WHY GANGSTERS LOVE THEIR BLACKBERRYS

Encryption Features Make The Devices Tough To Wiretap, Mounties Warn

Police often say that organized crime in B.C. is big business.

So perhaps it was only a matter of time before gangsters here adopted
the device of choice among corporate workaholics: the BlackBerry.

The device has become so popular among B.C. gang members that an
internal RCMP "threat assessment" on organized crime produced this
year devotes an entire section to the device.

"It's something we've seen increasing over the last three to four
years," Staff Sgt. Bruce Imrie, head of the RCMP's Vancouver
Integrated Technological Crime Unit, said in an interview.

And that poses a big challenge for law enforcement, because
encryption and security features make the devices much harder to
wiretap than land lines or cellphones.

"The BlackBerry [server] was created with corporate data security in
mind," states the RCMP report, obtained by The Vancouver Sun through
the Access to Information Act. "Until recently, this system was only
affordable by companies such as Telus, CIBC, and the like; they are
now more affordable and it is easy for individuals to set up a network."

Imrie confirmed when police get a warrant for a criminal's BlackBerry
messages it can be difficult to intercept them.

"The use of BlackBerrys may allow them to circumvent lawful access
.. [with] the encryption involved in the transmission," said Imrie.

Even when police confiscate a criminal's actual BlackBerry, he said,
cracking its password to view the messages stored on it can be a challenge.

BlackBerrys are most popular among a gang's highest-ranking members,
said Imrie.

"Your general street-level criminal doing organized shoplifting is
not as likely to have a BlackBerry as your high-end drug trafficker,"
he said. "[And] depending on the sophistication of the criminal
organization, the use of the BlackBerry seems to increase."

However, as BlackBerrys become more affordable, that distinction is
starting to blur, he said, with the devices becoming more prevalent
among all types of criminals.

RCMP Insp. Gary Shinkaruk, head of biker gang investigations in B.C.,
said BlackBerrys are "extremely common" among the criminals his unit
investigates.

"For a lot of groups, it's standard practice," he said. "It's not
uncommon for targets of ours to have numerous BlackBerrys."

Research In Motion, the Canadian company that makes the BlackBerry,
did not respond to a request from The Sun to comment on its security measures.

However in June, Scott Totzke, RIM's vice-president of global
security, told The Times of London that its encryption is virtually
unbreakable.

"Every message that is sent via a BlackBerry is broken up into 2Kb
[kilobyte] packets of information, each of which is given a 256-bit
key by the BlackBerry server," said Totzke. "That means to release
the contents of a 10Kb e-mail, a person would have to crack five
separate keys, and each one would take about as long as it would for
the sun to burn out -- billion of years."

The 500-page RCMP report, titled the Integrated Threat Assessment on
Organized Crime, is produced each year.

The copy released to The Sun was heavily edited, with the RCMP
deleting many sections for security reasons.

According to the report, the fastest-growing type of criminal
organization in B.C. is "independent" gangs -- which have risen from
11 in 2004 to 49 in 2007.

The report states these non-traditional gangs, often made up of
people from different ethnic backgrounds, often work for other gangs
on a temporary basis.

Biker gangs are the second-largest type, with 33 identified groups,
followed by Asian gangs, at 21, and Indo-Canadian gangs at 12.

The total number of gangs in B.C. has risen steadily over the past
four years, from just 51 in 2003 to 129 in 2007.

However, the report notes this may be due to police doing a better
job of identifying them rather than an actual increase.

Over that same period, the report notes, the number of gang- and
drug-related homicides -- a good indicator of total gang activity --
has remained relatively stable at about 30 a year.

"These data suggest that if violent dispute-resolution is a common
feature of organized crime, the landscape for this criminal activity
has remained relatively constant," the report states.