PJ Vogt

Typically, when someone in an organized crime group flips, the best-case scenario is that the informant might lead you to the head of the group they belong to.

But here, entire networks could be exposed.

Akon Iyik, the Australian drug kingpin, for instance.

You could get him.

You could get his underlings.

But his phone might also connect you to the head of the Comancheros, a totally different criminal organization.

He was tight with them.

If you controlled the phones, if you controlled them entirely, you might wrap up entire criminal social networks.

So then what does it look like, AFKU and the FBI building a phone network for criminals?

What's the process?

American law enforcement found themselves in a strange predicament.

The FBI employs a lot of smart people, but presumably few who know how to program a new smartphone.

So now they were outsourcing the work to these coders who were in the dark about the actual mission.

And so these remote coders who are building this, I mean, it's funny, it's like one of those, the Russian nesting dolls, because theoretically the company is saying they're a phone company, but they're really a phone company for criminals, but they're really a phone company to catch criminals.

Who do these coders think they're working for and what do they think they're making?

And whose idea is this?

Like, who has the audacious idea to try this?

It's easy to imagine the downsides of a plan like this.

Law enforcement running a bespoke phone network.

A Verizon, but for people who sell heroin by the shipping container and murder the people who wrong them.