merelygifted:

Belgian, Dutch and French police ‘looked over shoulders’ of gangs after hacking Sky EEC network

Police in Belgium and the Netherlands have arrested at least 80 people and carried out hundreds of raids after shutting down an encrypted phone network used by organised crime groups.

Belgian, Dutch and French police said they had hacked into the Sky ECC network, allowing them to look “over the shoulders” of suspects as they communicated with customised devices to plot drug deals and murders.

“During an action day on Tuesday … numerous house searches and seizures were made in Belgium and the Netherlands,” Europol and its judicial twin agency, Eurojust, said in a statement.

In France, law officials have identified about 2,000 users of Sky ECC “allowing for procedures to be opened relating to large-scale drug operations and attacks on people,” the Paris prosecutor said. “The network we are dealing with seems to be almost exclusively used by large-scale criminals.” …