ANoM: The app that spied on crooks

It was a Friday night when Federal Police contacted their Victorian counterparts with an urgent message. A shooting had been ordered by an overseas bikie boss to be carried at a Melbourne fight night.

The planning was so detailed police moved in to seize two stolen cars to be used by the hit team, cloned plates, and guns. Someone is walking around today unaware they are alive because cops unscrambled the encrypted message.

What the arresting officers didn’t know is the original tip didn’t come from an informer but something much more reliable.

As part of an international police sting over three years police had monitored 27 million encrypted messages from crooks from 300 cartels using a purpose-built app called ANoM.

The app had been built with a trap door for police and spread through the world enabling police to monitor criminals in Australia, US, Europe, Asia and South America,  

In the end police made more than 1000 arrests with more than 200 in Australia alone.

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