{"id":19541,"date":"2025-07-26T06:37:44","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T04:37:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/26\/operation-dark-phone-murder-by-text-this-jaw-dropping-tale-of-how-police-hacked-gangs-is-like-the-wire\/"},"modified":"2025-07-26T06:37:44","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T04:37:44","slug":"operation-dark-phone-murder-by-text-this-jaw-dropping-tale-of-how-police-hacked-gangs-is-like-the-wire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2025\/07\/26\/operation-dark-phone-murder-by-text-this-jaw-dropping-tale-of-how-police-hacked-gangs-is-like-the-wire\/","title":{"rendered":"Operation Dark Phone: Murder By Text \u2013 this jaw-dropping tale of how police hacked gangs is like The Wire"},"content":{"rendered":"

This docu-drama is cleverly built around the messages intercepted by the National Crime Agency when they penetrated a chat network between criminal organisations. It\u2019s hugely revealing<\/p>\n

Police work rarely resembles The Shield or Line of Duty. It\u2019s mostly paperwork, online training and referring people to driver offender courses. But sometimes life imitates art. In 2020, international police hacked the encrypted phone network EncroChat, used by organised crime gangs across the globe. For 74 days, they had access to every message and picture used to coordinate drug trafficking, money laundering, kidnap and murder. \u201cIt was the LinkedIn of organised crime,\u201d explains Matt Horne, a former gold commander at the UK\u2019s National Crime Agency (not the actor from Gavin & Stacey).<\/p>\n

Operation Dark Phone: Murder By Text (Sunday, 9pm, Channel 4) is a documentary-drama cleverly built around these messages, which appear like screenplay dialogue across scenes. It\u2019s an arresting insight into how criminal gangs work \u2013 and just as revealing, how they talk. \u201cSweets\u201d are bullets, while a \u201cpineapple\u201d is a grenade. A violent British criminal known as Live-long, lying low in Spain, organises an acid attack on a rival, in between sending pictures of his breakfast. Cucumber slices on labneh with paprika \u2013 nice. The trick, he instructs, is to stop the victim getting to a sink. Hold them down a few minutes, so the acid can do its job. Less nice.<\/p>\n

Continue reading…<\/a>
\nThis docu-drama is cleverly built around the messages intercepted by the National Crime Agency when they penetrated a chat network between criminal organisations. It\u2019s hugely revealing
\nPolice work rarely resembles The Shield or Line of Duty. It\u2019s mostly paperwork, online training and referring people to driver offender courses. But sometimes life imitates art. In 2020, international police hacked the encrypted phone network EncroChat, used by organised crime gangs across the globe. For 74 days, they had access to every message and picture used to coordinate drug trafficking, money laundering, kidnap and murder. \u201cIt was the LinkedIn of organised crime,\u201d explains Matt Horne, a former gold commander at the UK\u2019s National Crime Agency (not the actor from Gavin & Stacey).
\nOperation Dark Phone: Murder By Text (Sunday, 9pm, Channel 4) is a documentary-drama cleverly built around these messages, which appear like screenplay dialogue across scenes. It\u2019s an arresting insight into how criminal gangs work \u2013 and just as revealing, how they talk. \u201cSweets\u201d are bullets, while a \u201cpineapple\u201d is a grenade. A violent British criminal known as Live-long, lying low in Spain, organises an acid attack on a rival, in between sending pictures of his breakfast. Cucumber slices on labneh with paprika \u2013 nice. The trick, he instructs, is to stop the victim getting to a sink. Hold them down a few minutes, so the acid can do its job. Less nice. Continue reading…Technology | The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This docu-drama is cleverly built around the messages intercepted by the National Crime Agency when they penetrated a chat network between criminal organisations. It\u2019s hugely revealing Police work rarely resembles The Shield or Line of Duty. It\u2019s mostly paperwork, online training and referring people to driver offender courses. But sometimes life imitates art. In 2020, …<\/p>\n

Operation Dark Phone: Murder By Text \u2013 this jaw-dropping tale of how police hacked gangs is like The Wire<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":19542,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19541"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}