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Police In Oklahoma Have Cracked Hundreds of People's Cell Phones (vice.com)
An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a report via Motherboard: Mobile phone forensic extraction devices have been a law enforcement tool for years now, and the number of agencies using them is only rising. As part of an ongoing investigation, we have finally been able to turn up some usage logs of this equipment, from Tulsa Police Department, and Tucson Police Department. While the logs do not list the cause of the crime or any other notes about why the phone was being searched, it does list the make of the phone, the date, and the type of extraction. First, let's go over what extraction devices are being used here. Tucson PD opted for the brand that is arguably the worldwide leader in mobile device forensics, the Israeli company Cellebrite. Tulsa Police Department however opted for a few different models -- they purchased two different password breakers from Teel Technologies in 2015, and in March 2016 gave about $1,500 to Susteen for their SecureView extraction device (SecureView was the product Susteen created when the FBI requested they create a more advanced extraction device for them). It does its work instantly, and has an incredible reach into a phone's data. They renewed this contract in 2017. In August 2016 they also purchased the Detective extraction device from Oxygen Forensics. Oxygen is much less common than Cellebrite, from what we have found. The kicker really is how often these are being used -- it is simply really hard to believe that out of the 783 times Tulsa Police used their extraction devices, all were for crimes in which it was necessary to look at all of the phone's data. Even for the 316 times Tucson PD used theirs in the last year, it is still a real stretch to think that some low-level non-violent offenders weren't on the receiving end. There are some days where the devices were used multiple times -- Tulsa used theirs eight times on February 28th of this year, eight again on April 3rd, and a whopping 14 times on May 10th 2016. That is a whole lot of data that Tulsa was able to tap into, and we aren't even able to understand the why.
I agree, this is unnecessary. There are better ways to protect us from terror than cracking people's phones after they commit violent acts. Let's implement a real Muslim ban, unlike the watered down stuff to try to get through the courts. Once we do that, it won't be necessary to crack phones. And the recent terror attacks in the UK prove that a Muslim ban is, indeed, necessary.
The motherboard report: https://motherboard.vice.com/e...
(2nd last link in an article with 11 links. Really?!)
I'd even settle for why Microsoft is good at this point. Give it a rest SlashOverlords.
Not surprising. Police still need a warrant.
Androids have become a lot more secure. IPhones are crackable but it takes a special rig, https://arxiv.org/abs/1609.043... .
bash-2.04$
bash-2.04$yes "Don't you hate dialup connections?"| write USERNAME
Interesting. A quick scan of the 39 pages of the Tulsa report shows just 2 iPhones, both iPhone 5c. The rest are all mostly flavors of Android.
Look again, more carefully. There were a handful of 6 and 6s models as well.
Donald, shouldn't you be running the country or golfing or something?
My son has cracked more than a couple iphones... he won't take them out of his pocket before he get's on the skateboard. I just quit buying them for him.
- it is simply really hard to believe that out of the 783 times Tulsa Police used their extraction devices, all were for crimes in which it was necessary to look at all of the phone's data.
No it's not. It's very simple. It's 2017 how do you think drug deals work? Smoke signals?
No it's not. It's very simple. It's 2017 how do you think drug deals work? Smoke signals?
No.
SMS.
Which basically have the same level of privacy/intrusion prevention as post-cards. Or smoke signals.
There's a reason why your low-ranking street-trotting drug dealer is exactly that.
If he had a little bit more brain and could understand all the intricacies of cryptography and data security,
he would have enough brain to actually land a better paying job.
Lots of the information critical to investigate small fry drug dealer can easily be eavesdropped without even needed access to the culprit's phone.
Of course, there's going to be a few of them a tiny bit more tech savvy that will try to use some app to communicate...
but given the above mentioned brain deficiency, they'll probably end-up discussing it on Facebook. On somebody's public wall.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
How many times were these done without a warrant?
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Think of it this way, if they are cracking phones than chances are they are doing so via warrants.
The privacy issue isn't cops using warrants, the issue is cops performing surveillance without warrants via IMSI catchers (AKA stingrays). One of these involves a singular target with a warrant, the other inevitably gathers data on people where the is no warrant.
Sounds like they are doing the right thing.
Supporting each of approximately 8,000 homeless persons in San Francisco costs about $30,000 or $250 million total; presumably other cities' costs are similar. (Source: homeless censuses and San Francisco budgetary estimates, not including emergency medical services.)
Either government human services are not cheap -- or Harvard is.
How many believed the many stories that some of the older bands had really powerful protection that always worked and that was beyond the funding any city, state or federal contractor could work with per case?
It was like Enigma, quick, easy and connected.
The face database is also interesting https://www.muckrock.com/news/...
".... larger database of between one million, twenty million, or potentially a billion faces to instantly identify in the field"
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
and can guarantee that TPD has no idea why their actually doing it either. But one poster hit it on the head; this is most likely in relationship to busting drug dealers. SWIM once told me that even though many dealers use burners, those burners are still filled with people's numbers, texts, etc that can be used to create a web of information. Motherboard mentions "protesters and activists"; as a Red state we really don't have much of either and it hasn't escalated to the point of arrest in many years. I've had to deal with the TPD Cybercrimes unit before, they totally screwed up my requests by transposing the submitted the IPs. That pic on that page shows how "advanced" they are; I doubt they are really using this data much. However, they most likely are passing it all up to the FBI.
It's all those old discarded iphones 3 and 3+ lying in the junk boxes of stoned teenagers that they use as an excuse for calling them 'dealers'.
In my opinion a non functional American federal government is preferred. Their "Work" mostly looks (to me) to be passing bad laws or making the federal debt larger.
... on my $20 BLU Tank-II T193 cheapie.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.