the AFP. Being able to see behind the iron curtain of encrypted communications was the Holy Grail.

"It was a dream of all of us in law enforcement for the past decade,'' the Operative says.

The Investigator believed the stranger-than-fiction plan could work.

"It was highly exciting but I knew that it was going to be a difficult journey," he said.

"We had the best opportunity and no one else in the world had had it. So we were very keen to come back to Australia and sell that idea.''

Neil Gaughan, then the AFP's Assistant Commissioner of Organised Crime, enjoyed walking the floor of the force's Canberra headquarters - it was often when his officers would pitch "ripping" innovations to try to win his backing.

One day the now-Deputy Commissioner Gaughan was buttonholed by The Investigator. "We have got this idea,'' The Investigator said.

THE OBSTACLE BECOMES THE WAY

Ironside became so big and has resulted in so many arrests the AFP needed to call in reinforcements from as far afield as New Zealand to help out the more than 4,000 Aussie officers involved in its busts.

It will dominate courtrooms across Australia for years as a dizzying array of charges ranging from attempted murder to mass drug importations and money-laundering are prosecuted.

But in its early days it lived in a windowless bunker at the AFP headquarters, with The Operative, The Investigator, a superintendent named Rob Nelson who runs the force's digital surveillance collection unit, and an inspirational quote.

The digital surveillance collection unit might sound like a mouthful - but it's the left field, offbeat, no-holds barred ideas factory.

Supt Nelson describes his highly secretive unit as "the AFP's answer to James Bond's Q Branch" and says the team of 60 "happily wear the terms geek and nerd like a badge of honour".

When The Investigator first pitched the idea Gaughan was intrigued, excited - and wary.

"I don't mind taking calculated risks,'' he says.

But he wanted time to think and to get some advice.

This was new territory: police would ostensibly be providing assistance to the criminals by giving them access to AN0M.

(continued)

#13855171 at 2021-06-08 08:09:45 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #16 - INFILTRATION NOT INVASION Edition

>>13855012
Part 1: How Australian Federal Police and the FBI busted organised criminals on AN0M app

This is how the AFP and FBI toppled Mafia, bikies and ethnic gangs from Asia to Albania by executing raids across Australia.

Ellen Whinnett - June 8, 2021

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Plotting the world's most audacious take-down of organised crime required three essential skills: The ability to think like the most devious crook, the smarts to act like the savviest Silicon Valley tech wizard and the good nature to enjoy a beer after a long day at work.

When top-secret Operation Ironside erupted like a volcano into the underworld on Monday the untouchables of crime - Mafia, bikies and a host of ethnic gangs with masters from Asia to Albania - had a police squad the size of a country town burst through their doors across Australia.

They might have been arrested by tooled-up special operations officers brandishing military-style weapons. But they'd been outsmarted by the work of unassuming Australian Federal Police agents armed with an app and a big idea.

Ironside was a genius mix of imagination, nous and patience which started with a savvy AFP digital tech specialist known as The Operative and a relentless and energetic organised crime detective dubbed The Investigator.

Their police work was so devastatingly effective it will be written into crimefighting folklore - but without their real names.

Making prisoners - and fools - of the underworld brings with it enemies who are unlikely to forgive or forget.

THE OPERATIVE AND THE INVESTIGATOR

The clock started ticking on organised crime in Australia in May 2018.

The Operative, a clean cut everyman with world-class tech skills, and The Investigator, whose energy levels are matched only by his encyclopaedic knowledge of organised crime, were working side-by-side with the FBI to kill off Phantom Secure, a Canadian encrypted messaging app which criminals used to communicate safe from the eyes of police.

For Luddites, encryption simply means messages sent from one phone to another are turned into computer code for the journey and can't be unscrambled by police taps. Encryption is the invisibility cloak which has allowed criminals to "go dark" and easily communicate out of reach of police since about 2010.

Just as the technological disruption of Uber brought the taxi industry to its knees by ruining its business model, encryption was a hammer blow to the way crime fighters did their business: The bad guys were now so much harder to catch.

But as The Operative and The Investigator downed a few beers with FBI agents at a bar thousands of kilometres from home, an idea started to take shape.

The two Aussies and their FBI counterparts were entitled to enjoy a few coldies - destroying Phantom Secure was a significant victory and had removed a vital tool used by organised crime.

But as the enormity of what they'd achieved in undermining some of the world's biggest criminal networks sunk in, so did the realisation they could go much further.

"There was a gap in the market,'' The Operative says now.

Criminals had grown to implicitly trust encrypted apps and after the take-down of Phantom Secure wanted an alternative.

What if a new encrypted device could be surreptitiously placed into the hands of criminals desperate for a new way to conduct their drug-trafficking and related nefarious business, the cops wondered?

And what if it wasn't as secure as the crooks thought?

What if the encrypted messages could be decrypted and read in real time?

What if it gave crooks the security of distorting their voices on voice messages - but those voices could be unscrambled and identified?

And, most audaciously, what if law enforcement ran the platform and copied the messages as they were sent?

The Operative and The Investigator's work meetings talking over these possibilities with FBI agents rolled seamlessly into drinks and dinner.

"That's where this conversation started to snowball,'' The Investigator says.

"We said, 'we really think we can make this work'."

(continued)

#13855034 at 2021-06-08 07:10:02 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #16 - INFILTRATION NOT INVASION Edition

>>13855012
Operation Ironside: AFP, FBI take down mafia, bikie members in 'sting of the century'

Dramatic footage has shown the arrests of hundreds of Australians in what's been dubbed the "sting of the century".

Natalie Wolfe and Natalie Brown - JUNE 8, 2021

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Police have revealed new details of what's been dubbed the "sting of the century", including dramatic footage and images of the exact moment they nabbed dozens of suspects as part of a global operation to bring down terrorist groups, mafia organisations and outlaw motorcycle gangs.

Operation Ironside was formed three years ago as a collaboration between the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to bring down underworld figures.

Victoria Police carried out warrants in 52 suburbs. In a statement, officers said the murders of Muhamed Yucel in Keysborough in 2017; Zabi Ezedeyer in Narre Warren in 2017 and Ikenasio Tuivasa in Ravenhall earlier this year had also been potentially linked to persons or information in the operation.

'Significant quantities' of drugs found in NSW

In NSW, investigators executed 33 search warrants, arrested 35 people and seized 27 firearms, more than $800,000 in cash, luxury vehicles worth $1.5 million and "significant quantities" of prohibited drugs - including MDMA, cocaine, ice and cannabis - during the state-based arm of Operation Ironside, police said in a statement.

Officers sized 27 firearms - including two Glock pistols and a 50-calibre sniper rifle - as well as luxury vehicles including a Ferrari, Lamborghini, McLaren and Bentley.

Sting 'a heavy blow against organised crime'

Earlier today, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the Australian Government "has struck a heavy blow against organised crime - not just in this country, but one that will echo around organised crime around the world".

"This is a watershed moment in Australian law enforcement history ... Everything we've been doing has been to keep Australians safe," he told reporters.

Hundreds of alleged offenders were tricked into communicating via AN0M, an encrypted app designed by police.

The app also helped police stop a mass shooting of a family of five, orchestrated by organised crime.

"That particular case will come out later on where they planned on using a machine gun and potentially at a cafe where people would have been no doubt harmed," AFP Commissioner Reece Kershaw said.

"We were able to, with the co-operation of that particular state police force, take out that individual before they were able to do that."

Mr Kershaw said the person planning the mass shooting had been arrested some time ago, however other people allegedly involved were still being investigated.

More than 220 members of Australia's underworld were arrested as part of the nation's largest ever crime sting after they were allegedly caught using the app to plan executions, drug imports and launder money.

Hundreds more were nabbed by police in Europe and the US as authorities conducted sweeping raids across the globe.

The AFP said it had busted 21 murder plots, stopped more than 3000kg of drugs from hitting the streets and seized $35 million in cash.

Mr Kershaw said the organisation had inflicted "maximum damage to serious organised crime".

"With devastating consequences to those who seek to do harm to Australians and Australia's interests, and today, Australia is a safer country because of this unprecedented AFP-led operation," Mr Kershaw added.

More than 4000 law enforcement officers were involved in executing 525 search warrants across Australia.

"Ironside has arrested and charged who we allege are some of the most dangerous criminals to Australia," Mr Kershaw said.

"We allege they are members of outlaw motorcycle gangs, Australian Mafia, Asian crime syndicates and serious and organised crime groups.

"We allege they've been trafficking illicit drugs into Australia at an industrial scale.

"Sadly, criminal gangs are targeting Australia because it is one of the most profitable countries in the world to sell drugs, and for three years, this operation has been covert.

"Australian law enforcement has been arresting and charging alleged offenders and we have prevented tonnes of drugs from coming onshore."

(continued)

#13855016 at 2021-06-08 07:05:32 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #16 - INFILTRATION NOT INVASION Edition

>>13855012

2/2

Federal police Commissioner Reece Kershaw said it was an unprecedented operation that had netted some of Australia's most dangerous criminals.

"We allege they are members of outlaw motorcycle gangs, Australian Mafia, Asian crime syndicates and serious and organised crime groups. We allege they've been trafficking illicit drugs into Australia at an industrial scale," he said.

Worldwide, 9000 law enforcement officials were involved in co-ordinated operations linked to the penetration of AN0M.

Orchestrated by the FBI, AN0M launched a few years ago and recently grew in popularity as an alternative to the Ciphr encrypted network, which has reportedly lost users because of fears among criminals it has also been compromised by authorities.

Encrypted communications have become a pillar of organised crime activity and hampered investigations.

"You take that away, they can't do their business," a senior law enforcement officer told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

Anthony Russo, the FBI's representative at the US embassy in Australia, said global co-operation was necessary to tackle modern organised crime.

"In today's world, crime continues to transverse international borders. The threats we face are too diverse and too complex for any one organisation to tackle alone," he said.

Australian fugitive Hakan Ayik, who has been living in Turkey and is suspected by authorities of being a major facilitator of drug imports into Australia, was viewed as one of the two most influential backers of AN0M.

Commissioner Kershaw publicly advised Ayik on Tuesday to turn himself in because he had inadvertently helped set up a vast number of criminal peers and was now in danger.

"He's essentially set up his own colleagues," Commissioner Kershaw said.

The Herald and Age revealed Ayik's location and new identity in Istanbul in recent days and exposed his suspected role as the founder of the "Aussie Cartel" of organised crime figures wielding major influence over drug importation into Australia.

Rumours about the takedown of one of encrypted communication platforms were spreading in underworld circles on Monday, one source said.

In recent days, AN0M's Facebook, YouTube and Reddit accounts were deleted and key material on its website became unavailable. A chat feature allowing contact with the company had disappeared by Monday evening.

The site previously boasted that AN0M was "hardened" against surveillance and intrusion with "military-grade" encryption. People could send messages and share files contained entirely within the app.

It also offered the ability to "sanitise" or wipe data if a device was seized by authorities.

"Deleted data cannot be recovered through forensic examination," the site said.

The organisation said it was based in Panama and would only respond to law enforcement inquiries in that jurisdiction.

But the network was being monitored by law enforcement the whole time even as it became more popular.

AN0M and Ciphr followed Phantom Secure, a pioneering network that used specially modified phones and was used enthusiastically by organised crime. It was shut down in 2018.

European media also reported in March that another secure platform used by criminals, Sky ECC, had been compromised by law enforcement.

https://www.theage.com.au/national/mass-raids-arrests-across-australia-after-police-sting-dismantles-encrypted-app-used-by-criminals-20210607-p57yya.html

#13855012 at 2021-06-08 07:03:53 (UTC+1)
Q Research AUSTRALIA #16 - INFILTRATION NOT INVASION Edition

Organised crime dealt 'heavy blow', says PM, after global police sting cracks open 'encrypted' app

Fergus Hunter - June 8, 2021

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Prime Minister Scott Morrison says organised crime has been dealt a heavy blow after a global law enforcement operation yielded mass raids and arrests using intelligence from a compromised encrypted communications app relied on by senior underworld figures.

The ambitious operation used AN0M - an encrypted service developed as an alternative to the Ciphr network and others favoured by criminals worldwide - to covertly monitor a vast trove of communications about the global drug trade and other illegal activities.

Overall, the operation led to more than 220 people being arrested on 526 charges across Australia, while 3.7 tonnes of drugs, 104 weapons and $45 million in cash were allegedly seized in the operation involving more than 4000 police officers.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the operation, codenamed Ironside, was a "heavy blow" against organised crime, which has used encrypted communications to hamper authorities since the rise of the technology in recent years.

"The operation puts Australia at the forefront of the fight against criminals who peddle in misery and, ultimately, it will keep our communities and Australians safe," Mr Morrison said.

From 2018, the FBI was covertly in control of AN0M and Australian police introduced the technical ability to decrypt communications on the platform and monitor them for years. The surveillance yielded enormously valuable intelligence for years before the platform was completely shut down on Tuesday.

The app, which was installed on a specially modified Google Pixel phone, was introduced to key organised crime figures by undercover police operatives. Those figures were then used to promote and distribute the platform to the underworld and helped grow its user base significantly.

Police say there were about 12,500 users globally on the platform and about 1100 active users in Australia.

The users, who police say were exclusively using it for criminal activity, trusted the platform and did not use code in their communications. They were brazen and detailed about their activities, even sharing photos with drug shipments.

From 2019 onwards, the Australian Federal Police discreetly used intelligence from the surveillance of millions of messages to help disrupt criminal activities and make about 100 arrests. State and territory police often carried out the arrests and raids, acting on the federal police tips, even if they did not know its origins in the higly sensitive AN0M operation.

State police officers provided significant and long-term support to federal authorities during the operation and much of the activity on Monday and Tuesday, as the initiative came to a head, was in NSW.

Australia's contribution to the operation was enabled by the powerful TOLA Act introduced by the government in 2018, which targeted encrypted communications.

Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews called it "the most significant policing operation in Australian history".

(continued)