
European Police Hacked Secret Phone Network, Used AI for Major Bust - jbegley
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-07-16/european-police-hacked-secret-phone-network-used-ai-for-major-bust
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villgax
Zero mention of any AI technique whatsoever. Bloomberg, everybody.

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andai
Used to filter the millions of intercepted communications.

> According to the Gendarmerie Nationale, investigators had access to more
> than 100 million messages and were able to review, in real time,
> communications over a period of several weeks.

> Europol, the European police coordination agency, set up a joint team to
> process, analyze and share information. It also established a system that
> used artificial intelligence to scan the texts for particular words or
> phrases that might indicate that criminal actions, including murders, were
> being planned, said Wil Van Gemert, Europol’s deputy director of operations.

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toxik
Ah yes substring search, the hallmark of artificial intelligence.

    
    
      select * from messages where text like ‘%bomb%’;
    

Reminds me of that video where the caption goes “they used coding and
algorithms”.

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superhuzza
>Ah yes substring search, the hallmark of artificial intelligence.

I'm guessing they used AI to detect potential code words, or categorize
potential crimes (whether by type, or timing, whatever). Seems like a pretty
good use case to me.

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toxik
Does pattern recognition, even sophisticated pattern recognition, ever
constitute artificial intelligence? It reeks of popsci to me, and makes it out
to be something more than it is.

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netsharc
Assuming competent E2E encryption, but a completely compromised backend, I'm
guessing the cops deployed an app update that took the decrypted chat logs off
the devices and forwarded them discreetly to the cops.

I wonder if the app updater (surely they don't use the Google Play Store)
checks the updates for a valid signature, and whether the developers just
stored the signing key on their compromised backend server.

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crusty
What do you mean - it says right there, they used a "technical device" \- duh.

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ChuckNorris89
Maybe AI for them is some sort of pattern recognition the police used. Not
sure since the article is paywalled.

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cutler
Try Firefox reader.

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andai
Reader mode on Safari worked for me.

