The Decoded Podcast

We kick off the second week of this limited series by taking you behind the scenes on the interdepartmental and intercontinental effort to successfully prosecute darknet cybercrimes. Across federal agencies, we find that a few digitally savvy investigators and prosecutors are leading the charge on revamping the law enforcement strategy for taking on cybercriminals. We talk to Zia Faruqui — a federal magistrate judge in DC and a former federal prosecutor for the Department of Justice in the DC Attorney General’s office — to highlight the out-of-the box thinking needed to bust cybercriminal enterprises.

P.S. we also have a story to accompany the podcast! Read it here: Shadowboxing and geopolitics on the dark web  

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Now at the halfway point of the series, we talk to a former military cyber-intelligence officer about the feedback loop between the defense community and the private sector and unpack the domestic threats posed by nation-state actors in the cybercriminal underground.

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Funded by the Secret Service, the National Computer Forensics Institute is tasked with training law enforcement officers across the country in the tools they need to combat crime in an increasingly digital world. In this episode of our series on darknet forums, we dig into the top-down information-sharing model between federal, state, and local law enforcement officials. We see how jurisdictional issues can slow investigations into an increasingly interconnected global cybercriminal network, and talk with experts from the NCFI about how they’re trying to improve the playbook agencies use to fight cybercrime in the twenty-first century.

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In the third episode of our series on darknet marketplaces, we’ll meet investigators who spent their careers examining these dark corners of the internet with a magnifying glass. We learn how to follow the money with the woman who pioneered what would eventually become the DEA’s Cyber Support Section. We talk to an ex-FBI agent who brought down global hacking collectives and darknet forums. N matter how advanced the technology gets, enterprising agents turn to traditional investigative techniques to get the job done. But it’s far from a perfect process.

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In the second episode of our series on darknet marketplaces, we look at the personalities that helped build popular darknet forums and learn about the communication technologies and cryptocurrencies their members rely on. We also dig into how the geopolitics of the Russia-Ukraine war changed the nature of cooperation amongst cyber criminals on the dark net.

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Welcome to POLITICO Tech. We’re kicking off with a limited series exploring darknet marketplaces, some of the least regulated parts of the world wide web. As malware and cybercrime attacks become increasingly frequent, regulators and law enforcement agencies work different angles to shut these platforms down, but new, often more unassailable, marketplaces pop up. We’ll trace the latest evolution of a global network of cybercriminal actors and the people tasked with catching them. In this series premiere, we’ll talk with ransomware experts and discuss the tradecraft of cybercrime collectives and the challenges inherent in monitoring them online.

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The account of a 10-year-old Ohio girl seeking an abortion in Indiana has garnered international attention amid the fall of Roe v. Wade. Indiana's Attorney General is threatening criminal charges against the doctor who performed the abortion. Alice Miranda Ollstein reports.

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As the January 6 hearings progress, a cadre of young, female, former Trump aides have created an informal network to support each other. Meridith McGraw reports.

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The Food and Drug Administration is reviewing a first-of-its-kind application from HRA Pharma for Opill. If green-lit by the agency, Opill would become the first daily, hormonal birth control pill sold without a prescription. The submission of the application follows more than six years of studies the company has run. Alice Miranda Ollstein reports.

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The Biden administration argues that the president's upcoming visits to Israel and Saudi Arabia are of great strategic importance. But possible images of him glad-handing with the Saudi crown prince threatens to be the defining moment. Alex Ward reports.

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