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Mobile 'Remote Wipe' Thwarts Secret Service

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the cry-them-a-river dept.

bennyboy64 writes "Smartphones that offer the ability to 'remote wipe' are great for when your device goes missing and you want to delete your data so that someone else can't look at it, but not so great for the United States Secret Service, ZDNet reports. The ability to 'remote wipe' some smartphones such as BlackBerry and iPhone was causing havoc for law enforcement agencies, according to USSS special agent Andy Kearns, speaking on mobile phone forensics at a security conference in Australia."

2 of 383 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Hm by davidbrit2 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    They have one, apparently.

    "Hopefully our officers are putting the cell phones in a Faraday bag that is shielded, pulling the battery [out] and turning them off [before] getting them into the shielded laboratory."

  2. Re:Aww.. by KingSkippus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...if they are unable to gain access to these phones before they're remotely wiped, that's a bad thing. I don't understand why people think this is a good thing.

    Because if they are able to gain access to these phones before they're remotely wiped, then other people can gain access to your phone before it can be remotely wiped. 99.999% of those people do not have your best interest at heart. Probably 99.9% of them are thieves and criminals trying to screw you over. 0.099% of them are law enforcement officials overstepping the bounds of what is allowed by law. (But it would cost you tens or hundreds of thousands in legal fees to prove it in court, and you'd risk the chance that you get an idiot judge who sets a bad precedent for everyone else.)

    If we're lucky, 0.001% of them have anything to do with the president or counterfeiters, but really, I think that's being generous.