Talk:Operation Trojan Shield

This article is written in Australian English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, realise, program, labour (but Labor Party)) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

A news item involving Operation Trojan Shield was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the In the news section on 9 June 2021.

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I'd like to suggest that this article deal with the communication platform. The sting operation should be a separate article. Thoughts? Schwede66 08:48, 8 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think the two are inseparable at this point, as the communication platform seems to have been promoted solely to facilitate the sting. -- The Anome (talk) 08:57, 8 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with The Anome, one is not without the other. If you have a counterargument, I would be interested in hearing why it should be separated. Jurisdicta (talk) 01:35, 9 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There's not much information about the actual platform. Either way, the article can be 100,000 bytes before we need to consider splitting (right now it's ~15k), so for now at least it's best to keep all the information together especially since they're completely connected. Uses x (leave me a message) 02:39, 9 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with The Anome and Jurisdicta, they are inseparable. However, I am going to WP:bold and change the name of the article.eximo (talk) 23:08, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Text and/or other creative content from Operation Trojan Shield was copied or moved into de:Operation Trojan Shield. The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists.

This page has enough languages that it would benefit from <nowiki><translation> and <translation/> # tags tags. Even though the feature isn't supported yet for regular wikipages, it is useful to mark the sections for multilanguage editors.

Proposed Move

Proposing move from

Done. Taylor 49 (talk) 19:10, 10 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

After 90 minutes of waiting? Please follow the instructions on

WP:RM if you really want to forward with this. Wikidata using "Operation Trojan Shield" can just mean Wikidata is wrong. Anyway, "Operation Trojan Shield" is mentioned in passing in a few articles ( https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/08/world/australia/operation-trojan-horse-anom.html mentions it twice) while ANOM is mentioned constantly. More generally, this article is about the app as a whole, not just the law enforcement operation, and it is more recognizable with the ANOM title. SnowFire (talk) 20:03, 10 June 2021 (UTC)[reply

]

I shouldn't even go into this since you haven't even bothered to explain your reason, but it's also worth noting that Trojan Shield appears to be specifically the FBI's name for the operation - but this was a global operation (e.g. also Operation Ironside, etc.). So it's not a great name on those grounds either. SnowFire (talk) 20:05, 10 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There appears to be three arguments for moving the page to Operation Trojan Shield or Operation Ironside, so I'm not sure why it hasn't been moved. The FBI referred to it as both of those names. Further inspection of articles created more recently in other languages all use the term Operation Trojan Shield.eximo (talk) 23:15, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

wikidata has separate items about the police operation and the software

Wikidata has

Wikidata also has AnoClymous (Q107177733) which is an instance of Trojan horse (Q14639), messaging app (Q18922759), spyware (Q14644) and mobile app (Q620615). It has no Wikipedia articles at present, and commons:Category:ANOM. It is used by (P1535) Operation Trojan Shield (Q107145411).

This article is currently titled ANOM but is mostly about the sting operation. I agree with Wikidata that they are different "things" (but related). If this article is not split, we should consider which wikidata item it best fits, since the titles are presently confusing. --Scott Davis ^Talk 11:53, 13 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

See also the first talk page item: "Scope". I note, though, that the Wikidata and en.WP items do not necessarily have to match, and that it is important to link to related articles in other languages through Wikidata. Schwede66 12:59, 13 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

At the moment, it looks like the other language articles are not all properly tagged either. I expect the Wikidata item, Wikipedia article title, and first sentence to agree on the primary topic of the article. Currently, this article title is "ANOM" but the first line is "The ANOM (also stylized as AN0M or ΛNØM) sting operation (known as Operation Trojan Shield or Operation Ironside) is a collaboration by...". af:ANOM-lokvaloperasie according to Google Translate the title would be ANOM trap operation and the first line "ANOM (styled as AN0M) was a supposedly safe messaging program used by criminals and formed the basis for a trap operation." Neither article matches its title, but in opposite ways. The articles about the software should be AnoClymous (Q107177733) and the ones about the sting operation should be Operation Trojan Shield (Q107145411). Eventually, some of the article might be split and have one for each wikidata item (or for others we don't have yet). --Scott Davis ^Talk 15:04, 13 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Im not sure it fair to describe anom as a encrypted messaging application as well as the messing app, the court document describe anom as a device, more persisly it seem to be a google pixle phone installed with a customized version of the android operating system. more detals about the device can bee seen a this now removed word-press blog https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PwQXt6Sn_YwJ:https://anomexposed.wordpress.com/+&cd=7&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=au.it seem like it also contained voicepingapp.com used for walky talky feature.— Preceding unsigned comment added by 111.220.169.195 (talk) 16:34, 8 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The info has been corrected in the article since this. For future reference, here's the archived link in case the cache gets deleted at a future date: https://web.archive.org/web/20210608063520/https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PwQXt6Sn_YwJ:https://anomexposed.wordpress.com/ Uses x (leave me a message) 00:31, 9 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The now-unsealed court record: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/20799201-operation-trojan-shield-court-record should provide a substantial amount of public domain text, as the statements given by the FBI agent are made by a U.S. Federal Government employee in the course of their work, and thus should be in the public domain in the United States. -- The Anome (talk) 09:42, 8 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed some inconsistency among sources for the letter casing for ANOM. The USA's FBI used "Anom" in at least one of their court filings.^[1] uses. The Australian Federal Police used "ANOM" in a press release.^[2] This CNN article used "ANoM" though I can't see how they came up with that letter casing.^[3] At present this Wikipedia article is using "ANOM" which is consistent with Australian Federal Police usage. --Marc Kupper|talk 15:01, 8 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I would presume FBI:s spelling is the "correct" one, since they commissioned the product. But we should include both ways of writing it since both seem to be used. On a similar note, is it really stylized as AN0̸M? To me the "A" looks more like a capital lambda, and the "0/" looks more like the danish/norwegian Ø, so stylized as ΛNØM ? (compare this. /

talk) 16:58, 8 June 2021 (UTC)[reply

]

I think the ANoM version was created by someone attempting to copy the look of "AN0M" as displayed in a font with

old-style numerals. -- The Anome (talk) 18:02, 9 June 2021 (UTC)[reply

]

More likely Slashed_zero. peterl (talk) 18:42, 9 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the Ø was definitely a

l33t, and thus "cyber". But we can't easily represent this in Wikipedia in a reliable cross-platform way (there are several ways it can be done, but none are consistenly right), because of differences between browser rendering libraries on different platforms. -- The Anome (talk) 19:34, 9 June 2021 (UTC)[reply

]

Ah, I see. Maybe we could have a picture of the "icon" (maybe from here) then? Should fall under

talk) 20:43, 9 June 2021 (UTC)[reply

]

No mention is made of any search warrants at the outset of the operation. Is it possible that using the Five Eyes framework allows governments to spy on the other four countries' citizens without obtaining warrants? Abductive (reasoning) 08:46, 9 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

why is there no prior history about this "app"? there was nothing on wikipedia; this article was created in june 8th 2021. did "app" really exist at all? what does actual court documents of arrested people say about the app that was used to gather information and evidence against them? or is there no mention at all of such an "app" in court documents? why is there no evidence of any such app except in publicity coming from law enforcement after the arrests? why is this significant fact not mentioned in this article?— Preceding unsigned comment added by 2402:4000:2281:dc7c:48db:50bf:a506:2 (talk) 17:26, 9 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I recently adjusted the wording on the wordpress blog post incident; however User:Uses x restored some of it ([4]). I think we should keep it to the short and sweet version. Basically, there's essentially no reason to take the cache of a deleted blogpost from someone who seemed to be trying to hype their own favored secure communication system seriously - anonymous, deleted blogposts are the absolute bottom tier of reliability. As such, we're stuck with whatever the RTE article says, and I'm not convinced that this one snippet is relevant enough to draw into the article very much. Notably, to my understanding there's been no allegation that the alleged Google connections were relevant or part of the scheme or anything. According to our sources, the comms were essentially bcc'd to FBI servers. There's no indication Google maintained said backups or anything. The bit about servers in US / UK / Australia / NZ / Canada is interesting and possibly relevant, but again, it's a bad source and RTE was essentially just repeating it.

Basically, to me, this is kind of like hoisting up the person who wrote an analysis that a stock was going to fall 3 months before a stock actually collapsed. Maybe this analyst was on to something, but far more likely is that they were just lucky: tons of analysts are constantly making hordes of predictions, some people will be right by sheer chance. Wikipedia shouldn't raise up these "I totally called it" predictions without really strong backing in independent sources competent in that area. This random wordpress guy was right - but so what? Maybe he was just lucky. Having read the article, a lot of his other complaints sound unhinged like the use of JIRA for issue tracking, so it seems entirely possible he was merely throwing out random accusations. We shouldn't act as if he actually cracked the case, because two paragraphs in a non-technical media article isn't sufficient to say either way. I think keeping it to just "calling it a scam" is the most that's supportable here, and remove the added bits. Thoughts? SnowFire (talk) 23:27, 9 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@SnowFire RTÉ syndicated the article from the Agence France-Presse, which is a major news agency. AFP doesn't post articles on their site like Reuters/AP/UPI do, so the syndicated articles are the best source. Anyway, my view is that even when the "exposing" is put aside, the connections to those servers is an important part of how the device worked, as it explains how messages were copied. There might be a better way to present the information compared to how it is right now, but I think the information should be mentioned somewhere. Uses x (leave me a message) 23:38, 9 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, we can mention it, but I wouldn't particularly cite it to this one deleted blog rant is all I'm saying. We can mention the connections to the extent that reliable sources bring them up, which very well may not match the slant that Mr. Blogposter made (who, let me stress again, made some nonsensical claims too). SnowFire (talk) 00:22, 10 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I notice my edit changing "over 800 suspects" to "around 800 suspects" was reverted. I won't edit any more of these, but similar hypey wording occurs around 9 times in the article (3x "more than", 1x "almost", 5x "over"), and combining all of these together, it makes this article sound a bit like a press release or an advertisement. I would personally prefer a more factual, encyclopedic tone. My proposed solution is to change most of these to "around" or "about". –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:42, 9 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

In the UK the National Crime Agency hasn't said how many were arrested, so we know "over 800" is correct, but the actual number might not be anywhere near 800 so "around" wouldn't work. Uses x (leave me a message) 23:49, 9 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

• AnomChat.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 06:06, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Note: the result of the deletion discussion on Commons was to keep the image, so this is no longer an issue. -- The Anome (talk) 11:40, 13 October 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Recently, a discussion on the GrapheneOS Wikipedia page took place and it was decided that the alledged use GrapheneOS in ArcaneOS was not relevent enough to be on the GrapheneOS page.

But it may be relevent to this page, the sources from the removed section on the GrapheneOS page are below:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7b4gg/anom-phone-arcaneos-fbi-backdoor

https://www.engadget.com/fbi-anom-phone-arcaneos-180523267.html

Note to editors from the GrapheneOS discussion: There is likely a bias/conflict of interest from editors involved in that discussion, If you are a editor from the GrapheneOS discussion, You are advised to Stay Out Of This Discussion. 2603:7080:A903:F154:B992:783B:E850:2A41 (talk) 22:08, 7 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I'm aware that the claim of a third country's involvement has been floating around for a while, but I am curious as to how reliable 404media.co is in this regard - is it reliable enough to be a source for what country this was? Or would it be better to wait until something is revealed in the court cases where this has been raised? - Bilby (talk) 11:28, 15 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Looks OK at first glance. 404's team of 4 is anchored by a professional journalist with 6 years experience at Vice's Motherboard. Could dig deeper at RSN if you want, but seems OK. –Novem Linguae (talk) 12:55, 15 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Good enough for me. :) If things change from the court cases we can always update. - Bilby (talk) 13:08, 15 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

In case it is of any interest, an article covering the Victorian trial was in WA Today: https://www.watoday.com.au/national/victoria/threat-to-life-messages-39-men-charged-as-part-of-global-police-sting-appear-in-court-20230918-p5e5lm.html It has someone from the AFP describing the operation in Australia, and he made a few statements that may be of value. - Bilby (talk) 22:30, 19 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

A second article that may be of interest: https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/threat-to-life-messages-39-men-charged-as-part-of-global-police-sting-appear-in-court-20230918-p5e5lm.html Short version for both is that the Victorian trials have started. Like NSW and SA, lawyers are questioning the legality of ANOM. Might be worth a mention in the legal challenges section. I also expect a ruling in regard to the NSW cases soon. The WA Today article caught my attention as it has some more details of the Australian side of the operation that I don't think have been clearly stated before. - Bilby (talk) 13:14, 24 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This edit request by an editor with a conflict of interest has now been answered.

Under "legal challenges" the article currently states "A judgment in one of the cases before the Supreme Court of South Australia has ruled in favor of the police." Since then the case has gone before the Court of Appeal, with the defence arguing that the method of interception of the ANOM messages was not legal. So I'd suggest adding, "although this judgement has since been appealed.". Source: Mott, Mitch (November 17, 2023) "The argument that could bring Operation Ironside tumbling down", The Advertiser. As it is behind a paywall, the relevant quote is "On Thursday, the SA Court of Appeal begun the first in the nation hearings based on an appeal from a test case run before Justice Adam Kimber in the Supreme Court." It is worth mentioning, I think, as the SA case is regarded as a test case for ANOM in Australia, and the appeal is expected to end up in the High Court. - Bilby (talk) 12:27, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Approved I've added the language as you've suggested, noting that the appeal was current as of November 2023, along with the Courier Mail source. Regards,  Spintendo  22:23, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for that. I've been following the cases in Australia and I'm curious about how the legal arguments will turn out. - Bilby (talk) 22:37, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

As a sidenote, The Advertiser is a tabloid, but because the Mott piece also appeared in the Courier Mail, I thought it would be better to use that link as the reference even though, as you noted, both are pay-walled. Regards,  Spintendo  22:43, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Comments welcome!
@Bilby, @SnowFire @Pigsonthewing @Yarnalgo @Duckmather
I swapped the infobox from event infobox to law enforcement infobox. However, there are two key differences that I see which may cause discussion. 1. The results section does not include the LEA claims to what they seized, prevented or achieved i.e. amount of drugs seized, guns seized, victims rescued....etc. 2. The planned by parameter is not the same as initiated by. Thus, the U.S. may have initiated the operation world wide, but that's not the same as being a master planner for how each of the countries executed their operation. There also may be a different word to that could be used instead of planned or initiated.

I'm inclined to update the law enforcement infobox to include these parameters, however, before I do the update, I would like a 20 day comment period for any other additions that should be considered. (updating info boxes is very time intensive, and has to be tested and verified to ensure the change doesn't break all the existing uses of the infobox)eximo (talk) 17:17, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Comment/Reply Here

eximo (talk) 17:17, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

• Thanks for tagging me, but due to my COI I think I need to sit this out. My only comment is in regard to point 2, which is that as far as I am aware it was the FBI who created the progrm, so I don't think that it is very far off base to say that it was planned by them. There was input from the AFP, and some sources seem to say that they proposed it, but I was led to believe that it was an FBI operation that involved the AFP and other groups. However, I am very happy with whatever the consensus is, and to be honest I have no special knowledge about how it came about - just what I have read. - Bilby (talk) 14:21, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed that a link to CourtListener was added here. I am a bit concerned about this, because it is linking to a list of names of people who have not yet been convicted of a crime, which in turn raises BLP concerns. Any thoughts? - Bilby (talk) 05:29, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Bilby I'm for inclusion of the link to the court records that are the result of the operation. Particularly since the motions of law are likely to be enlightening going forward about the legality and how the operation was conducted. The ability for other wikipedia editors to monitor the case will ensure the article stays up todate. If you think the link should be moved to the talk page, I might consider that, but think it may take it out of the reach of more editors. The link doesn't violate the issue of publishing the names of a living person on wikipedia without secondary sources as the names do not appear in the article. It's a link to court records for a "see also", which frequently links to sites that are more expansive that the article or topically related. It's not self published, and given that the right to a speedy trial has already been violated for these persons who are by all accounts considered a vulnerable population to civil rights violations, it's likely a benefit to them to have the Wikipedia community apprised of the cases as they proceed. eximo (talk) 18:19, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]