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."

Comments

This seems a lot like self-incrimination

[mysidia]

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

Re:Turn off the fucking phone.

[ColdWetDog]

I have an iPhone, you insensitive clod! I can't just "remove the battery"!.

iPhone users aren't criminals. You'll want to get an Android phone to slum around with your wicked friends.

Steve

Sent from your iPhone

They are computers, not phones

[Zero__Kelvin]

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.