How a Secretive Phone Company Helped the Crime World Go Dark

[DGUtley]

How a Secretive Phone Company Helped the Crime World Go Dark. - Vince Ramos wanted Phantom Secure to be the Uber of privacy-focused, luxury-branded phones—flood the market with devices, and sort out the law later. Then the FBI investigated him.

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Everyone crammed into the Las Vegas hotel suite was asleep except for Vince Ramos. The Wynn luxury hotel, with its indoor gardens, seafood restaurants, and extravagant shopping, had been this group's world for the past few days, with law enforcement officials from the U.S., Canada, and Australia grilling Ramos. Four or five officials lay down after another session of questioning their suspect.

His trip to Vegas had been a setup. He’d travelled to meet an associate as part of his multi-million dollar business, selling encrypted phones under the brand name Phantom Secure. Phantom's customized BlackBerry phones used dedicated software designed to make an ordinary wiretap impossible. The associate and Ramos planned to attend a fight in Vegas. But instead the FBI were waiting and cornered Ramos, dangling charges above his head usually reserved for taking down mob bosses. Biker gangs in Australia, drug traffickers in California, and even members of the Sinaloa Cartel all used Phantom's phones. Rather than treat Phantom as an innocent third party to crime like Apple or Google when criminals use phones made by those companies, authorities said Ramos himself was part of criminal conspiracies. The agents had Ramos on tape suggesting he made the phones to help drug smugglers. On the other side of that hotel room door, when the agents finally stopped asking their questions, there was likely a long prison sentence.

But with the agents asleep, Ramos saw an opening. He slipped out into the corridor without waking his captors. Ramos walked to his wife's room and said goodbye. He had a chance to get up to Washington state and cross the border back to his home in Canada. He headed downstairs, moved through the boiler area and basement, and left the hotel. Embarrassingly for the agents still in the suite, the person they had been hunting for years had just walked away.

This is his story: https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7m4...phantom-secure

[Peter1469]

The Blackphone is suppose to be secure as well.

[Lummy]

All the non-phone functions of smart phones aside, the capability for private phone conversations was greatly desired in landlines back in the 1950's by regular old people, and having a private line was a status symbol. I remember when you'd have to wait for another person on the line to hang up before you could make a call.

My head exists back in that time of mutually assured privacy and always will. Now privacy is just a game to be conquered. I am nowhere near able to wrap my head around what technological advances need be developed just to realize what was once standard.

This gross intrusion by technology and its technocrats into human affairs is literally reshaping human psyche, I think, and it isn't good. It is, I think, evil.

[Lummy]

Greed has redefined privacy, once just about sacrosanct, as something that is bad. Humanness is being crushed by technology.

The only reason is because they can't do anything about it anyway, and it's just too cool.

[Dr. Who]

How a Secretive Phone Company Helped the Crime World Go Dark. - Vince Ramos wanted Phantom Secure to be the Uber of privacy-focused, luxury-branded phones—flood the market with devices, and sort out the law later. Then the FBI investigated him.

Attachment 32138

Everyone crammed into the Las Vegas hotel suite was asleep except for Vince Ramos. The Wynn luxury hotel, with its indoor gardens, seafood restaurants, and extravagant shopping, had been this group's world for the past few days, with law enforcement officials from the U.S., Canada, and Australia grilling Ramos. Four or five officials lay down after another session of questioning their suspect.

His trip to Vegas had been a setup. He’d travelled to meet an associate as part of his multi-million dollar business, selling encrypted phones under the brand name Phantom Secure. Phantom's customized BlackBerry phones used dedicated software designed to make an ordinary wiretap impossible. The associate and Ramos planned to attend a fight in Vegas. But instead the FBI were waiting and cornered Ramos, dangling charges above his head usually reserved for taking down mob bosses. Biker gangs in Australia, drug traffickers in California, and even members of the Sinaloa Cartel all used Phantom's phones. Rather than treat Phantom as an innocent third party to crime like Apple or Google when criminals use phones made by those companies, authorities said Ramos himself was part of criminal conspiracies. The agents had Ramos on tape suggesting he made the phones to help drug smugglers. On the other side of that hotel room door, when the agents finally stopped asking their questions, there was likely a long prison sentence.

But with the agents asleep, Ramos saw an opening. He slipped out into the corridor without waking his captors. Ramos walked to his wife's room and said goodbye. He had a chance to get up to Washington state and cross the border back to his home in Canada. He headed downstairs, moved through the boiler area and basement, and left the hotel. Embarrassingly for the agents still in the suite, the person they had been hunting for years had just walked away.

This is his story: https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7m4...phantom-secure

How dare anyone produce an actual secure phone! The right to privacy is now clearly against the law. I wonder why the firearms industry isn't also indicted and convicted of racketeering conspiracy - after all, their products are also of benefit to criminals, as are many motor vehicles and in particular those that are made to be bullet proof. I'm sure if one tried, one could find all manner of products that are used to facilitate crime, even though that was not the intent for their development. Industrial espionage is a major issue, yet when someone builds a better mousetrap that would help defeat the industrial spies, he ends up with a 9-year prison sentence.

[DGUtley]

I still have a land line b/c it still requires a warrant.