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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.

8 of 73 comments (clear)

  1. (Phone forensics expert AMA) by GrEp · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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
  2. Re:Actual link to TFA by phantomfive · · Score: 2

    Now that I've read the article, it looks like the phone searches either were done with consent or with a warrant, and in most cases, a warrant was used. Hard to feel outraged about that.

    It is eye-opening to see the nice tools the police have to search through phones, though. A pretty UI, it's more than just grep.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  3. Re:I agree, this is unnecessary by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yes, a Muslim ban would be a good start - but it should be quickly followed by a ban on Christians and Jews entering the country. In fact, the only people we should be allowing into the country are Atheists. Lesbian Atheists. And not the butch ones, just the "lipstick" ones. It's the only way to be sure.

  4. Re:I agree, this is unnecessary by tsqr · · Score: 2

    I doubt if more than a paltry few (if any) of these extractions were connected in any way with terrorism-related cases. Much more likely your garden-variety domestic felonies such as homicide and drug trafficking.

  5. Re:I agree, this is unnecessary by zlives · · Score: 4, Insightful

    or pretty girls phone.

  6. Re:Lack of iPhones by pr0fessor · · Score: 2

    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.

  7. Re:Actual link to TFA by Holi · · Score: 2

    They state: "One "preview sheet" we received from Tucson had a column for whether they received a warrant to crack into the phone", that hardly supports the claim of "most cases". That "preview sheet" lists 14 uses.

    --
    Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
  8. Re:I agree, this is unnecessary by Sparowl · · Score: 2

    You can, but if we suspect you of filming it covertly on your phone, it will be subject to seizure and data mining.