Tag Archive for: lawyers

French Supreme Court rejects EncroChat verdict after lawyers question secrecy over hacking operation

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France’s Supreme Court has referred a criminal case that relies on evidence from the hacked EncroChat encrypted phone network back to the court of appeal after finding that prosecutors failed to disclose sufficient information about the hacking operation.

The Cour de Cassation in Paris found that French investigators and prosecutors had failed to supply a certificate to authenticate intercepted phone data and messages obtained from EncroChat phones as required by French law. There was also an absence of technical data about the hacking operation, the court found.

French police and prosecutors refused to disclose how a joint Dutch and French operation to hack EncroChat, which led to thousands of arrests of suspected organised criminals around the world, was undertaken – citing defence secrecy.

Defence lawyer Robin Binsard, co-founder of law firm Binsard Martine, which took the case to the Supreme Court, said last night that the case would be re-heard by the court of appeal to determine whether adequate legal guarantees were in place.

“The Supreme Court stated that, in the absence of a certificate of truthfulness, the evidence covered by defence secrecy could not be legal. The case will be sent to another court to see if the certificate exists. In the meantime, there is no guarantee of validity of evidence from EncroChat,” he wrote on Twitter.

“The Supreme Court stated that in the absence of a certificate of truthfulness, the evidence covered by defence secrecy could not be legal. The case will be sent to another court to see if the certificate exists. In the meantime, there is no guarantee of validity of evidence from EncroChat”

Robin Binsard, Binsard Martine

The hearing follows an operation by French cyber experts to harvest 120 million messages from EncroChat phone users in multiple countries, in a novel interception operation that provided a rich source of intelligence and evidence on the activities of criminal groups in 2020.

In the UK, the National Crime Agency (NCA), working with regional organised crime units, the Metropolitan Police and other law enforcement agencies, made more than 2,600 EncroChat-related arrests using the French data by…

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Clinton lawyer’s indictment reveals ‘bag of tricks’

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The 26-page indictment of former cybersecurity attorney and Hillary ClintonHillary Diane Rodham ClintonAttorney charged in Durham investigation pleads not guilty Attorney indicted on charge of lying to FBI as part of Durham investigation Durham seeking indictment of lawyer with ties to Democrats: reports MORE campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann by special counsel John DurhamJohn DurhamAttorney charged in Durham investigation pleads not guilty Attorney indicted on charge of lying to FBI as part of Durham investigation Durham seeking indictment of lawyer with ties to Democrats: reports MORE is as detailed as it is damning on the alleged effort to push a false Russia collusion claim before the 2016 presidential campaign. One line, however, seems to reverberate for those of us who have followed this scandal for years now: “You do realize that we will have to expose every trick we have in our bag.”

That warning from an unnamed “university researcher” captures the most fascinating aspect of the indictment in describing a type of Nixonian dirty tricks operation run by — or at least billed to — the Clinton campaign. With Nixon, his personal attorney and the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) paid for operatives to engage in disruptive and ultimately criminal conduct targeting his opponents. With Clinton, the indictment and prior disclosures suggest that Clinton campaign lawyers at the law firm of Perkins Coie helped organize an effort to spread Russia collusion stories and trigger an investigation.

Durham accuses Sussmann of lying to the general counsel of the FBI in September 2016 when Sussmann delivered documents and data to the FBI supposedly supporting a claim that Russia’s Alpha Bank was used as a direct conduit between former President TrumpDonald TrumpOvernight Defense & National Security — The Pentagon’s deadly mistake Overnight Energy & Environment — Presented by Climate Power — Interior returns BLM HQ to Washington France pulls ambassadors to US, Australia in protest of submarine deal MORE‘s campaign and the Kremlin. According to Durham, Sussman told the FBI general counsel that he was not delivering the information on behalf of any client….

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Human rights lawyers ask Australia’s ‘hacking’ Bill be redrafted

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Human Rights Law Centre and the Law Council of Australia have asked that the federal government redraft the Surveillance Legislation Amendment (Identify and Disrupt) Bill 2020, calling its contents “particularly egregious” and “so broad”.

The Bill, if passed, would hand the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) three new computer warrants for dealing with online crime.

“Sweeping state surveillance capacity stands in stark contrast to the core values that liberal democracies like Australia hold dear,” Human Rights Law Centre senior lawyer Kieran Pender declared to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) on Wednesday.

“In the past two decades, the surveillance capabilities of Australian law enforcement and intelligence have rapidly expanded, every increase in state surveillance imposes a democratic cost.”

According to Pender, each time further surveillance powers are contemplated, three questions should be asked: Are the proposed powers strictly necessary, carefully contained, and fully justified.

“We believe that the Bill in its present shape does not satisfy those criteria,” he said.

“While many of the expansions made to surveillance powers in this country in recent years have been troubling, this Bill stands out as particularly egregious because its scope encompasses any and every Australian.”

The first of the warrants is a data disruption one, which according to the Bill’s explanatory memorandum, is intended to be used to prevent “continuation of criminal activity by participants, and be the safest and most expedient option where those participants are in unknown locations or acting under anonymous or false identities”.

The second is a network activity warrant that would allow the AFP and ACIC to collect intelligence from devices that are used, or likely to be used, by those subject to the warrant.

The last warrant is an account takeover warrant that would allow the agencies to take control of an account for the purposes of locking a person out of the account.

“The powers offered by the Bill are extraordinarily intrusive, the explanatory…

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Smashing Security #137: Porn trolling lawyers, Insta hacking, and Ctrl-Alt-LED

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Erection your honour! Lawyers find themselves behind bars after they make porn movies in an attempt to scam internet users, boffins in Israel detail a way to steal data from an air-gapped computer, and Instagram coughs up $ 30,000 after a researcher finds a simple way to hack into anybody’s account.

All this and much more is discussed in the latest edition of the award-winning “Smashing Security” podcast.

Graham Cluley