We begin with the audio of a horrifying call made to the French police in 2020. Two men are driving home when their car is attacked. The police ask for the caller’s name as bullets ricochet around the vehicle.
This killing (of a mechanic called Houcine Hakkar) was planned and discussed in detail on an app called Sky ECC. The police were at the tip of an enormous iceberg. Showing modern law enforcement on screen can be a challenge: in the online era, it’s less cops and robbers; more zeros and ones.
So it’s a surprise to be confronted with something as thrilling as The Narco Hack. This three-part documentary explores an extraordinary investigation by French, Belgian and Dutch police, during which they undermined several massive criminal organisations via methods at once impressively logical and completely mind-boggling by compromising Sky ECC’s encryption software. Sky ECC was developed by a company called Sky Global, apparently with lawyers and journalists in mind.
The app was designed to strip phones of all their normal features, leaving just itself. When the app was shut down, the phones deactivated. Oh, and the phones could be wiped remotely, which was a handy feature.
And so begins an epic tale of brave detective work and tech wizardry. This kind of material is undeniably hard to render visually – but while The Narco Hack does feature an awful lot of scrolling computer text and close-ups of smartphones being turned on, it also hears at length from the cops involved. From shrewd, single-minded prosecutor Johanna Brousse to eccentric cybercrime whiz “Bertillon” (his name is protected and he appears via a series of AI-rendered face-swaps), they’re an engaging bunch.
Furthermore, the investigation grips hard, and the stakes are extremely high. As Bertillon walks us through the decryption process (server locations, cryptographic keys: you’re glazing over already, aren’t you?), most viewers almost certainly won’t fully understand. However, what unfolds on the ground is approximately The Wire meets The Imitation Game.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
