“The volume[of content] was increasing at a scale and our ability to resource it and monitoring it really wasn’t scalable commensurate to the growth,” Anthony Russo,the FBI’s representative at the US embassy in Australia,told theHerald andThe Age.
Popularity surged in July 2020 when European authorities announced an investigation into another platform,EncroChat,which was dismantled. Before the take-down of another app,Sky Global,in March this year,there were 3000 active users of An0m. This surged to 9000 by May.
This week,the AFP said officers were monitoring 40,000 messages over a fortnight in April 2020 and this had increased to 2.67 million a fortnight by April this year.
Despite the vast trove of valuable intelligence incriminating users,the decision to close the app and go public also took into account the expiration of legal authority enabling access to the data,and “resource fatigue” as hundreds of officers dedicated their lives to the operation.
“You can only protect the source of your intelligence for so long because the longer that goes you increase the risk that the platform becomes compromised,” Mr Russo said. “We made a strategic and deliberate decision to take down the case on our own terms at a time and a place of our choosing.”
The operation has so far led to more than 250 people being arrested on 595 charges across Australia,while three tonnes of drugs,128 weapons and $46 million in cash were allegedly seized in the operation involving more than 4000 police officers.