Overview

• Five males aged 16 to 19 face investigation for allegedly embedding over 800 police service lines into unauthorized conference calls that blocked communications for up to 74 seconds.
• Late-June searches under warrants in Schleswig-Holstein, North Rhine-Westphalia, Baden-Württemberg and Bremen resulted in the seizure of smartphones, laptops, external drives and networking gear for forensic analysis.
• A June breach of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern’s mPol server disabled about 3,500 encrypted police smartphones and spurred an Interior Ministry directive to overhaul the system.
• Forensic experts have found no evidence of data theft among seized devices, and investigators have yet to identify a motive for the disruptions.
• Police unions and authorities are calling for bolstered cybersecurity expertise and greater transparency to safeguard law enforcement communications.