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

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.