https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/08/nyregion/el-chapo-trial.html
By Alan Feuer
The New York Times
Jan. 8, 2019
In February 2010, an undercover F.B.I. agent met in a Manhattan hotel with a
Colombian info-tech expert who had been the target of a sensitive
investigation. The I.T. specialist, Christian Rodriguez, had recently developed
an extraordinary product: an encrypted communications system for Joaquín Guzmán
Loera, the Mexican drug lord known as El Chapo.
Posing as a Russian mobster, the undercover agent told Mr. Rodriguez he was
interested in acquiring a similar system. He wanted a way -- or so he said --
to talk with his associates without law enforcement listening in.
So began a remarkable clandestine operation that in a little more than a year
allowed the F.B.I. to crack Mr. Guzmán’s covert network and ultimately capture
as many as 200 digital phone calls of him chatting with his underlings,
planning ton-sized drug deals and even discussing illicit payoffs to Mexican
officials. The hours of Mr. Guzmán speaking openly about the innermost details
of his empire not only represented the most damaging evidence introduced so far
at his drug trial in New York, but were also one of the most extensive wiretaps
of a criminal defendant since the Mafia boss John Gotti was secretly recorded
in the Ravenite Social Club.
[...]
--
Subscribe to InfoSec News
https://www.infosecnews.org/subscribe-to-infosec-news/
https://twitter.com/infosecnews_
