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UK Police Roll Out On-the-Spot Mobile Data Extraction System
Qedward writes "The Metropolitan Police has rolled out a mobile device data extraction system to allow officers to extract data 'within minutes' from suspects' phones while they are in custody. 'Ostensibly, the system has been deployed to target phones that are suspected of having actually been used in criminal activity, although data privacy campaigners may focus on potentially wider use.'"
Why not just have all cell phone communications pass through government servers where everything can be easily skimmed and saved?
Seems like it would save a lot of trouble.
Looks like the UK beat Michigan to the punch.
http://slashdot.org/story/11/04/19/2231240/michigan-police-could-search-cell-phones-during-traffic-stops
Can they verify the extracted information?
Why yes, I HAVE been on the phone with Barack Obama recently, and YES I REALLY DID receive a phone call from the prime minister, only 15 minutes ago. So why don't you uncuff me and let me go before they call back?
As in pretending it's a gun and pointing it at somebody?
How do you know someone is a "suspect"? If there's already some other evidence, however light, that someone is a culprit (such as a witness statement), then fine, arrest him and take the phone, too.
Otherwise, I think this is just one of those circular reasoning things: he's a suspect because there might be incriminating information on his phone. We're checking his phone for incriminating information because he's a suspect. (Oh, and, he's a suspect because we suspect there might be incriminating information on his phone.)
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free.
To be gunned down in my house by the cops, when they come looking for me.
So I'll gladly give up all my rights, and betray the American way.
'Cause there ain't no doubt I don't wanna die, that's why I will obey.
I wonder how long until we start seeing these things pop up in the US (attached to drones even):
http://www.geek.com/articles/geek-pick/wasp-the-linux-powered-flying-spy-drone-that-cracks-wi-fi-gsm-netwokrs-20110729/
Poms love to be on their knees due to their public school education where all newcomers are ""Fags" and subject to bastardisation.
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
Carry the broken USB port model, and all's well unless the collection device uses a debug port(which requires the battery to be removed to access, also deactivating the SD slot on opening battery cover). In addition, the software stack allows for a lot to be altered, which can discourage people from poking at the data easily.
Maemo/Meego might be considered dead, but it puts the end user in enough control to be ahead of most of this stuff.
That said:
Could the N9's Aegis be used to consider these device probes as things that introduce the reset/malfunction condition? It seems to
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Sounds like the UK ought to added to the US State Department list of "unfriendly countries" where travel by US citizens is discouraged.
Wait a minute, if the US State Department did that then US citizens would have no "friendly countries" in the world to visit.
Actually, the problem is that we have a comfortably large rump of stodgy, thick, opinionated, fear-cultured yoemen, raised on the milk from organs like The Daily Telegraph, The Sun, The Mirror and The Daily Mail. They eat this sort of thing up but it never crosses their tiny, shrivelled minds that tools like this can and will be used against them in a Court of Law.
I'd be disgusted if I wasn't so completely jaded.
Also, unban ethanol-fueled
...a nightstick.
The Metropolitan Police are in London. That's one city. It's the capital city, and it's a pretty big city, so there is a police force that deal with pretty much just that. They don't even deal with the outlying parts of the Greater London area.
If the police in Washington DC rolled this out, would you say "US Police"? No, because that would be stupid. It's one city, not the whole country.
We need a kill gesture. Some way to immediately block access to the phone's info while the phone corrupts its information beyond readability. No signing in with a login code, just do *this* sequence of key presses or gestures, and the phone initiates its info-apoptosis. Why isn't there an app for this?
Yeah, because the USA doesn't have something like laws that are valid through the entire country and is able to uphold those. If it can and is done in Michigan, it will never happen anywhere else in the USA, or is it just the first city and will it only be a matter of time for the rest of the USA to have this equipment available as well?
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Touchscreen just broke on my damned phone. Maybe if I drive over there they can tell me who these last 4 texts are from.
Real criminals use encrypted/scrambled walkie talkies, because cellphones are not sinister enough.
I've got a tricked out Treo. Hack that, Coppers!
Well, looks like I'm about to encrypt my phone, I don't even have any data that I care if they see.
I care not for your karma and your mod points.
April came, UK internet starts being censored to protect companies that are still posting record profits while reducing their staffing head count and Avoiding taxes like every big company in the UK does lately. TPB is the big one but I am annoyed because this is the start of censoring based on what companies want over the requirements of the people that keep paying for this country. Funny thing 3 days ago we have the list of unfairly blocked websites, http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/05/14/1816217/report-highlights-10-sites-unfairly-blocked-by-uk-mobile-internet-censorship?utm_source=commentcnt&utm_medium=feed to ANYONE that is reading this going but TPB was bad, well why is the UK censoring www.biased-bbc.blogspot.co.uk on UK mobiles as hate speech? We also have the Tory MP Claire Perry who is standing in front of MPs saying the internet should be opt in to stop kids seeing porn, yet when asked about sexual based images in her old new paper she blows that off as up to the editor and harmless. So on one hand this women is saying the UK people are too stupid and need an opt in system while saying that established new papers are free to do what they want. Double standards amaze me. and Let’s not forget that this women comes from a new paper as well, the new corp had their girl brooks in with the government, i guess it’s time that a few other papers try and mould some of the government.
:/) . I just spent 15 minutes looking for a way to encrypt the hard drive of my phone, seems i will have to jailbreak it to get the protection i want out of my hardware.
:/ sorry
Now we have the police stating they will rip a copy of your phone and we all know this will happen for the most minimal event. Get pulled over for speeding, "let me check you phone" your data will be pulled, all your contacts, all your images (with EXIF info because you would not have had time to clear it (EXIF can hold GPS data about where the photo was taken)) and it’s all going to be logged (did you know the UK police are only meant to keep your finger prints for a set time if you are not charged, to day this database has never once been trimmed
A few months ago I would have said the UK is in serious trouble, I think it’s become fcuked in a very short space of time, there is no national sprit, the unemployed are restless with no hope, my generation is being r@ped for every pounds the government can get to support an aging population. I have had to stop driving because the cost of petrol is so high; my food bills have gone up 20-25% in a year. My wages are not going up but the middle class tories just tell everyone it’s time to tighten your belts. I have nothing left to tighten. I am just under 30, only a few of my friends are on the housing market, the ones that are have all had help from their parents or grandparents. I do not know one person my age that went to uni and is now in a position to afford a house in the UK without the help of someone else (caste system take 2, you don’t have to do the job of your parent but you better hope they can support you while you find your profession). Funny stat i read yesterday, in the 1960s you could buy a house for 1.5 times the min annual salary, today that number is now 6-7 times the minwage in the UK. At this rate I will never own a house, I can barely afford to drive anywhere, and i am going to spend my whole life paying for a country that spent the money before I was even really in the job market. I mean i was at school and uni while labour was pushing billions in to the public sector to improve their stats. and now why am I paying for it? why were my parents giving a chance yet I am forced to work to pay for others errors.
omg this is just a rant
Finally I want to say one thing, I want to introduce a tax system based on ag
where the hell is all this terrorism that they need to stop? Soooooo ONE time a few guys flew some planes into some buildings... about 3000 died... tsunamis and earthquakes kill over 10000 people at a time.
Now that we have signed away all of our freedoms, the "terrorists" have officially won.
The true terrorists are the assholes who run our governments.
ICS has FDE built in, and it is very slick and simple to use.
People here seem to get a kick out of making the UK seem as Orwellian as possible. Some of the stories are accurate, many of the summaries aren't, but we're not the oppressed, constantly spied-upon people /. would have you believe.
I don't have a problem with SAM sites in London during the Olympic Games; if there were an attempt to fly a plane into a packed Olympic Stadium I'd prefer it was shot down, as doing so and it instead crashing elsewhere in London would probably save hundreds if not thousands of lives. I'm confident they'll be removed after the games (the residents don't like it; they're in the wrong place for anything else; the government won't want to waste money deploying them and housing troops nearby to operate them when they're not needed). I'd note that compares favourably to the permanent employment of missiles in DC - though I'd question whether it really makes much difference whether fighter aircraft are used to intercept aircraft out-of-contact or SAMs are used. I suppose fighter aircraft have the personal touch.
I don't know what the 'Olympics scandal' is. The cost of the thing is a scandal, but then these things always are expensive.
Not a one off. Evidence of this being common practice. Or sthu, tbh, and stop spreading your poison.
There is a new generation of openmoko phones in the works. These phones are much more trustworthy than closed phones with binary blob OS that has been tampered with by the network provider as well. As far as I know nobody has user friendly LUKS support, but it shouldn't be too hard to add. http://projects.goldelico.com/p/gta04-main/
I certainly had mixed feelings reading this article for the first time just now.
Cool technology. Holy crap, governments can use this unsuspectingly. WTF? Didn't Google get torn a new one for effectively the same reason? That the government can do this but companies cannot makes it seem prosecuting Google was a distractionary measure while the government's action get to slip under the radar (pun intended).
This is exactly why we need a full linux on our phones. I want dmcrypt, I want ssh (ok, already there), I want TrueCrypt.
Someone needs to buy some examples of these data extraction devices and reverse engineer countermeasures against them. Because it will not be too long before criminals get the same devices as the police (don't put your phone down in a bar while you go for a wizz, it may be there when you get back but is the data still intact).
Countermeasures could go from simple, detecting a probe attempt and unless the unlock code is entered crash the phone / wipe encryption keys all the way to. Detect a probe, send back counter-probe, get make and model of device query online for latest master passwords and instruct probe device to wipe its own firmware.
Police in various areas of the US, particularly NYC, are using stop and frisk, or rather, are overusing it. They must be salivating at the potential for "stop and download".
- T
The police are using windows base computers so just put a virus vault on your SD card and watch the fun began.
I suspect that one of the main uses of this will be at protests. By extracting cell phone data from protesters, and you can predict future protests as well as find all sorts of data to discredit the protesters.
I don't know what the 'Olympics scandal' is. The cost of the thing is a scandal, but then these things always are expensive.
Well, aside from the staggering cost to the taxpayer and particularly the locals who are footing a big chunk of the bill, there is the fact that normal daily life for everyone else who isn't particularly interested is going to get turned on its head for varying periods. How much inconvenience regular people suffer and how much financial loss is incurred by businesses who aren't on the Olympic gravy train remains to be seen, but it's a good bet that both will be substantial, particularly for those who live or work anywhere near London or one of the other major venues. Transport for London have already been running damage control publicity, because they haven't got a prayer of coping with demand at peak periods even with all the recent improvements. Half the West End is going on holiday for two weeks. Even local government departments are making plans for people to work from home, not just for the duration of the Olympics themselves, but for almost two months. You get the idea.
Then there is the fact that the Olympic authorities have effectively bought laws to protect their "sponsors". Some things that might (or might not) be considered bad manners under normal circumstances are now criminal acts under English law. That is deeply, deeply offensive.
In a similar vein, there are the special privileges to make sure their VIPs (a list running to tens of thousands of people) do feel very important. There was an interesting radio programme the other day discussing whether members of the "Olympic family" were going to receive priority healthcare from senior medical staff at hospitals in the event of any problems, for example. Representatives of local hospitals and relevant organisations painted a very mixed picture when interviewed, and the best the officials responsible for the Olympics had to offer was, liberally translated, "The IOC set all these conditions if you want to have the Games, so we had to bend over like nice little hosts because what else could we do?" It apparently didn't occur to anyone to tell the IOC, after the winner of the bid was already announced, when reportedly the full contract was produced and seen by officials for the very first time, that the IOC's list of demands was more reminiscent of a self-important diva popstar than a serious organisation, and that if they wanted to buy laws they should publicly undo the big announcement they just made and go somewhere else because our legal system is not for sale.
Next, there is security. Lots of it. OK, I get that it's a big event and an obvious target and everyone wants to keep the athletes and spectators safe. But right now we have a big problem in this country with security theatre, and we have a significant problem with a certain type of person with an over-inflated sense of importance being put into a position of legal authority over everyone else. Do you know what almost all of the media coverage for the Olympics has been about for the last several months? Security. Not the elite athletes. Not whether the focus on sport is encouraging more people to participate themselves. Not the story of creating the venues and the benefits the organisers hope they will bring to local areas long after the Games are gone. Not the opportunity to bring the international world together and build some community spirit at a time when many parts of the world -- not least Greece -- are feeling all too isolated in other ways. No, almost everything is about bringing a helicopter carrier through the Thames barrier, or mounting SAMs on rooftops over London, or hiring vast numbers of people (with any relevant experience?) to help secure the venues, or the fact that our military will be openly running major operations on our own soil in peacetime, oh, and don't forget to fear The Terrorists.
Yes, I'm annoyed by the Olympics. I genuinely hope, for
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Remove battery. Place battery into glove compartment. Lock glove compartment. Sorry officer, it's locked. I'm going to need a warrant for that search and seizure.
Believe it or not, Apple has a defense against this built in to iOS 5.
The automated "read a suspect's cellphone tools" I've heard of work by performing a tethered jailbreak. After executing the jailbreak logic, they read the memory containing the security key, and brute force the simple 4 digit PIN, which then grants full access to the machine. The process takes from a few seconds to a few minutes.
The fix is to go into Settings / General / Passcode lock, and turn "Simple Passcode" to Off. Set a passcode longer than 10 characters. The brute force time has now been extended to longer than your natural lifetime.
Of course, you now have a 10+ character passcode to enter every time you want to use your phone. It's up to you to decide if your security is that important to you.
John
I've got Little Bobby Tables in my address book, and looking forward to The Met uploading my contacts into their database...
Mods have no sense of humor.
If I were living in the UK I would be worried this would turn into a colossal waste of money (I'm sure the US will waste even more money). What this "Kiosk" amounts to is a hacking module designed for use by people that have very little real knowledge of how the device works. This means it is using predetermined exploits to gain access. These exploits will be addressed by the manufacturer not because they want to thwart police but rather the evil doers stealing peoples phones. That means the Kiosk and will need to be updated constantly and will still likely only yilld the same low hanging fruit. I say low hanging fruit because for anyone interested in defeating the Kiosk of Doom, the methods are already known and in use. Hardware AES encryption and a complicated password is basically unbreakable. Hardware encryption should be thought of as hardware authentication. Without using the built in encryption module cracking AES 256 will take life times because dictionary attacks won't work. With the actual hardware present only the users typed in code is a problem but you are forced only use the phone against itself. With this attack you are limited by the phones own ability, so no attacking the passcode with a bunch of playstations. What it all means is that if there is an exploit available that will allow multiple authentication attempts without triggering something like IOS delete after 10 attempts then a 4 digit password is not safe from people that know and can use those exploits. If you have an actual password, pattern, whatever... You can feel safe that some bobby wont be looking at the naked pictures of your wife unless you let him. I saw some people mention having a kill code and I think it is a good idea but limited. You would have to have the presence of mind to kill your phone and of course it would be assumed that you ruined the data on purpose. If I was simply worried about pictures of my wife or whatever I would simply not give my strong password or pattern and wait until I was forced to. At that point you can talk to a judge and explain why and ensure that the handling of your data is dictated by a court of law and private pictures or
Unlike the phones of its time (2009), it was not a mass-market phone. It is a multitool for communications, as pre-Elop Nokia engineered & built them.
It was more open than Android, it was too unfriendly towards carriers, had features that were ahead of others(hardware keyboard, 32GB flash + SD slot), had integrated communications frameworks for various network types.
The case where I'd recommend an N900 is if one already has one - for there is no replacement that matches it in openness, form-factor, or network availability.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Has anyone considered that SMS communication between husband and wife is privileged communication under Section 1(c) of the Criminal Evidence Act 1898? Or that email on a mobile telephone may be privileged communication from a legal representative? If the police look at any of this information then a case is prejudiced. A chain of evidence ensures the integrity of data but it doesn't guarantee privacy. Therefore, holding the information and acting upon it leads to reasonable doubt.