Blackberry’s biggest clients were governments and corporates; it was when they tried to rebrand the kit as chav-phones that they went titsup (in any case the security was overpowered by folk at the BT research centre near me under the guise that RIM had infringed some of BTs patents; what they found was then developed into kit the Old Bill have (at least Suffolk, Essex and Metpol) that they can use to go through every last bit of memory in a persons phone without this being detected; and thus unearth the useful metadata, call data records etc.
big corporates and public service organisations use encryption only for basic security; its main use is not to hide things but to confirm the sender is who they say they are and not someone impersonating them. When I worked in public service my emails had a PGP key in the header but were actually sent in clear text – the key was only used to authentication. This concept was thought up by the Germans in the late 20th century as they assessed why they lost a war when they in fact had better technology and resources than their adversaries.
The saddest part of this is I am not surprised if this chap is being truthful but has got into a situation where he decides taking this risk is a good idea (could simply be doing too much coke). BTW telephone numbers in both UK and NL are issued by the Communications Ministries (Ofcom UK / Agentschap Telecom NL ) so the government knows exactly which providers have them and thus can work out where the devices are being used. GSM mobiles (whether or not they are 3G/smartphones always exchange location data with the base stations; they would not work otherwise)
Currently MIVD and GCHQ as well as NCA and the 4 or 5 different kinds of “feds” in the Netherlands may well be genuinely “looking the other way” because they have to; as extremists who don’t do drugs are posing far more threat to the entire world than those who do (I wouldn’t be surprised if their sudden change of policy to tolerate poppy and hashish growing towards the end of the war was why the Taliban are now seen as chilled out compared to IS!)
However this situation is unlikely to continue; even less so if someone is openly trying to sell kilos of hard drugs on a forum that seems to attract a lot of teenagers desperate for hedonism and instant gratification. It may be better for folk to waste their time here than in a prison cell…
