Slashdot Mirror
Police Increasingly Looking To Smartphones For Evidence
Barence writes "Your smartphone could place you at the scene of a crime, destroy an alibi or maybe even provide one – which is why one of the first things police now do at the scene of a crime is take away a suspect's cellphone. This look into smartphone forensics reveals how even wiping incriminating data from iPhones isn't enough to get criminals off the hook. 'If you're looking at your email messages and you rotate the phone, there's a snapshot of that message,' said Phil Ridley, a mobile phone analyst with CCL-Forensics. And what people leave on their phones is horrific. 'We were contacted by police who couldn't get a video to work on a handset – it turned out to be a bloke beheading someone in his garage,' claimed another forensics expert."
it shows your phone was at the scene, it doesn't prove YOU were.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
If you are planning on committing a crime remove the battery from your phone. This goes for non-smartphones as well. Use a prepay for crime planning and ditch it as frequently as possible.
Don't commit crimes and you'll be OK.
Your smartphone is your data.
So it is extremely odious that police take away a person's cell phone, if the person is not being arrested or at least charged with a crime.
This is a far more significant breach than mere 4th amendment stuff. Police are looking for information you have recorded, instead of evidence of a crime.
The routine taking away of life-critical devices from 'suspects' is a menace to society. This does more harm to innocent people than criminals.
For people who rely on their smart phones for all communications, this would be similar to police impounding the right arm or left foot of suspects, to attempt to 'analyze' if they held a weapon, and demanding DNA from random people at a scene who are 'suspects' (whether there is actual cause to suspect them or not beyond mere presence/appearance).
This should be solved legally and technologically dealt with. Cell-phones should regularly purge latent/hidden data when charging AND resist attempts to gather data from them.
If someone is a suspect, the police should have to get a special warrant to access cell phone data, and it should be served not by confiscating the physical device, but by the court granting the police 10 minutes to hold the suspect's phone, during which all "data capture" must be completed.
If the physical phone is confiscated under a warrant for confiscation of the phone, then only physical aspects of the phone should be subject to analysis, not private data the user had stored, unless previously discovered
haha, what a hoot, since we now allow the government to unilaterally declare someone a criminal, and then harm and/or incarcerate and/or kill them without trial and without warrant.
Once a phone's location is generally accepted as showing where you were at a given time, it's an instant alibi.
Leave the damned thing turned on somewhere else, then go commit your crime.
Or turn off the ringer and vibration, box it up and take it to a somewhat nearby kinko's, and then fedex it back to yourself. Now it's on, and will travel around the city, while you do whatever it is you want to do.
If you get nicked, use that phone location and piles of court cases where phone records were admitted as proof of location.
So I'm guilty until proven innocent?
Yes. Hadn't you noticed?
ah you'd think so but you'd be wrong. Evidence such as your phone being at home or some place else seems to be viewed with suspicion. That how ever doesn't apply to evidence that places your phone at the scene of a crime.
Know what? The police could come into my home and squat here for as long as they like. They can have a key, if it wasn't asking too much I'd like to close the door when I'm taking a dump but if they really wanna watch me when I'm on the can, hey, to everyone what they really enjoy. But I wouldn't want them in my phone or computer, though.
People define privacy, and which parts thereof are important to them, differently. I don't consider the place I park my cadaver in this important and sacred, but I can understand why other people might see it that way, so I guess I should be supportive since I, too, have places and things I hold dear that belong to my most private space.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Mostly people who passed elementary school civics.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
That the phone records also show you taking it to the courier's office. Explain that one to the police.
Better to tape it to your neighbour's car just before he/she/it goes out - providing they aren't similarly criminally minded!
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
The problem stems from the perception that it is a phone, when in fact it is a hand-held computer that happens to be able to place and receive phone calls. This is fundamentally no different than them seizing a laptop and rifling through it. It should obviously require a warrant unless the device was used in the commission of the crime and they can already prove that.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
The only private space left is the one in your head. If I cant remember something important it just doesnt get stored. If you REALLY worry about privacy, keep it all in your head.
Good-bye
"Your smartphone could place you at the scene of a crime, destroy an alibi or maybe even provide one – which is why one of the first things police now do at the scene of a crime is take away a suspect's cellphone.
Well. It will be used to prove you guilty to whatever extent is possible. It will NOT be used to disprove your guilt.
Humans respond to incentives, and police are humans. In our era the police are incented by the fact they are judged by their 'numbers' or 'stats'. So they do what is necessary to maximize those numbers. Other concerns are secondary.
In a future era we will look back on this "management by the numbers" as an expensive way to reduce management headcount. You can easily have 20 direct reports if you are permitted to use an Excel spreadsheet to judge their quality.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
Obviously there's no legal protection for the data on your phone - not that there shouldn't be, but your privacy rights only go one way in modern society, so don't hold your breath - but where are the technical measures? We've seen that police use forensics devices that attach the data port on the phone to give them immediate and complete access to the entire file system.
There's always a tradeoff between convenience and security, and it's time cell phones at least gave you the option to choose a bit more of the latter. How about not allowing read access via the USB port when the phone is locked? That's just basic common sense, but phone manufacturers and OS vendors don't take physical security seriously yet. How about cutting power to the phone when the back cover is removed? How about having a power-on password in addition to a lock-screen password, so the phone can't simply be put into recovery mode?
On a PC I can set a BIOS password, a hard drive password, and use full disk encryption of a sort that nobody will ever be able to break. If the machine is running but locked, suspended, or hibernating, even windows will ensure that there's no way to get at my data without actually having the proper credentials. There's no way to recover my passwords or encryption keys from memory, except for the rather technical, obscure, and time-sensitive technique of physically freezing the RAM and trying to read back its contents after a reboot. Compare this to joke that passes for file system encryption on the iphone.
In a lot of ways, smartphones store more valuable data than PCs do, and yet the options for protecting that data are virtually nonexistent.
The "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" is dangerous in a democracy.
There is a great piece about it here: http://www.homelandstupidity.us/2006/05/14/if-you-have-nothing-to-hide-you-have-everything-to-fear/
"The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse." — James Madison
Chance favors the prepared mind.
Perfect is the enemy of good.
That's flat out incorrect. The difference between "beyond a reasonable doubt" and "likely" is the difference between a criminal trial and a civil trial: In a criminal trial, guilt must be proven "beyond a reasonable doubt"; in a civil trial, the winning party is based on a "preponderance of the evidence" (ie "likely"). One can have a reasonable doubt about one side's evidence in a civil trial and still conclude that particular side's argument is more "likely" than the other side - the "likelihood scale" simply needs to shift to 51% vs 49%. In a criminal trial, the jury cannot have any doubt whatsoever, except for "unreasonable" doubt (ie "the laws of physics do not apply and a person can, in fact, be two places at once" would by most definitions be considered "unreasonable" doubt). Would you be willing to risk a death sentence on the basis you "likely" committed the crime for which you are on trial?