Niall Donald

It's from August the 1st to September

the 17th, 2024.

And so that is the period around which there was a hack into an encrypted network called the Ghost Network.

And so we can surmise that those two things are connected.

Yeah, obviously the charge of directing or controlling the criminal gang can carry a potential life sentence.

We have seen other people brought before the courts on discharge, but it isn't, you know, it's not everybody that gets charged with that offence.

So the ghost, the hack into the ghost network is, was a multi-police organisation, basically coordinated with

police in Australia primarily, where this network was based.

Unlike EncoChat and the Sky ECC network, this was a much, much smaller network.

EncoChat, as we've spoken about before, basically people would use a handset and they'd have an app and they could get, they could

They could send messages through the network in that way.

The ghost network was slightly different.

You had to buy the handset from an IT person.

AnchorChat, I can't remember the number, but it was tens of thousands, where the ghost network was much smaller and only operated in a number of countries.

The two main countries were Australia and Ireland.

The person accused of controlling the ghost network was a kind of, I think he was actually described in court proceedings as a computer geek, believe it or not.

But he was a guy living with his parents, you know, who are sort of Chinese, of Chinese origin, living in Australia, who ran a dry cleaning business.

But basically the messages sent on this network were monitored over a period of time by police forces and they would subsequently say that it showed the importation and distribution of drugs.

And while we have heard of anchor chat in some Irish cases or cases involving Irish criminals such as people like Padder Keating and Liam Byrne,

We haven't, in this country, brought cases to do with a live hack of an encrypted network.