Organized crime is using encrypted messaging apps to enlist youth. This spells trouble for police

While police have made arrests after gunshots were fired at the U.S. consulate in downtown Toronto in two separate incidents in recent months, finding those responsible for these alleged gun-for-hire plots remains elusive.

Investigators say encrypted messaging apps are being used to recruit young people in the region and enlist them for criminal enterprises, which have also involved incidents at Jewish schools, synagogues and GFL Environmental waste management facilities in the Greater Toronto Area.

With the federal government’s “lawful access” bill still before the Senate, police will likely face an uphill battle in cases like these, experts say — especially considering youth who are being recruited online probably have very little information about the people who are giving them instructions.

“They don’t even know who they’re working for, is my guess,” said Michael Arntfield, a former London, Ont., police officer and current criminologist and professor at Western University.

The ringleaders for these plots are able to enlist teens who are impressionable, Arntfield told CBC News — with the added bonus that in most jurisdictions, teenagers aren’t going to face stiff criminal sentences when compared to adults.

“And there’s really no way if they’re arrested to link them back to the architect of the crime,” he said.

2 charged after gunshot hits consulate

Police announced Thursday that a 19-year-old and a 15-year-old now face a swath of charges after a gunshot hit the U.S. consulate in downtown Toronto last week.

During a news conference announcing the arrests, Toronto police Chief Myron Demkiw highlighted the importance of the federal government’s controversial Bill C-22, which he said would provide police with the means to deal with “modern, digital communication” like encrypted messaging apps.

“If law enforcement does not have the tools needed to prevent violence that is planned and paid for through encrypted messaging apps, it ultimately is our communities that suffer,” Demkiw said.

But opponents have argued Bill C-22 unnecessarily expands the powers of police and intelligence agencies, endangering privacy, flouting the Charter and making Canada less attractive to business.

Carmi Levy, a technology analyst and journalist, told CBC Radio’s Metro Morning Friday that once a back door for law enforcement is opened in encrypted messaging apps, it will likely be easier for other prying eyes to force their way in, too.

“That really is the problem here,” he said. “How do you balance the need to put the right tools in the hands of law enforcement with the need to ensure that you and I — as regular, law-abiding citizens — aren’t put at unnecessary exposure to this kind of digital mass surveillance?”

Creating safe online spaces for kids

But Levy also noted that encrypted messaging apps can be “incredibly disruptive” for police, and can grind an investigation to a halt.

“Timing is everything in law enforcement, and the more obstacles you put in place, the less likely it is that they will ever catch the bad guys,” he said.

While the justice system and federal government wrangle with the legal ramifications of the issue, society as a whole also has a part to play when it comes to protecting kids and pushing back against criminal networks that are recruiting online, said Ahmed Ilmi, who is a member of the federal government’s youth strategy working group expert panel on gangs and radicalization.

Ilmi, who is also an assistant professor in the department of global development studies at the University of Toronto Scarborough, told CBC Radio’s Metro Morning Friday that both conversations between parents and their kids and education in schools is vital to combating the problem.

“For almost two decades now kids have been socialized online, and we are now seeing some of the negative effects,” he said.

“The question is as adults, how do we intervene, and how do we create safer public space online for our children and our youth?”