Arabic version: تطبيقات مشفّرة تؤجّج المخاوف بشأن جرائم القتل المأجورة في سيدني
According to The Guardian, Sydney police and organised-crime sources are raising concerns that encrypted apps are helping recruit young, inexperienced people for contract violence. Police have dubbed the arrangement “crimetasker”, in which underworld figures post jobs and people accept work without knowing those commissioning it or the intended target.
The model differs from traditional gangland hits, where professional crews supplied their own firearms, vehicles and connections. In the newer arrangement, the person offering the contract may provide stolen cars, guns, communications, intelligence and payment, while the recruited crew carries out the shooting. Contracts can be worth from tens of thousands of dollars into the millions.
Electrician Joshua Macdonald was killed in a shooting at Merrylands West, while 23-year-old biomedical engineering student Marco Tapia was shot dead in his bed during a Glen Alpine home invasion. Police said neither man had links to organised crime. The cases were the second mistaken-identity underworld hit in Sydney in as many days, and as many as six such deaths have occurred in the city since the start of last year.
NSW police commissioner Mal Lanyon said young people were being recruited through encrypted communications, including by people based offshore. Police minister Yasmin Catley said 800 people had been arrested by the taskforce dealing with gang violence in the past year, while acting premier Prue Car said organised crime groups were involving vulnerable children for small sums of money to commit violent crimes.
At a parliamentary committee hearing on 28 August, NSW police deputy commissioner Scott Cook said there had been 50 organised-crime public-place shootings that year to that point, all but two in metropolitan Sydney. He said organised crime in New South Wales often had a global nexus, and that the use of telecommunications by networks across the world created a major challenge for investigators.
