New South Wales (NSW) Police officers will find encrypted messaging apps such as Telegram, WhatsApp and Signal, along with more obscure ones like Wickr, Wire, and LINE, will no longer operate on their work-issued phones from today, after new security software was uploaded.
It will also stop any encrypted messaging apps being downloaded in future. Around 17,000 officers have also been ordered to remove all communication software from their official phones.
In future, the phones will only provide “secured access to approved ... systems and applications for all users,” a NSW Police spokesperson said.
Officers can now use only SMS, which can be traced and recalled even after they’re deleted.
Damning LECC Report
The move comes after NSW’s Law Enforcement Conduct Commission (LECC) made two findings of serious misconduct against a high-ranking detective after he allegedly left a crash scene in Sydney’s NorthConnex tunnel in 2023 “to avoid being breath-tested.”The second finding related to the officer being deliberately dishonest about his alcohol use in an insurance claim made after the crash, in which he said he “fell asleep” at the wheel.
The LECC said it became apparent during its investigation into the incident that “some officers had adopted the practice of deleting messages, records of messages, and calls from encrypted applications.”
It appeared the practice was “partially instituted” to avoid the need to produce records for the public record, the report alleged, and urged NSW Police to consider whether it was consistent with official policy on keeping records.
It also suggested that guidance be issued on the use of encrypted apps on work phones.
Following the probe, Police Commissioner Karen Webb referred concerns officers were using encrypted messaging services to NSW Police’s Public Affairs Branch.The Operation Harrisdale report, which was released on July 18, made multiple recommendations, but restricting phone use is the only one that has so far been adopted by the commissioner.
NSW Police said its Professional Standards Command was “also currently reviewing other LECC positions and opinions from that same report.”
In 2023, the NSW government, at the behest of police and other law enforcement agencies, introduced new laws targeting the use and possession of encrypted devices utilised by criminals to communicate with one another “for the purposes of evading law enforcement.”
The maximum penalty for the offence is three years imprisonment.
