14 DAY TRIAL // The state police started to encounter difficulties in thwarting criminals’ attempts to avoid interception of intelligible communication because of the encryption methods used.
In an annual report regarding wiretapping in 2013, released on Wednesday, law enforcement said that the number of encryption cases they encountered had increased by more than half compared to the previous year.
Although in 2012 they managed to successfully run decryption algorithms in all cases that involved encryption of information in order to have access to plaintext data, in 2013 they failed to do so in a number of nine cases.
“The number of state wiretaps in which encryption was encountered increased from 15 in 2012 to 41 in 2013,” says the report.
This shows that criminals keep up with the technological evolution and tap into more complex forms of data protection. There are various encryption tools publicly available, and working with them does not require special computer knowledge.
In 2013, from January 1 through December 31, the state police was authorized for interception of wire, oral, or electronic communications 3,576 times. Compared to this figure, the amount of cases where encryption was used is quite small.
However, with more and more encryption tools becoming available to the average user, it is safe to assume that law enforcement may record a higher number of cases where privacy protection instruments are used for criminal activities.
Developing stronger encryption for the regular user could also mean that the police may find it more difficult to gain access to plain text information through the current investigative means.
Wiretaps were functional for an average period of 40 days, and the one with the most intercepts was in the Northern District of Illinois, used for a drug investigation that gathered 136,378 messages over 90 days. 36,244 of the interceptions were incriminating.
The total cost of the intercepts decreased in 2013 by 18%, according to the report, and the amount spent on the devices was $41,119 / €30,226. “The expenditures noted reflect the cost of installing intercept devices and monitoring communications for the 2,069 authorizations for which reports included cost data.”
Drug offenses were the most dominant type of activity for which wiretaps were authorized in 2013. Money laundering and smuggling came in second “and was specified as the most serious offense in approximately 4 percent of applications.” In 4% of the wiretaps, the crime investigated was homicide.