>Le Roux admitted that he had created the encryption software E4M but denied that he had developed TrueCrypt, its famous progeny.
To me the picture that is being painted is that Truecrypt was a project funded by criminals and maintained by people associated with organised crime.
Yet we still don't know what happened in 2014 that ended the project and the circumstances in how they 'gassed' their canary. Was it something to do with Le Roux's informing? Was it connected to the Snowden revelations?
It was ridiculous that the author even brought it up. The privacy-aware and technologist audiences will be smart enough to see that he in no way connected Le Roux to Truecrypt in the whole series. The others will mentally connect "mass murdering, drug lord" to "Truecrypt" due to repetition. This image will be the one they hear the likes of Comey say in public media where encryption is the tool of thugs and must be backdoored/squashed. The author is doing a disservice to both Truecrypt and encryption in general by constantly trying to tie it in.
It should've been mentioned in the beginning with his E4M work and then later in the follow-up question. That's it unless the author has more evidence with a solid or highly-probable tie-in to Truecrypt.
What do you mean? It was explained on part 2 that the code for TrueCrypt was built on top of E4M.
"I asked him what he meant, and Hafner told me that in the middle of the development work for DriveCrypt, he discovered that Le Roux was still working on E4M and had incorporated some of his work for SecurStar into his personal project.
(...)
In 2004, a group of anonymous developers did exactly what Hafner had feared: They released a new and powerful, free file-encryption program, called TrueCrypt, built on the code for E4M. “TrueCrypt is based on (and might be considered a sequel to)” E4M, a release announcement stated."
This whole thing just seems off to me. LeRoux was the guy they wanted, he was the boss, the mastermind, the guy who ordered all the murders, set up the operations. It makes no sense why the Gov. would give him a deal to get all the guys under him, when they already had the Kingpin in their custody! Normally cops work the lower level guys to get to the Kingpin. In this case they took a top down approach, which seems off to me.
Also, the sting operation on Hunter's crew is a classic example of entrapment. Lured by big money, and egged on by LeRoux, it looks like Hunter's crew was lead into this, and they went along with whatever LeRoux told them to do. It would be relatively easy to say these guys would not have ever done any of what their accused of without LeRoux's involvement.
They turned a high volume illicit prescription drug seller case in to multiple arrests of hitmen. We also don't know what, if any, deal he has been offered. That seems like it was probably a great score for the DOJ.
Keep in mind, a lot of the crimes we've read about in this story are himself, a non-US citizen not in the US, doing things with/to non-US citizens not in the US. I imagine the prosecutors are fare less concerned about a South African living in The Philippines having a Filipino killed than they are with the fact that the killers were brought in from the US.
Why just take the head of the fish? Take the rest of the body, and by association it'll have the largest flow on effect. With LeRoux out of the scene, it's not like everyone else will just suddenly stop.
It's hard to know what the government is really thinking. Consider Silk Road 2: whatever happened to the guy running it, Blake Benthall? He vanished into government custody in late 2014 and nothing since.
Readit News
To me the picture that is being painted is that Truecrypt was a project funded by criminals and maintained by people associated with organised crime.
Yet we still don't know what happened in 2014 that ended the project and the circumstances in how they 'gassed' their canary. Was it something to do with Le Roux's informing? Was it connected to the Snowden revelations?
It should've been mentioned in the beginning with his E4M work and then later in the follow-up question. That's it unless the author has more evidence with a solid or highly-probable tie-in to Truecrypt.
"I asked him what he meant, and Hafner told me that in the middle of the development work for DriveCrypt, he discovered that Le Roux was still working on E4M and had incorporated some of his work for SecurStar into his personal project. (...) In 2004, a group of anonymous developers did exactly what Hafner had feared: They released a new and powerful, free file-encryption program, called TrueCrypt, built on the code for E4M. “TrueCrypt is based on (and might be considered a sequel to)” E4M, a release announcement stated."
In: https://mastermind.atavist.com/he-always-had-a-dark-side
Also, the sting operation on Hunter's crew is a classic example of entrapment. Lured by big money, and egged on by LeRoux, it looks like Hunter's crew was lead into this, and they went along with whatever LeRoux told them to do. It would be relatively easy to say these guys would not have ever done any of what their accused of without LeRoux's involvement.
Again, this seems completely backwards to me.
Keep in mind, a lot of the crimes we've read about in this story are himself, a non-US citizen not in the US, doing things with/to non-US citizens not in the US. I imagine the prosecutors are fare less concerned about a South African living in The Philippines having a Filipino killed than they are with the fact that the killers were brought in from the US.