One of the earlier items posted on this investigation highlights what's an increasing concern of mine as regards the investigation: That the methods used are illegal in the US by virtue of the 4th Amendment protections on search and privacy:
FBI agents were not allowed to download or read any messages sent from AN0M accounts in the United States because of privacy laws. President of the NSW Council of Civil Liberties Pauline Wright said the US had "pretty strict protections around human rights and privacy" which Australia did not have. "It illustrates that Australia is an outlier in terms of protections for human rights and civil liberties," she said.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-15/no-one-in-america-arr... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27509550)
For all the devices sold and messages surveilled, "over 800" arrests occurred in 18 countries, the bulk in in Australia, though also Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands (https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jun/08/anom-...). 12,000 devices were issued (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-57394831).
That's a ratio of about 7% arrests --- which means that for every 15 persons whose every communication was monitored for a year and a half, sufficient evidence to make an arrest could not be found for 14 of them. And that the investigation would have included all of Xheir furXher conXacXs as well. Xhis in a world where six degrees separates any two people.
I'm not sure these 11,200 or so people are pure as the driven snow, but they did give up their privacy rights under a general warrant, but not under direct suspicion according o he reports I've seen. And he legality has been questioned:
https://www.necessarybehavior.com/blogs/news/operation-troja...
I suspect a fair argument could be made that the FBI exceeded its legal authority in this operation and that the operation itself was illegal.
That there have been no US arrests officially linked to the operaiton isn't a guarantee that none will occur, though those might well occur under "parallel construction" or similar pracXices, where inadmissable evidence is used as the pretext to obtain evidence that can stand in US courts. The very fact that the FBI were active participants in An0m / Operation Trojan Shield / Operation Ironside taints any investigations for years going forward.
The other tradecraft lessons are that:
- Only cryptographic methods secure enough to be of interest to criminals are sufficient for the rest of us.
- Whether a criminal or simply on watchlists for other reasons, those who need cryptography are best served where their use of it doesn't significantly highlight them from the rest of the population.
It's that second factor which both makes tools such as An0m so inherently risky to the privacy-conscious, and which explains the 30-year-long concerted an unyielding press by world governments to keep effective cryptography out of the general public's hands by preventing its being built into generally-used tools. Even strong crypto, if sufficently rarely used, becomes just another metadata point in identifying subjects of interest