A National Crime Agency (NCA) officer has denied key facts were deliberately “suppressed” about what discussions took place with French law enforcement in the run-up to the hacking of EncroChat—an encrypted phone network allegedly used by thousands of criminals across Europe—in March 2020.
On Friday, Wayne Johns was cross examined by Stephen Kamlish, KC at an Investigatory Powers Tribunal which is hearing legal challenges by 10 individuals on the use of encrypted conversations by the NCA from EncroChat, which resulted from a hack conducted by French law enforcement.
At the heart of the case are Targeted Equipment Interference (TEI) warrants, which the NCA obtained on March 25, 2020, in order to access up to 9,000 EncroChat devices in the UK and investigate the alleged owners of those devices….