Slashdot Mirror
FBI Tries To Force Google To Unlock User's Android Phone
Trailrunner7 writes "Those multi-gesture passcode locks on Android phones that give users (and their spouses) fits apparently present quite a challenge for the FBI as well. Frustrated by a swipe passcode on the seized phone of an alleged gang leader, FBI officials have requested a search warrant that would force Google to 'provide law enforcement with any and all means of gaining access, including login and password information, password reset, and/or manufacturer default code ("PUK"), in order to obtain the complete contents of the memory of cellular telephone.' The request is part of a case involving an alleged gang leader and human trafficker named Dante Dears in California. Dears served several years in prison for his role in founding a gang in California called PhD, and upon his release he went back to his activities with the gang, according to the FBI's affidavit."
Well, first of all, it's a rubber stamped warrant. Literally.
Second, Google is unlikely to have some of the information requested; the PUK of the SIM would be known by the SIM manufacturer, not the maker of the phone's operating system. Same goes for text messaging; it goes through the carrier, not Google.
Third, the records are unlikely to be physically at Google Legal Investigations Support.
Fourth, some of the "items requested" amount to a fishing expedition -- so much for "particular" descriptions of the places to be searched or items seized.
Exactly! This is how law enforcement is supposed to act. They have a suspect, they provide reasons to a judge, get a warrant and Google opens the device. If you're involved in crime don't keep anything incriminating on your phone. I mean really, these are the kinds of assholes law enforcement should be locking up.
Silly me - here I was thinking it was a failure of Mr. Dears to behave in a socially responsible adult manner, instead of engaging in petty crime and preying on the weak.
Society doesn't owe him a $500 a night job. Society doesn't owe him a cushy life free of any bad luck.
Bullshit. The middlemen (pimps) would be taken out of the equation entirely because prostitutes would be empowered to have total control over their enterprise, as they do on craigslist and other sites.
Legalizing prostitution increases profits (not having to pay a pimp), allowing women or men to "vet" their dates in advance(the high-class prostitutes are frequently grad students who target single and successful dorks like you for $400 per session) and eliminates violence and urban blight by shifting the acts to private residences.
But like the lazy, brutish, and entirely misguided crackdowns on Marijuana; legalized prostitution ain't gonna fly in Ammurika anytime soon, especially with loonies like Santorum seriously considered candidates for president.
I think that one thing we can agree on is that statistics are total horseshit. Sure, if done by a totally impartial party (which doesn't exist) they might be useful. But in something as divisive as race, crime, punishment, slavery, social equality, who is really impartial? Ask yourself a few questions and you soon realize how pointless these statistics are...
1. Who is black? Most blacks have a large part of their genetics made up of Caucasian genes. Look at our president. I'm white, my son is adopted from the heart of Africa, 100% African genes. Is he black? Certainly... but how does he fall into these statistics? He's going to have the up-bringing of any white-middle class child.
2. Who's collecting these statistics? The judicial system? The judicial system has been proven prejudice by hundreds of studies over the years. They convict more minorities of crimes, they give them longer sentences, they charge them with more infractions. They pull over a white kid with a pocket knife and they call his parents, they get a black kid with the same knife and he's getting charged with a felony. Are blacks really twice as likely to commit a crime with a knife? Or are they just twice as likely to get convicted?
3. The AC poster is clearly a troll and probably doesn't even believe in what he's saying. So there's that.
He's already guilty of the crimes he committed before, and he has not yet completed his sentence for those crimes. He's on parole after being released early from prison. Actually, he's on parole for a second time, after having violated the terms of his parole earlier and going back to prison for an additional year and a hafl.
One of the terms of his parole is that he must not have a mobile phone. Another one of the terms is that any passwords, encryption, to any information whatsoever that he has, he will immediately provide the means to access that data upon demand of his parole officer. He denied to his parole officer that he had a mobile phone, but his parole officer found it and seized it. The parole officer had every right to do so under the terms of his parole. He's also refused to provide the account and password information to access it, even though he agreed to provide it as a condition of his early release. So he's already in violation of two of the terms of his parole, and for that alone he gets to go back to prison. There is no additional trial needed -- he has already been found guilty of his original crimes. The terms of parole have nothing to do with "innocent until proven guilty." That bit of justice ended with his verdict. He is guilty.
As far as these new allegations and crimes go, he needs to stand trial for them. But he's already a convicted felon who was let loose from prison too early, twice. "Wholly innocent" is not a factual statement one uses to describe this felon.
John