17
votes
Swedish teenager charged in Australia for allegedly using encrypted communication apps to help plan contract killings in Sweden and Denmark
Link information
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- Title
- Swedish teen charged in Sydney with organising contract killings online
- Published
- Apr 16 2025
- Word count
- 286 words
Aside from the technical questions the headline and article raise but don't answer I found this interesting:
I might've been interested in making things blow up (pop bottles and too much pressure worked well) at that age but I don't think myself or any of my peers would've seriously considered anything but contacting authorities had we been asked to carry out something nefarious. Maybe something similar happened here and someone they tried to hire was more innocent than they thought.
In my experience it's less of a "recruiting people out of nowhere" and more "recruiting youth into gangs then forcing them to shoot someone as part of remaining accepted in the gang" thing. I'm used to this being kids who don't find family or acceptance elsewhere or whose family members are also in the gang, but I'm not sure if that dynamic is the same in Sweden.
ETA: It is absolutely strategic on the part of the adult(s) involved. They assure the child they won't be caught, and if they are they'll be treated as a juvenile, and if they're not they'll get a lighter sentence, and either way they'll be taken care of inside and family will be outside. Whether any of that is true depends a lot on the details, but also the US is more willing to treat kids as adults in court than a lot of Europe is.
While sex acts are the typical association with online grooming of children similar mechanisms can be used to manipulate children into a variety of behaviors. Presumably the perpetrators would find it much easier to find and manipulate a vulnerable child over a period of time than to find any that are already predisposed to such activities. Historically gangs recruiting children were doing the manipulation in person, but the Internet adds a whole new vector.
In my opinion almost anyone is capable of landing in a similar position if their life takes the right set of wrong turns. Turns that both expose vulnerability and give access to that vulnerability to someone that wishes to exploit it.
Holy balls, that's a helluva allegation! When I was 15, I had just barely figured out masturbation and how to sneak cigarettes from my mom's pack when she wasn't looking.
How does a 15-year-old even get mixed up with a "transnational criminal syndicate" anyway? Do we reckon that's authority-speak for "kids doing really stupid and dangerous stuff online"? Prosecutors really like reframing hacker collectives like they're akin to the Colombian cartels, and not young idiots with more brains than wisdom playing with proverbial fire.
Who is this notorious hacker 4chan?
You're absolutely right of course and I'd be hesitant to take the serious tone of the article at face value.
I wonder how they were got, so to say. If it’s a truly encrypted application, one end must’ve been compromised, and I’d assume it’s more likely it was the other side. But how did they then track it to Australia?