AN0M app messages were lawfully obtained, court rules in Operation Ironside test case

South Australia's highest court has ruled millions of messages sent and received across the encrypted AN0M application were lawfully obtained.

In a major legal milestone for the Operation Ironside cases around the country, three justices of the Court of Appeal handed down the decision for a test case involving two accused in front of a courtroom packed with legal identities and detectives.

"The court has determined that the use of the AN0M application platform did not involve interception," President of the Court of Appeal Justice Mark Livesey said.

"The challenges to the validity of the authorisations referred to as 'major control operations' have not been made out and that otherwise the challenges have been rejected."

The encrypted application AN0M was at the centre of the three-year global collaboration between the Australian Federal Police (AFP) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), which used the encrypted messaging service to lure alleged criminals into revealing their secrets to police.

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