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Cheese photo leads to Liverpool drug dealer's downfall

bbc.co.uk

11–20 of 208 posts

Re: Cheese photo leads to Liverpool drug dealer's downfall

#13

In reality, the police were likely violating his rights and doing some good old fashioned parallel construction. They had his prints from his products, knew who he was already, waited until they watched him post a picture of cheese, then claimed it was only the picture that caused him to be caught. This is a clear change in police methods, enabled by tech, and an abuse of your constitutional rights if this was a U.S.…

A major dealer in Liverpool is almost certainly someone who has his prints on file for previous crimes. They'll have suspected that account was him for a while but didn't have reasonable grounds, this photo clearly convinced someone it gave them that.

But sure, let's take talking points from another country and apply it here too to get angry because question mark

Re: Cheese photo leads to Liverpool drug dealer's downfall

#14

In reality, the police were likely violating his rights and doing some good old fashioned parallel construction. They had his prints from his products, knew who he was already, waited until they watched him post a picture of cheese, then claimed it was only the picture that caused him to be caught. This is a clear change in police methods, enabled by tech, and an abuse of your constitutional rights if this was a U.S.…

IMHO the concept of "parallel construction" is mostly an USA specific thing because USA legal doctrine is heavy on fourth amendment application and "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine that can make evidence inadmissible depending on how it was obtained. But all those things and rights are specific to USA, not in general, and not even for other common law countries.

As far as I understand, such "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine is not applied in UK, as long as the evidence is believed to be true, it would generally be admissible in court even if it was obtained through e.g. mass warrantless wiretapping, so if they knew who he was already, they could and would have just gone ahead and there would be no need to put in the effort for some parallel construction.

Re: Cheese photo leads to Liverpool drug dealer's downfall

#15

In reality, the police were likely violating his rights and doing some good old fashioned parallel construction. They had his prints from his products, knew who he was already, waited until they watched him post a picture of cheese, then claimed it was only the picture that caused him to be caught. This is a clear change in police methods, enabled by tech, and an abuse of your constitutional rights if this was a U.S.…

Nope this is all from the compromise of Encrochat. There have been dozens of stories about the pseudonymous users of that service being linked back to real identities since the initial first large wave of arrests Sometimes you don’t need crazy parallel construction theories - just a simple criminal network cracked because the participants believed it to be secure

Right, it seems like he was discussing criminal activity on Encrochat, posted his fingerprints in the picture, and the Police must have had his prints on file from previous incidents. No rights violations required, not that such rights would apply in the UK anyway but that's a different issue.

Re: Cheese photo leads to Liverpool drug dealer's downfall

#16

In reality, the police were likely violating his rights and doing some good old fashioned parallel construction. They had his prints from his products, knew who he was already, waited until they watched him post a picture of cheese, then claimed it was only the picture that caused him to be caught. This is a clear change in police methods, enabled by tech, and an abuse of your constitutional rights if this was a U.S.…

I don't think there is a fruit of the poisonous tree doctrine in UK.

Of course there might be other reasons not to admit to illegally obtained evidence.

Re: Cheese photo leads to Liverpool drug dealer's downfall

#18

In reality, the police were likely violating his rights and doing some good old fashioned parallel construction. They had his prints from his products, knew who he was already, waited until they watched him post a picture of cheese, then claimed it was only the picture that caused him to be caught. This is a clear change in police methods, enabled by tech, and an abuse of your constitutional rights if this was a U.S.…

Similar to how companies "don't discriminate" when hiring or firing.

Re: Cheese photo leads to Liverpool drug dealer's downfall

#19
post #7

This is a very good example of showing that decentralized anonymous communication channels of any type are not enough to ensure free speech. I'm not saying that this particular example has anything to do with free speech, but it does show that you can not speak freely even over encrypted anonymous channels. You can still easily be doxed. We can not rely on any technology to ensure freedom of speech. We need to engend…

No amount of technology will keep you anonymous if you freely post details that identify you. This example is just poor opsec. He might as well have posted a picture of his driver's license! Just like that guy who posted the exact GPS coordinates of his terrorist camp.

Re: Cheese photo leads to Liverpool drug dealer's downfall

#20
https://www.merseyside.police.uk/news/merseyside/news/2021/m... is the police source for the news. The fella pleaded guilty, so (I guess?) the rest of the evidence didn't have to be revealed in court.

Of interest is that Liverpool police arrested 60 people because of the Encrochat "hack" for selling drugs and weapons. I imagine some of those would be customers, but I imagine a few hundred would have been arrested across the country.

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