A lawyer at an appeal against the National Crime Agency’s (NCA’s) use of data from French police’s hack of the EncroChat encrypted phone network has accused the NCA of having a “closed mind” when it applied for a warrant in March 2020.
The Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) is hearing a three-day appeal against the granting of a Targeted Equipment Interference (TEI) warrant, which the NCA obtained on March 25, 2020, in order to access up to 9,000 EncroChat devices in the UK and investigate the owners of those devices.
Lawyers for 10 individuals targeted say the NCA knew the French gendarmerie’s hack of EncroChat, known as Operation Emma, was a live intercept—something the NCA deny—and should have requested a Targeted Interception (TI) warrant but it would not have allowed the evidence from the encrypted devices to be used in an English or Welsh court….