"The Comancheros are understood to have linked up with a Mexican drug cartel importing cocaine into Australia and are sharing the technology.


''There is nothing strange in organised crime having better access to technology than the authorities,'' said Michael Kennedy, a former police detective and an academic at the University of Western Sydney.

''The bikies are becoming more entrepreneurial and, after all, organised crime is a business enterprise. Crime groups will share technology if it helps them.''

The Comancheros are believed to use the phones sourced from Mexico with global roam activated. The roaming facility is expensive but criminals believe it is priceless to have communications that cannot be monitored.

What makes the BlackBerry so hard to ''tap'' is that Mexico has no reliable register of handsets, mobile numbers, or users."