Drive-By Shooting Suspect Remotely Wipes iPhone X, Catches Extra Charges (appleinsider.com)

schwit1 shares a report from Apple Insider: A woman from Schenectady, N.Y. accused of being the driver in a shooting used Apple's remote wipe feature to destroy evidence on her iPhone X that might have been related to the event. The iPhone was seized as evidence in the case, but police say that shortly after she triggered the remote wipe, an option available via Find My iPhone in iCloud. Normally the tool is intended for people with lost or stolen devices. The suspected driver, Juelle Grant, was arrested on November 2nd and charged with two counts of tampering with physical evidence, and one count of hindering prosecution. As Apple Insider notes, only one of the tampering counts is connected to the iPhone.

Comments

No Faraday cage?

[Arzaboa]

I'm surprised (I probably shouldn't be) that the police do not have some system in place so that these phones are cut off from communicating with anything once they have them. I'd have to think that a tampering charge is less than a murder charge.

--
Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. -- Winston Churchill

Re: No Faraday cage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or just pull the sim card?

Re:No Faraday cage?

[Locke2005]

I'd also have to think that you can't prove in court who did it -- anybody with her icloud username and password COULD have wiped the phone. And yes, I'd think they would immediately put phones in as RF-proof bag as possible. It they don't, they are just being idiots.

Re:No Faraday cage?

[Harlequin80]

It's beyond reasonable doubt, not beyond ANY doubt.

For example

Someone logs into her iCloud account, from an IP address that is registered to her physical address and then wipes the phone immediately after an event that gives her motive to wipe the phone.

You then have means, motive and opportunity with little to no reason to believe anything else was likely to occur. I don't see how you could argue that there was a reasonable doubt.

Re:No Faraday cage?

[Anonymous Coward]

A few layers of Reynolds Wrap should be plenty.

Re:No Faraday cage?

[ShanghaiBill]

It's beyond reasonable doubt, not beyond ANY doubt.

Indeed, and "reasonable doubt" means roughly a 90% probability.

When DNA evidence first became available, The Innocence Project went back and evaluated old archived evidence, and were able to show that about 10% of convicted defendants couldn't possibly have committed the crimes. This is a floor on the number of wrongful convictions, since there are other people that are innocent but without enough evidence to exonerate them.

So our society is clearly willing to send plenty of innocent people to prison rather than acquitting too many of the guilty.

Is there more than a 10% chance that some stranger logged in and wiped her phone? Of course not. It was either her or an accomplice. She is guilty.

But can the phone wipe be used as circumstantial evidence that she is the shooter?

Anyway, at least she is paving the way for future female murderers. I hate the way everyone looks at drive-by shooting as a "guy thing".

Re: No Faraday cage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah crazy. As soon as I saw this article I thought "why wouldn't police stations have a faraday cage or lock the phones in aluminum boxes or old microwaves or something?" But looks like you beat me to it. Nice.

Re:No Faraday cage?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen such a box in my local police station. If I remember right, it is also a glove box so that phones can be kept from receiving or sending signals while being manipulated.

I have no idea how wide spread these things might be. I don't live in a huge city, but it does host offices of Google and Microsoft. This may be the reason they have such a thing, or it might be that they just moved to a nice new police station and it was in the budget.

Re:No Faraday cage?

[PopeRatzo]

Indeed, and "reasonable doubt" means roughly a 90% probability.

Is that true, Bill? I had no idea that reasonable doubt had been quantified to that extent. I don't doubt you, I'm just surprised. I learned something today.

Re:No Faraday cage?

[AHuxley]

In the past physical access by the police was all that was needed.
Now its time to sell every city and town in the USA on a collection of Faraday tablet/phone bags.
With hours of course work in how to look after the phone and keep it safe.
Sell an up upgrade to the police evidence lab/room too. Keep any evidence away from all networks until the pushed police software can do its magic.

Re: No Faraday cage?

[hey!]

Well, it's an empirical estimation of what reasonable doubt tends to amount to, at least. My guess is people don't convict very often without feeling more certain than that in a Bayesian sense, but you do have to account for confirmation bias.

Re: No Faraday cage?

[Harlequin80]

Not sure I would extend your numbers to a % on reasonable doubt. To the outcome of the innocence project shows more the error rate for conviction. There would also be the error rate on not convicting, but that % is essentially unknowable.

Re: No Faraday cage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because she wiped her phone doesn't mean the phone had evidence of her committing a murder. There are plenty of things which could have been on that phone that had nothing to do with the murder, but which would have got her into just as much (or more) trouble than the evidence tampering.

Re: No Faraday cage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isnâ(TM)t it true that even if the phone is wiped all that does is break the encryption key but technically it can be recovered via some sort of forensics?

Re: No Faraday cage?

[hey!]

That's actually my point: accuracy and confidence are two different things. From my experience serving on juries, voting to convict probably implies more than a 90% level of belief. As people near a conclusion they switch from reasoning to rationalizing, which means that last bit of certainty is spurious.

Re: No Faraday cage?

[Anonymous Coward]

no it doesn't. But she isn't being charged with wiping evidence of a murder, she is being charged with tampering with evidence. The phone as soon as it is seized is evidence whether it has anything incriminating on it or not.

Re: No Faraday cage?

[Harlequin80]

Sorry didn't pay enough attention to see you were not Bill.....

I need more sleep

Re: No Faraday cage?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the phone can still be recovered even after its wiped.

Re: No Faraday cage?

[DontBeAMoran]

They're law enforcement officers. They don't have time to play the sims.

Re:No Faraday cage?

[ehlo]

I work in a team that, among other things, does forensic acquisitions of electronic devices on a regular basis, including with the police.

This type of scenario is what we scare the new recruits with when we have them in day-1 training. So much effort goes into acquiring devices (warrants, court orders, co-ordination, deployment, police presence, etc) and there's so much riding on the (potential) evidence on them that it would be devastating to go through all of that effort only to be foiled by a remote wipe.

It is best practice to turn the device on airplane mode as soon as the device comes into your possession, and/or put it in a faraday bag. There are special ones made specifically for mobile phones that have windows in them so you can see the device's screen. They cost $200. The acquisition and chain of custody forms you have to fill in when acquiring a device in the field usually even have a box you have to tick to indicate that you have put it in flight mode.

tldr; there are robust best practises in place, they weren't followed in this case.

Re: No Faraday cage?

[blindseer]

I'm pretty sure that such remote wipe capability is possible over WiFi. If someone subscribes to some of the more popular WiFi services this gives a very high probability that the phone can still be wiped, and higher yet if someone has subscribed to more than one.

Take myself as an example. As a university student I was on the eduroam network, which is international and often available beyond what people might recognize as a university campus since old universities tend to blend into the city they are in over time. As someone that got my phone from AT&T I was automatically subscribed to the AT&T WiFi network, which seems quite popular in many shopping centers and stores.

I'm pretty sure that removing the SIM card is insufficient for preventing a remote wipe. I'm also pretty sure that powering off the phone is verboten as that could destroy evidence. Removing the SIM card while the phone has power could destroy something as well, data and/or hardware, so that's probably something the police should not do to preserve evidence.

More people are becoming aware that their phones can tattle on them. I can imagine other measures becoming popular to keep the police out of our phones and lives.

Re:No Faraday cage?

[AmiMoJo]

You can buy Faraday cage bags with built in charging (so that the phone doesn't power down and disable PIN/finger/face unlock, although these days they have a time-out as well) for this purpose. Maybe they couldn't afford them, maybe they just screwed up.

Re: No Faraday cage?

[ArsenneLupin]

or old microwaves

Doesn't work. Put phone into microwave. Shut door. DON'T TURN MICROWAVE ON. Call phone. It rings.

Re: No Faraday cage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Switching to airplane mode does not require unlocking the phone. Powering off also does not require unlocking.

Re: No Faraday cage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who at Apple made that stupid decision? Android lock screen does not have airplane mode switch.

Re: No Faraday cage?

[jabuzz]

So what if there is a daily scheduled remote wipe of my phone that unless I cancel gets executed. Have I then tampered with evidence given I did nothing after the phone was seized as evidence?

Re: No Faraday cage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please tell me how exactly you're going to get anyone's *locked* phone into airplane mode without their assistance?

Re: No Faraday cage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mine does, but prompts for PIN if you try to change its status.

Re:No Faraday cage?

[AmiMoJo]

Don't people use the emergency shut down features of their phones? Hold the power button for a few seconds, or press it 5+ times on some models.

I guess you can buy equipment to bypass the lock for some devices, but not all.

Re:No Faraday cage?

[sycodon]

Odds are we let far more guilty people go than are convicted wrongly.

Lady Justice is depicted with analog scales. Turns out that is a very appropriate description of how it works.

Re: No Faraday cage?

[BasilBrush]

Fundamentally, your question is "Can the absence of action be a crime?". And the answer is yes.

Re: No Faraday cage?

[c6gunner]

By using the airplane mode button. The one which shows up on the lock screen.

Re: No Faraday cage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the microwave only limits radio waves in a particular band. Somewhere around 2GHz as I recall. Cell phones used to operate around the same region but due to the radio noise, they have moved to other bands like 700Mhz (will has some other nice properties as well related to penetration and reflections).

Re:No Faraday cage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Odds are we let far more guilty people go than are convicted wrongly.

And that somehow justifies the wrongful imprisonment of innocents? Because I don't understand why you would respond that way unless you consider the wrongful imprisonment of those innocents to be acceptable casualties.

Re: No Faraday cage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps, but that is too broad. A better question is "am I required to inform the police about the proper way to store the objects that they have seized from me in order to ensure maximum shelf life?"

Oh, I don't have the answer to that question, I just feel it is a better question to be asking.

Re: No Faraday cage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, remote wipe don't need a SIM. The phone needs to be on, and connected to some kind of network though.

Usually, turning a phone off is easy enough. It might need a password to do so - in which case you force it off by removing the battery. Oops - can't do that with some of the newer phones.

Still, removing the SIM and putting the phone in a metal lunchbox should work. Presumably, the police station is big enough that unwanted wifi networks don't penetrate to where they dissect phones.

Re: No Faraday cage?

[cayenne8]

By using the airplane mode button. The one which shows up on the lock screen.

I must have turned that off on my iPhone, along when I turned off all notifcations on the lock screen so that messages, etc don't show up there where anyone could read them.

I'd have to think other people might think of that too?

Re: No Faraday cage?

[Anonymous Coward]

That answer is yes - but I am not so sure it applies to this case of "not cancelling the self destruct".

Anyway, setting up a daily cancellable remote wipe is too complicated. If you, as a criminal, worry that cops might grab your phone - why have anything on it in the first place? Just install an app that purges call logs, gps logs and so on, almost continously. They can get call logs from the phone company, but it takes more time and a warrant that they may or may not get. Info about gps/map/route history, network connections, browsing histories and various messaging apps can all be gone forever though. And it'll work even if the phone goes straight into a faraday bag! A local wipe is so much better.

Re: No Faraday cage?

[GoTeam]

You are talking about criminals who think the proper solution to a problem is to point a gun at it. I'm not sure they've given proper thought to securing their phones.

Re:No Faraday cage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is there more than a 10% chance that some stranger logged in and wiped her phone? Of course not. It was either her or an accomplice. She is guilty.

Guilty of what? Destroying evidence? Yes. Murder? Not necessarily. The phone wipe could have been performed to hide any number of illegal activities not related to the murder. If she is guilty of the murder, then I'm sure their will be plenty of other evidence at trial in addition to the phone wipe. If your confident she's guilty of murder just because the phone was wiped, then I pray you never end up on the jury of someone who is wrongfully accused.

Re: No Faraday cage?

[blindseer]

Usually, turning a phone off is easy enough. It might need a password to do so - in which case you force it off by removing the battery. Oops - can't do that with some of the newer phones.

A non-removable battery is a feature, not a bug. If you want a phone that can be wiped remotely to secure your data from being taken without your permission then you want the phone to stay powered so it can receive the wipe command. Alternately the storage could be volatile and removing the battery would wipe as well.

I'm not terribly concerned if the police are inconvenienced in scraping data off our pocket computers. My electronic devices are for my convenience, not the government's.

Re:No Faraday cage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, you know, don't do illegal shit like drive for a wanted shooter.

Re:No Faraday cage?

[BranMan]

I think the point that sycodon was getting at is that we have an imperfect system, we are fallible as humans, and not every iota of evidence in every case is back and white. Shit happens, some innocents will be wrongly imprisoned.

Do we want it to happen? No! Do we do what we can to try and prevent it? Yes! Do we acknowledge that it will, on occasion, happen anyway? Well, yes.

No justification happening here.

Re: No Faraday cage?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's because of door design. The door is designed only to filter 2.4GHz.

Re: No Faraday cage?

[Local ID10T]

By using the airplane mode button. The one which shows up on the lock screen.

My stock android phone (Samsung Galaxy S7) does not have this. I just checked..

Re: No Faraday cage?

[piojo]

Don't forget not all our laws are just. Also, don't forget police are also part of the group that solves problems by pointing guns at them.

Have you ever called the police and subsequently been arrested yourself because of some tired cop's poor judgment or personal biases? That happens, too.

My point is: I caution you against assuming all arrested people are violent thugs. Some of them are, most aren't.

Re: No Faraday cage?

[c6gunner]

The S7 is nowhere near stock android. It's heavily customized by Samsung.

Yes, some manufacturers to remove that functionality from the lock screen.

Re: No Faraday cage?

[JesseMcDonald]

It's simple to remove the Airplane Mode button from the Quick Settings shown on the lock screen—or at least it is on my OnePlus 3T, and I would assume the same is true for most other near-AOSP Android phones. Unfortunately the same tile configuration is also used when the phone is unlocked, so if you want to enable or disable Airplane Mode after making that change you have to do it through the Settings app.

Re: No Faraday cage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Read more of sycodon's posts, you'll realize he is hostile and belligerent enough that he certainly does think that mere suspicion or antagonism towards his enemies is enough.

Remember, the quality of your argument can depend on your character.

Time-Based Remote Wipe

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we get a feature to automatically remote wipe our phones if they haven't been successfully unlocked for X days?

Re:Time-Based Remote Wipe

[Anonymous Coward]

You're describing a deadman switch. Courts will probably respond with "lol nah fuck you" directly, but if you pitch said justice through a lawyer with a murika-appropriate price tag, it can hold water.

Much like website canaries, these are workarounds that accomplish the exact same end result (ie wipe a device, announce a court order) but steps around weird, subjective, exploitable "intent" verbiage.

I've imagined a novel type of access control on the idea. A court says the law is forcing you to divulge a password, you MUST remember and provide it, but it automatically mailed itself to a random recipient. With instructions to not contact you until the Unexpected Duress has passed. You are literally incapable of furnishing the password, whether you're being tortured by a $5 wrench or a tantrum-throwing legal system.

Intent tends to live a few houses down from the laughably tangled spaghetti of thoughtcrime, and the same-result silliness behind these indemnifications is evidence of that.

Re: Time-Based Remote Wipe

[c6gunner]

Assuming you have a rooted Android phone you can probably accomplish that with Tasker.

Re:Time-Based Remote Wipe

[Agripa]

There are methods to use a password which is too long to remember. They come down to storing the password in a physical form which if accessed improperly is destroyed or plausibly destroyed like a deck of cards, stack of bills, or set of code books.

Of course it is inconvenient if you can only unlock your phone once at the beginning of the day and the court may not care but at least it gives you a chance to establish plausible deniability. It would be more suitable to a fully encrypted file server, workstation, or desktop.

Faraday cage

[Anonymous Coward]

Kind of surprised police departments don't immediately put phones into a Faraday cage.

Re:Faraday cage

[Locke2005]

Faraday cages require a ground, i.e. they are not portable. But there should be some way of blocking radio reception. In our Faraday cage at work, I was still able to communicate with WiFi routers outside the cage; they are not perfect.

Re:Faraday cage

[dlleigh]

That is incorrect. Faraday cages do not require a ground and can be very portable.

A simple roll of aluminum foil would work. Just tear off a large sheet, wrap it around the phone and crimp the edges with your fingers. Done!

The aluminum foil would be quite effective at blocking the RF signals going to and from the phone, and it would also detune the phone's internal antennas, increasing the effectiveness even more.

Re: Faraday cage

[Anonymous Coward]

Faraday cages do not require a ground if you have a power source. Just oscillate the current across the skin if the cage and you achieve the same effect at most frequencies, including those on cell bands.

Re:Faraday cage

[Anonymous Coward]

"Faraday cages require a ground", No, grounding is used with Faraday cages for lightning shows, as the lightning passes on the outside of the cage to ground.
To block radio waves, no ground is needed. It's just photons, you don't need a ground for your sun-glasses to work.

The gaps in the cage need to be smaller than the radio wavelength. 2.4GHz is about 12cm, 5GHz is about 6, the cell bands are longer.

Also, tin foil doesn't work. A box lined with steel wool might be a cheep way to go. A microwave oven with the door closed also would work, and no you don't need to plug it in, and you might not like what happens if you turned it on.

Re:Faraday cage

[cdsparrow]

Yeah, just put my phone in microwave, it didn't lose either cell or wifi signal. Signal strength went down some, but still played youtube for a couple minutes just fine.

Re:Faraday cage

[Anonymous Coward]

Tin Foil doesn't, but Copper Tape does wonders. From GPS to Cell to everything else, line a box with it and you're golden (its a staple at work for "no signal" tests).

Re:Faraday cage

[rogoshen1]

well that's yet another way to destroy evidence, right?

Re:Faraday cage

[vlueboy]

Also, tin foil doesn't work. A box lined with steel wool might be a cheep way to go. A microwave oven with the door closed also would work

Speaking of microwaves, I am puzzled as to why we consider them shielded enough for human safety --haven't done any research though. There is a kindof urban legend I've heard here from the days of wifi B and G that congested home routers sometimes drop connections whenever someone's zapping food in the nearby ovens.

More personally, owning recent tech shows motive for worry whenever I walk by an active set (2 different brands thru the years) while listening to various bluetooth devices (headphones, speakers). My audio playback starts stuttering till I walk away. So are all of them poorly shielded and leaking acceptable non-cooking radiation?

Re:Faraday cage

[Raenex]

Parent is correct. I can confirm 5G does not penetrate my aluminum hat.

Re: Faraday cage

[Anonymous Coward]

True story. So at the time wife and I were expecting our first baby, she imported from China some maternity clothing designed to block harmful background RF. It was marketing BS for sure. But, it did work! As I laughed at her for wasting money on this expensive clothing, I tested it with a phone call (speaker mode) and immediately threw the garment over the phone. From four bars to dropped call!!!

Apparently that shit does work.

Re:Faraday cage

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, just put my phone in microwave, it didn't lose either cell or wifi signal. Signal strength went down some, but still played youtube for a couple minutes just fine.

You forgot to turn on the microwave.

Re:Faraday cage

[Sarten-X]

Speaking of microwaves, I am puzzled as to why we consider them shielded enough for human safety

Because the general public has no idea how microwave ovens work, or what microwave radiation does to humans. It's just a magic box that makes food hot, and probably doesn't kill the operator too quickly.

The size and shape of the oven is actually important. The microwaves bounce around inside, and produce standing waves. If you disable the motor on an oven (or put an upside-down plate over the spinning hub), and heat a large chocolate bar, you'll see some places get hot quickly (at the antinodes of the standing waves), and other places stay cool (where the reflecting waves aren't reinforcing each other). The motor acts to move food around through the hot spots, to more evenly expose the food to the high points of radiation.

Now about that radiation... It's really just a really bright light at a particular "color" (like all electromagnetic waves). It's in the 2.45 GHz range, just like 802.11 WiFi and Bluetooth signals. At that frequency, it makes molecules a bit more active, especially water molecules. It's not energetic enough to move atoms or electrons, so it won't change your DNA or cause cancer, but water will absorb microwave energy very nicely. Notably, that includes all the water just under your skin, so there's almost no radiation getting through more than about 17 millimeters of tissue.

Yes, that means that if your oven's shielding isn't particularly good, you will actually get "cooked" if you stand close to it... but because you aren't inside the oven, the microwaves aren't reinforcing each other, so there aren't any of those "hot spots" that actually cause significant heating. Essentially, you're getting hit with radiation, but usually not enough, and in too small of an area to matter (unless you do something particularly hazardous, like stand in front of a high-power microwave transmitter).

In short, it doesn't matter much if your microwave oven is a little leaky. It might disrupt WiFi and Bluetooth a bit, but it won't cause any more harm than eating a few bananas... the radiation from those will actually be inside you, passing right by your vital organs! However, you do still want your oven to leak as little radiation as possible, but for a different reason: any energy that escapes the oven isn't going to be heating your food.

So are all of them poorly shielded and leaking acceptable non-cooking radiation?

Yep.

Re: Faraday cage

[hey!]

If your small faraday cage is perfect and infinitely conductive, it will work perfectly. If is reasonably well constructed and fairly conductive, it will work well enough.

I suspect real world behavior for such shields is more complex than the simple high school physics model, and that the device inside is less than perfectly shielded. The shield in a shielded cable can be thought of as an imperfect Faraday cage, and depending on application it may not require grounding or it may need to be grounded at one or both ends.

In any event grounding never hurts and in practice sometimes it helps.

The idea that grounding is mandatory may come from preppers building room sized Faraday cages so their stuff survives a post EMP apocalypse. Not only is such a large build likely to have numerous imperfections, in some situations the cage and it's contents can acquire a large static charge relative to ground.

Re: Faraday cage

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only is it marketing BS, it can actually be worse than not using those clothes. Unless you wrap your baby entirely in those clothes from head to toe, it could act as a parabolic dish concentrating the signal to certain parts of the body or bouncing it many times through the body before the energy dissipates instead of travelling through the body once..

Re:Faraday cage

[imidan]

Same for me. My phone works fine in the microwave with the door shut. However, wrapping it in tin foil did block the signal.

Re:Faraday cage

[blindseer]

So are all of them poorly shielded and leaking acceptable non-cooking radiation?

Yes and no. I recall reading somewhere that the ovens are allowed to leak up to one watt of power. Compare that to the power of WiFi or Bluetooth at milliwatts and that's a lot of noise for the signal to go through. If you have a 1200 watt microwave oven and 1 watt leaks out then that's doing pretty good to keep most of that energy in, so "poorly shielded" may not apply on that grounds. Having the oven overwhelm your Bluetooth though may make this seem quite a bit of a leak.

Re: Faraday cage

[houghi]

Haha. We made him type this.

Re:Faraday cage

[thegarbz]

Faraday cages require a ground, i.e. they are not portable. But there should be some way of blocking radio reception. In our Faraday cage at work, I was still able to communicate with WiFi routers outside the cage; they are not perfect.

It depends on what you are doing. If your goal is to block a radio signal you don't need to ground a faraday cage. If your goal is to protect people or equipment including from the faraday cage itself then it should be grounded to avoid a charge building up on it or currents flowing through it when you touch it.

Re: Faraday cage

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait, so it blocks RF but not cosmic radiation? (Which would literally require a few feet of water or a few inches of lead.)

Re:Faraday cage

[Anonymous Coward]

Another one of those "know it alls" who have heard about wave lengths and radiation and now are so sure that microwaves, mobile etc. cannot cause cancer because the radiation isn't ionizing. Unfortunately, this is a childish view of biology and reality.

Firstly, the argument presumes cancer is always caused by DNA damage due to direct effects of the radiation. Not so - many factors can cause cancer. Just irritation of tissue can cause cancer. Certainly, heat applied to the skin can cause cancer. There are many different mechanisms in which heating of tissue could do so. Heat by itself increases mutations inside of cells. Heat disrupts various enzymes involved in DNA replication, DNA repair and protein folding. The cell has to activate heat shock protection mechanisms to ensure proteins fold correctly, but these mechanisms are imperfect. Heat also impairs cells ability to get rid of waste products (including mutagens) and the metabolism is higher meaning that there's a higher rate of free radicals generated (=> mutagens). Cell death due to heat means other cells have to divide more - more opportunity for replication errors, mutations and cancer. Heat weakens the blood-brain barrier meaning toxins and mutagens have an easier job passing over.

Biology is immensely complicated. I think the safest thing is you can is that if something has any biological effect at all, there's a chance it causes a cancer. You can not reject it just because of lack of some simple physical property (like lack of ionization). All you have done is AT MOST exlusion of cancer by that specific mechanism but not by another mechanism. It is in practice impossible to deduce or calculate how big that effect might be due to the complexity - the only thing you can do is run experiments on animals (and sometimes humans) and that has been many variables (pattern of exposure, latency, differences in sensitivity across species and within species... some humans have much worse DNA repair than others and some have cogenital mutations that raise the risk of cancer, meaning they only need a few more hits before cancer sets in).

Also, don't you agree that UV-light is a cause of cancer? UV-light is not ionizing radiation.

Re: Faraday cage

[c6gunner]

There is a kindof urban legend I've heard here from the days of wifi B and G that congested home routers sometimes drop connections whenever someone's zapping food in the nearby ovens.

It's not an urban legend, and it's not just B and G; my original Chromecast operated on the 2.4 ghz band, and it would stop playing movies every time I went to nuke some popcorn. Kinda handy actually; didn't have to bother hitting pause. Started right up again as soon as the popcorn was done.

Re: Faraday cage

[Pascoea]

Saw a shop in Florida that sold RF-proof undergarments. The only thing it accomplishes is proving that there are too many dumb people with too much money.

Re:Faraday cage

[Gilgaron]

Yes and no... the microwave is about as likely to cause cancer as repeated rug burn or noogies even if it is going to raise your likelihood of cancer beyond that of standing silently in a dark room instead. Safely ignored, standing by the grill would be more hazardous.

Re:Faraday cage

[Anonymous Coward]

Eating a banana is WAY more dangerous than sitting next to a microwave operating for several minutes. Radiation from potassium-40 is actually ionizing (beta and gamma at 1.3-1.4 MeV, that's a minimum of 1,300,000 electron volts vs microwave energy's maximum of 1.3 meV, or 0.0013 electron volts). When potassium-40 decays it's going to actually destroy some random molecule(s) in your body, even strongly bonded ones like DNA. Microwave radiation just bounces off all but the absolute weakest bonds, which are already broken easily and randomly by just being at body temperature and bumping into stuff. Both forms of exposure are absolutely dwarfed by the danger of being exposed to direct sunlight, which is only at ~2-4 electron volts, barely ionizing, but is at such high power (the sun is BRIGHT) that it can do far more damage than the potassium-40 in a banana. Sunlight is so dangerous that short term exposure can result in radiation burns (sunburn) as your skin is torn apart at a molecular level.

But really of the three, the sun is the only one you should be somewhat cautious about. Our bodies are pretty resilient, and have many, many defenses against radiation from our evolutionary history of being immersed in a radioactive environment. The microwave oven isn't going to hurt you.

Re: Faraday cage

[vlueboy]

Kinda handy actually; didn't have to bother hitting pause

Thanks for the confirmation and the additional anecdote. In hindsight, a better term than "urban legend" would have been more adequate for my GP comment. I haven't experienced it myself, but can think of "known issue"... unfortunately I've been lurking lots on Hackernews and sub-consciously avoided what there would have been a sure-fire citation-needed reply :)

I laughed at the happy note on your workflow. It reminds me of what happens when software fixes this kind of thing in an un-skippable update. Couldn't find the exact XKCD I had in mind but this one is funny too https://xkcd.com/1172/

Re:Faraday cage

[vlueboy]

Thank you for the informative reply and presenting sources, Sarten-X. It's nice to continue seeing the banana-related measurements.

They pop up in tech circles often, and I like propagating knowledge of the handy XKCD chart at https://xkcd.com/radiation/

Re: Faraday cage

[vlueboy]

On a closer look after posting, I think that was the right xkcd link all along.

Re:Faraday cage

[Agripa]

A microwave oven with the door closed also would work, and no you don't need to plug it in, and you might not like what happens if you turned it on.

A 900MHz microwave oven which uses finger stock to seal the door seam against RF would work great but they are long obsolete because the exposed and fragile finger stock along the inside of the door was easily damaged allowing leakage. This is a shame because they heated food more effectively than higher frequency ovens.

2.4 GHz microwave ovens use a choke ring folded into the door which is why the doors are so thick but the choke ring only works over a narrow frequency range and to a lessor extent its odd harmonics. Outside of that, the seam in the door acts as a slot antenna preventing good attenuation.

A small bag made of continuous metal mesh (Faraday bag?) with a conductive seam would work great though. The various metalized plastic bags I have tried have been hit or miss and not as effective but someone undoubtedly makes one which is suitable.

Re:Faraday cage

[Agripa]

Tin Foil doesn't, but Copper Tape does wonders. From GPS to Cell to everything else, line a box with it and you're golden (its a staple at work for "no signal" tests).

The problem whether tin, aluminum, or copper foil is used is the seam which acts as a slot antenna. This is especially a problem with aluminum because of its durable insulating oxide.

RF shielding enclosures often use conductive finger stock or braid to bridge across seams limiting the size of any inadvertent slot antenna.

Re:Faraday cage

[Agripa]

Speaking of microwaves, I am puzzled as to why we consider them shielded enough for human safety --haven't done any research though. There is a kindof urban legend I've heard here from the days of wifi B and G that congested home routers sometimes drop connections whenever someone's zapping food in the nearby ovens.

The level of leakage needed to interfere with 2.4 GHz WiFi is very low compared to the level needed to become a safety hazard.

The spectrum analyser function of a Ubiquiti access point can easily see the distinctive leakage from a microwave over at a considerable distance. They really trash the whole 2.4 GHz band.

The ISM bands were intended for applications where there was really no alternative to allowing high levels of leakage which make communication applications unreliable. If this is unacceptable for your product, then a different spectrum allocation is needed.

More personally, owning recent tech shows motive for worry whenever I walk by an active set (2 different brands thru the years) while listening to various bluetooth devices (headphones, speakers). My audio playback starts stuttering till I walk away. So are all of them poorly shielded and leaking acceptable non-cooking radiation?

It is pretty much an impossible problem; the choke ring used to shield the door seam has a finite attenuation so there is always a minimum level of leakage. 900 MHz microwave ovens used finger stock (a 900 MHz choke ring would be too large) which would work much better however the finger stock is fragile and prone to damage compromising its performance which is why 900 MHz microwave ovens are no longer in use.

She a good guurrrlll

[Anonymous Coward]

She dindu nuffin.

Re:She a good guurrrlll

[Anonymous Coward]

"Dear police, We didn't see nothin'. Sincerely, The Black People"

Re: She a good guurrrlll

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is the proper response when dealing with a criminal organization (police).

It's hardly "tampering with evidence"

[Anonymous Coward]

Ya honah, Eyes justs tryin to find ma phone

Not supporting shootings, but...

[BerkeleyDude]

Seriously? How about refusing to give up the encryption key - would that count as tampering with physical evidence? They're effectively the same thing.

Re:Not supporting shootings, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a big difference between tampering with evidence and being required to assist in your own conviction...

There is a thing called a Constitution and the right against self incrimination, maybe you have heard of it?

Re:Not supporting shootings, but...

[s4080326]

Refusing to give up the encryption key would be contempt of court depending or your fifth amendment right depending on the price of your lawyer.

Re:Not supporting shootings, but...

[mentil]

It was an iPhone X, so the police would hold it up to her face to unlock it. This has happened before.

Re:Not supporting shootings, but...

[HornWumpus]

I've said it before.

She should have used her junk as reference picture.

Re:Not supporting shootings, but...

[Locke2005]

The iPhone unlock requires eyes to be looking at the camera... I don't want to know what you use for the eyes in this metaphor!

Re:Not supporting shootings, but...

[HornWumpus]

One pink, one brown for her.

'Old one eye' should work, unless apple discriminates against the one eyed..

Re:Not supporting shootings, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

The iPhone unlock requires eyes to be looking at the camera... I don't want to know what you use for the eyes in this metaphor!

I saw this documentary about it.

Re:Not supporting shootings, but...

[Actually, I do RTFA]

You don't have to provide an encryption key - you don't have to help them. But you cannot hinder them.

Similarly, lawyers and big corporations shred documents regularly, because that's legal. But once they are subpoenaed, it's illegal

Re: Not supporting shootings, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

My phone has a laser blaster just in case.

Re:Not supporting shootings, but...

[91degrees]

The information is not destroyed in that case. Simply unavailable. Someone (with knowledge of the key) could reasonably easily restore the data.

If you destroy the encrypted key on the phone (not quite sure how these work, but I presume there password is used to unlock the key that encrypts the data or something), or you have a key on some sort of medium that you wipe, that might be considered tampering.

Re:Not supporting shootings, but...

[f3rret]

You don't have to provide an encryption key - you don't have to help them. l

Not entirely true.
This lady explains better than me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Not supporting shootings, but...

[Actually, I do RTFA]

She may "explain better", but I'm not going to watch a video to reply to a slashdot comment. Care to summarize? (Or is your point that you can be forced to help with biometric locks? Yeah, that's why you should have a PIN if you really care.) Also, offer only good in the USA..

Re:Not supporting shootings, but...

[f3rret]

I find your name and the content of your reply slightly ironic.

But essentially it's true that in most cases the authorities cannot compel you to to divulge your crypto keys, but under certain circumstances they can.
For example if they already know what they can expect to find (I.e they have examples of say child pornography coming from your IP), then a judge can compel you to divulge your keys or be held in contempt of court.

There are other cases mentioned in the video.

Re:Not supporting shootings, but...

[Agripa]

For example if they already know what they can expect to find (I.e they have examples of say child pornography coming from your IP), then a judge can compel you to divulge your keys or be held in contempt of court.

Knowing what is on the phone leads to probable cause for a warrant to seize and search it.

Knowing that it is your phone leads to the forgone conclusion doctrine so requiring your to unlock or produce the pass code does not reveal anything new.

Product idea?

[b0s0z0ku]

How about a one-way drop box on police cars that's a Faraday cage, grounded to the car's chassis with a lock that only management can open. Should prevent phones from being wiped, and preserve the chain of evidence -- if a body cam shows the phone being dropped into the secure box and the box is only opened in the presence of two people, it would reduce the risk of accusations of evidence tampering. Better yet, design the box to be sent directly to a trustworthy lab equipped with a Faraday cage where they can work on the phone. (i.e. PD can only put the phone in, they can't unlock it at all).

Re:Product idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

That might be a bit much. Pulling the SIM would be plenty IMO.

Re:Product idea?

[b0s0z0ku]

Don't some iPhones use an eSIM these days?

Re:Product idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

The next iteration of the phone can have a mode to detect a lack of any RF and auto wipe if the user chooses... Faraday-Wipe-Away Mode. Or the iDon'tKnowWhatHappened mode....

Re:Product idea?

[KixWooder]

The X doesn't but the newest ones do.

Re:Product idea?

[b0s0z0ku]

So if you work in a restaurant and take your phone into an industrial freezer, you're stuffed?

Re:Product idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, You are not stuffed. You can still play Candy Crush or Cow Clicker just fine.

Re:Product idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

That you means that you trust two cops that work together. What a useless idea. Those two pigs will happily work against you together, they just want to wrap up cases nice and tidy, the ends justify the means.

Re:Product idea?

[Locke2005]

So your phone self-wipes every time you drive through a tunnel? Awesome!

Re:Product idea?

[Actually, I do RTFA]

That removes the ability of the police officer to return the phone at the time. For instance, if they realize that there is no need to arrest the person.

Re:Product idea?

[yarbo]

It could be triggered by being cut off for more than 10 minutes, it could shut itself down to make the only venue for attack the drive encryption (rather than memory, or screenlock attacks). It could require a password entered within 30 minutes to prevent wiping.

There are a lot of ways to approach this problem that balance how much data to destroy or inconvenience to impose along with how sensitive it could be.

For some people, false positives are strongly preferred to false negatives.

Re:Product idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

The next iteration of the phone can have a mode to detect a lack of any RF and auto wipe if the user chooses... Faraday-Wipe-Away Mode. Or the iDon'tKnowWhatHappened mode....

That's a great idea. Then I wouldn't only lose signal on my way to work, I'd lose everything on my phone.

Re:Product idea?

[AmiMoJo]

How about a phone that auto-wipes if I don't re-authorize with a strong password every 24 hours? And that wipes if it detects known data extraction tools, or for that matter any USB data connection unless I pre-authorize it?

Re:Product idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone want to sell some used microwave ovens to the government at a huge markup?

Re:Product idea?

[RoloDMonkey]

You don't need anything so complicated. Just Google "faraday bag forensics". You can buy single use, single seal bags that work the same way as disposable bank deposit bags; once it is sealed it can't be opened without evidence of tampering.

Re:Product idea?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget to ground the car, which is insulated by it's tires

Like Schoedinger's cat, kinda

[Rick Zeman]

Uh, how can they charge her with obstructing anything when they a) don't know what was on the phone and b) had any assurance they could even access they phone (especially as TFA notes that they were so clueless that they didn't toss it in a Faraday bag). There may or may not have been evidence.

This all part of the game, and this round went to the bad guys.

Re:Like Schoedinger's cat, kinda

[rogoshen1]

I think it's one of those "we're gonna charge you, and you can fight it; but you'll get the maximum penalty -- OR you can fess up and we'll give you 5 years and probation" type shake-downs.

And definitely, this round will definitely go to the bad guys (overreaching DA's and police)

Re:Like Schoedinger's cat, kinda

[b0s0z0ku]

If she was actually involved in attempting to kill someone, it's not terrible if they get her for something, just like Al Capone was jailed for tax evasion.

Re:Like Schoedinger's cat, kinda

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are saying she was one of the 'bad guys' I think you should check your view at the door. She hasn't been convicted of anything and as far as we know could be entirely innocent. She is accused of driving a car and probably little more. I doubt we know if she even knew about the murder at the time she drove the vehicle or whether or not a crime had taken place.

Re:Like Schoedinger's cat, kinda

[Riceballsan]

pretty sure attempting to destroy evidence counts if you are knowingly destroying something that you know the police are going to try to search. If the police are about to search your car, and you set it on fire before they can arrive... pretty sure that counts as destroying evidence, regardless of whether the police can prove there was or wasn't evidence in the car.

Re:Like Schoedinger's cat, kinda

[sarren1901]

The article really did not say how much evidence they had on her being the driver. If all they have is evidence tampering it won't really get them far or anywhere at all. As said above, how can you prove she did this to avoid this if you don't have any evidence she even was there?

They may very well have additional evidence not mentioned that has her in the car as the driver. Then she's screwed.

So far it doesn't sound like they have enough to really pin anything on her.

Re:Like Schoedinger's cat, kinda

[b0s0z0ku]

What about tower location records? The phone may be wiped, but it was still on the network (presumably) when during the time the attempted murder happened.

Re:Like Schoedinger's cat, kinda

[rogoshen1]

Fair point; but at the risk of setting precedence for questionable behavior by police and DA's going forward?

Re:Like Schoedinger's cat, kinda

[Anonymous Coward]

>two counts of tampering with physical evidence,

If she remotely remotely wiped the phone after the police seized it as evidence, the fact that she tampered with evidence in any form is a felony in New York State. Whether it had anything incriminating on it or not is irrelevant. It's just a question of whether the prosecution can prove that she did it intentionally and knowing that it was police evidence at the time.

> and one count of hindering prosecution

Not sure about this one. Not a lawyer, just making a guess really here.

Disclaimer: Not a lawyer, just making a guess based on what limited knowledge I have on criminal trial proceedings.

Re:Like Schoedinger's cat, kinda

[Kjella]

So? If you're served with a subpoena wiping the records instead is a crime, they don't have to prove the records would have been incriminating. I think it's obvious the same should apply to remotely wiping a seized device. You're free to set up any security policy you like in advance, even a dead man's switch if you want but taking active hostile action against a police investigation is not accepted in any legal system. Now I'm sure the US legal system has a lot of other issues, but I really fail to see how this makes them the bad guy. Not even a little.

Re:Like Schoedinger's cat, kinda

[R3d M3rcury]

Pretty easy, actually.

The data on the phone was evidence of something. It could have exonerated her or it could have convicted her. But we'll never know because she destroyed the data on the phone.

That's obstructing.

Re:Like Schoedinger's cat, kinda

[Anonymous Coward]

If the police took custody of the phone, and she remote wiped it, it's destroying evidence EVEN IF there was nothing on the incriminating phone. Of course, since the phone was wiped, the police don't know what was on it, do they? Because she deliberately destroy the contents so the police could not see them.

If that seems wrong to you, I suggest you explain why destroying evidence before the police can see if it is incriminating should not be a crime.

Re:Like Schoedinger's cat, kinda

[Anonymous Coward]

>> If the police are about to search your car, and you set it on fire before they can arrive... pretty sure that counts as destroying evidence

IANAL, but I believe something has to be requested / acquired by the police for it to be considered evidence. Hacking a company from your mom's basement and then immediately destroying your PC doesn't equate to destroying evidence. (Would be good if someone with actual legal knowledge would chime in, instead of me potentially talking nonsense.)

I appreciate the strong desire we have for The System to operate ethically and justly. To operate within the rules. I AM ALL FOR THAT. But I also understand that there are assholes in society who seem to always skirt the law. Essentially, adult versions of that little shit in class who would kick the chair of the kid in front, and stop when the teacher turned around. Years ago that kid would get thumped at lunchtime; I don't know what happens these days ... I haven't been to school in many decades.

Likewise, there are adults who commit crimes and leave no apparent proof e.g. ignore a court order and stalk (torment) a former partner. The law RIGHTLY requires evidence before they can be charged. However anyone who's had such an experience would appreciate the police bending the rules.

Re:Like Schoedinger's cat, kinda

[Anonymous Coward]

>> If that seems wrong to you, I suggest you explain why destroying evidence before the police can see if it is incriminating should not be a crime.

Better yet, how do those same people feel when they hear that police have destroyed evidence?

Re:Like Schoedinger's cat, kinda

[n3r0.m4dski11z]

"You're free to set up any security policy you like in advance, even a dead man's switch if you want but taking active hostile action against a police investigation is not accepted in any legal system."

Are you? is setting your phone to self destruct ala dead mans switches any different if the ends are the exact same. What about if you set up a canary type http address, that when unreachable for longer than an hour, would self destruct the phone? Do you really think they need much proof? or do they just assume if the phone is wiped when they go to forensic it, that you somehow orchestrated that.

Is this not precedent for any of these cases? I dont see why you think not. The law with regards to technology is often vastly misunderstood, and broadly and heavy-handedly applied.

Re:Like Schoedinger's cat, kinda

[sjames]

I'm guessing that since they apparently didn't arrest her (no web access in jail), they don't have much to show she was involved. Perhaps they hoped the phone would provide what they needed, but that's not going to happen now.

Re:Like Schoedinger's cat, kinda

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not illegal to have a retention or access policy on a device that wipes content daily or upon a failed access attempt or any other metric. Implementing such AFTER the fact though is definitely illegal. Many corporations already have such policies in place to handle stolen phones and devices.

Re:Like Schoedinger's cat, kinda

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, she could just be securing the naked photographs she had stored on her phone, from being leaked. Or her diary. Or the access to all her SoMe. Or her two-factor authenticator applications. Or credentials for work. Password safe. There are millions of reasons why she would wipe the phone, it's pretty easy to argue that she wanted to keep private information private and didn't trust police to handle that correctly. Better safe than sorry is my take on such matters. She doesn't have to prove her innocence, she is to be presumed innocent. It's actually the police who has the job of finding out if a crime has occurred and find evidence to prove who did it. If they cannot prove it, that should be on them. But seeing as the US justice system doesn't really care about justice at all, only about convicting someone, I wouldn't trust them with any data of mine. That's also why I will not be visiting the US.

Re:Like Schoedinger's cat, kinda

[geekmux]

You're free to set up any security policy you like in advance, even a dead man's switch if you want but taking active hostile action against a police investigation is not accepted in any legal system. Now I'm sure the US legal system has a lot of other issues, but I really fail to see how this makes them the bad guy. Not even a little.

Your logic is truly baffling if you think we're "free" to do as we wish here.

In the real word a "dead mans switch" is called Corporate MDM Security Policy which dictates wiping the phone after XX number of failed password attempts. I can see police accidentally or purposely attempting to get into a suspects phone which might trigger such a policy that they would be unaware of. I can also see police failing to "hack" a device resulting in a device wipe, ALL of which would be immediately turned into a charge of destroying evidence, which the suspect would have to spend a shitload of money proving otherwise, even if they had zero culpability. Not exactly a "free" solution by any means.

I'm sorry, but assuming there is a simple answer here is just plain wrong, especially since police have proven time and time again that they are technically incompetent. The only solution I've seen here that might work is a policy that dictates an immediate confiscation of an electronic device from a suspect, and that device placed into a locked box that would require at least two people (3rd party to the police) to open and perform forensic analysis. Any device found wiped or tampered with would automatically launch a full investigation to determine exactly how data was erased and who was responsible.

You're right. The US legal system does have a lot of issues. This is certainly one of them, and they don't have a good solution that actually protects information and avoids false charges.

Re:Like Schoedinger's cat, kinda

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't read TFA and IANAL, but if she was aware the police had it, then it is tampering with evidence. Or if they can prove she was somehow involved and it might have had evidence that ties her to it, they would have a reasonable case. However, if they can't tie her to a crime and if she could reasonably have thought she had lost it, I would assume it would be ok for her to wipe it.

Re:Like Schoedinger's cat, kinda

[Anonymous Coward]

It appears she knew the police had it. Remote wiping your phone is questionable behaviour if the police have confiscated it.

Re:Like Schoedinger's cat, kinda

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely you can have a dead mans switch wiping the phone. When questioned later, just admit to having such an app. There are many valid reasons for having a phone that auto-wipes. Don't want the abusive husband to find out about her lover, perhaps? Or perhaps she takes naughty pictures of herself, and don't want those to leak out if the phone ever gets stolen or lost?

Re:Like Schoedinger's cat, kinda

[Anonymous Coward]

Plea bargaining isn't a shakedown, its a cornerstone of modern law.

Re:Like Schoedinger's cat, kinda

[rogoshen1]

The joys of a surveillance society; simply being near a crime is enough to garner suspicion.

God help us.

Re:Like Schoedinger's cat, kinda

[rogoshen1]

How do those boots taste?

Re:Like Schoedinger's cat, kinda

[geekmux]

Surely you can have a dead mans switch wiping the phone. When questioned later, just admit to having such an app. There are many valid reasons for having a phone that auto-wipes. Don't want the abusive husband to find out about her lover, perhaps? Or perhaps she takes naughty pictures of herself, and don't want those to leak out if the phone ever gets stolen or lost?

Clearly you've never dealt with the US legal system. I don't give a shit what "legitimate" reason you have for using a dead mans switch on your phone, I can promise you it WILL be viewed as destruction of evidence, and you WILL be charged for it. Plain and simple.

Re:Like Schoedinger's cat, kinda

[Agripa]

Uh, how can they charge her with obstructing anything when they a) don't know what was on the phone and b) had any assurance they could even access they phone (especially as TFA notes that they were so clueless that they didn't toss it in a Faraday bag). There may or may not have been evidence.

This all part of the game, and this round went to the bad guys.

Since they had probable cause to seize and search the phone, the burden of knowing that evidence was on the phone was already met.

IMPERSONATING me & LYING again? apk

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject: I don't have a build for MacOS (yet, eventually I will) & as far as speculative execution? Hosts stop portsmash "You basically have to already be able to run your own evil code on a machine in order to PortSmash it." from https://www.theregister.co.uk/...

* I'm not sure on Spectre/Meltdown (though those impersonating me like YOU say it does & I HOPE YOU'RE RIGHT - it works out for me GOOD if you are per https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... my reply to you there saying hosts stop those too).

APK

P.S.=> In the end: You're pretty lame though IMPERSONATING me like you just have & then STALKING ME by your UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous posts AFTER you 'downmod bomb' my posts (especially ones that SHAME & expose YOU ZIP https://news.slashdot.org/comm... )

Re: IMPERSONATING me & LYING again? apk

[Anonymous Coward]

WAAAAAHHHH! WAAAAAHHHH! I was an asshole on the internet and now people are being mean back to me... Make them stop, mommy... they're hurting my feelings! I'm better than them because I own the $1 house you gave me, right? Make them leave me alone!

Re: IMPERSONATING me & LYING again? apk

[Anonymous Coward]

ZIP you're literally crying. Not APK. You also tried to twice downmod hide APK exposing you as a fool and liar https://news.slashdot.org/comm... Ashamed? You should be.

Re: IMPERSONATING me & LYING again? apk

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL, APK is REALLY mad at ZIP. It's obvious. We all know that when APK gets really mad, he pretends to not be himself in comments to fake support for himself. This has been going on all day today. Everyone knows you're APK. You're having quite a meltdown today, and I'm enjoying every moment of it.

Re: IMPERSONATING me & LYING again? apk

[Anonymous Coward]

ZIP I bet APK is laughing his ass off at you by exposing how much of a stupid liar you are here https://news.slashdot.org/comm... I know I am lmao at you. You're pitiful.

Re: IMPERSONATING me & LYING again? apk

[Anonymous Coward]

Linking to your own lies doesn't make them true.

That's heavy handed but a faraday bag would work

[SuperKendall]

I get where you are going with the one-way cage but in reality I'd be more worried about people remote-wiping seized devices that police tampering, so a more practical thing for every police car to carry would be faraday bags with wire mesh embedded in them - I used to see them for sale on Amazon, but the last I looked I couldn't find them. Seems like it could be made cheap enough for every police car to have a few on hand in case they needed to hold a phone for evidence and prevent any remote tampering.

You could have the bags come with a fairly tamper-proof seal that would work almost as well as the one way cage to ensure devices were not tampered with between seizure and lab work. Don't they already have similar things for evidence bags for normal stuff?

You don't have to prove anything in court

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd also have to think that you can't prove in court who did it

Not really. IRL something like 98% of cases are plea-bargained, so generally you don't have to prove a damn thing.

Was able to find Faraday Bag after all

[SuperKendall]

It seems like at least someone has a faraday bag for phones now

I've thought about getting one myself for a while now, in the case of a Carrington event or EMP, just to keep spare phones in I would have around anyway.

I have no idea if that one is any good, just the first one I found that looked promising.

Re:Was able to find Faraday Bag after all

[Anonymous Coward]

Em events are disruptive of unusual amounts of radiation in a given volume. Yet the amount of energy needed to fry a single phone with such a small surface area would give every exposed animal radiation burns. The threat to electronic devices is almost entirely eliminated if they are not connected to a long conductor, such as the power grid.

Keep your stuff unplugged, it will survive. However, the cell network will be spectacularly set on fire in the case of another Carrington, so they wont work anyway.

Re:Was able to find Faraday Bag after all

[shess]

I've thought about getting one myself for a while now, in the case of a Carrington event or EMP, just to keep spare phones in I would have around anyway.

"Tell me, Mr. Anderson, what good is a cellphone when you are unable to contact a tower?"

Re:Was able to find Faraday Bag after all

[ELCouz]

Pocket calculator?

Re:Was able to find Faraday Bag after all

[SuperKendall]

Keep your stuff unplugged, it will survive. However, the cell network will be spectacularly set on fire in the case of another Carrington, so they wont work anyway.

Good to know, thanks, but I had thought maybe some forward thinking carriers were hardening some towers here and there against EM spikes just for emergency purposes if nothing else?

I did figure it pretty unlikely cell service would work after an event like that, but I could at least use any offline mapping apps or the like to get somewhere else.

Re:Was able to find Faraday Bag after all

[i.r.id10t]

Indeed. If one didn't want to bury books in a septic tank - an old phone loaded up with PDFs and EPUBs with a small solar panel and charger setup stashed away in a properly shielded and sealed (water tight w/ desiccant in there!) box would be a good substitute

Re:Was able to find Faraday Bag after all

[Highdude702]

saved porn would probably be the major winner in this. lets be honest, its the intertnet..

Re:Was able to find Faraday Bag after all

[arth1]

I don't have a sim card for my cell phone. I use it for a lot of things[*] - pretty much anything except phone calls and SMS works just fine. Some use cases requires a WiFi connection, but certainly no connection to a cell tower.
Given that actual phone calls is the least use most put a smartphone to, I am sure that many can do just fine without it.

[*]: Books, music, audiobooks, GPS, exercise monitor/logger, calculator, metronome, 2FA token server... When near WiFi also checking e-mail, checking news, instant messaging, ssh, updating apps.

Re:Was able to find Faraday Bag after all

[SuperKendall]

Seems like a great post-apocalyptic story to be told where an empire is based entirely on one guy managing to save a hard drive of porn and a computer to access it, from a global EMP event.

Re:Was able to find Faraday Bag after all

[Highdude702]

Should pitch it to creators of south park and make randy marsh the savior. It would play well with the no internet episode!

Re:Was able to find Faraday Bag after all

[terrycarlino]

In the case of a Carrington event there will be no cell network to connect to, so the value of having an operating phone will be small. I suppose you could use it to look at saved photos or something, but generally speaking in the case of a Carrington event I'd be more worried about where my next meal was coming from rather than if my phone, which is likely to be useless for the next decade, worked.

Flip side of the coin

[Daetrin]

IANAL, but i'm pretty sure tampering with potential evidence is obstruction even if they can't prove there was anything incriminating in the evidence in the same way that police searching without a warrant/probable cause invalidates actual incriminating evidence, even if they argue that they would eventually have found that same evidence via legal means.

Basically the people who write the laws aren't _completely_ braindead. If the burden of proof were the other way around all potential suspects would always destroy all potential evidence, even after being indicted and while in full view of officials, and all police would always search you without a warrant and then back off and wait for a warrant if they actually found something that looked like it might be incriminating. (And one or both of those things still obviously happens quite a lot anyways, but at least there's some legal recourse this way.)

Cheap fix

[robotmankiller]

Doritos bag will block signal for $.50. Hope it helps.

Or

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, the cops tried to guess the password too many times, and activated the phone's security feature.

"Ooops ... I mean, she must've done it remotely."

what if your wipe key is lawyer vs attorney

[Joe_Dragon]

what if your wipe key is lawyer vs attorney and when asking you to open your phone some says I want my attorney and then the phone wipes it self?

Re:what if your wipe key is lawyer vs attorney

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be an intriguing thing. Speak your code word in the presence of the phone, then proceed to unlock it. Still, I'd be worried about both a) it not recognizing the command and then you unlock it and everything is still there, and b) it incorrectly identifying some other phrase as the command to wipe the phone. The former could be averted by having the wipe process switch to a different key, but simply having a duress key that displays dummy data would be a much simpler solution.

Not that I agree with a duress key per-say. Since proper encryption cannot be proven to exist, when you unlock the phone and they see nothing incriminating, it is impossible to prove that you haven't given a duress key.

Re:what if your wipe key is lawyer vs attorney

[Anonymous Coward]

"Siri, am I being detained?" -> Automatic wipe.

Re:what if your wipe key is lawyer vs attorney

[Anonymous Coward]

Or what if someone hacks your iCloud account and wipes your phone at the wrong time - you go to jail?

Re:what if your wipe key is lawyer vs attorney

[Anonymous Coward]

No because unless they did it from your home while you were there then there would be plenty of evidence to say it wasn't you or at least there was significant doubt it was you. realistically though that is a stupid scenario that is about a 1 in 100 trillion likely occurrence.I mean seriously the coincidence of being hacked just after the phone has been taken as evidence and that hacker deciding to wipe the phone instead of steal information or try to gain further advantage! it just doesn't stack up as a believable scenario.

Re:what if your wipe key is lawyer vs attorney

[Anonymous Coward]

The phrase is per se, Latin for "for itself".

Re:what if your wipe key is lawyer vs attorney

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are paranoid enough to have a voice activated wipe command, you are probably paranoid enough to leave your phone at home while committing crimes rendering it unnecessary, unless you are a moron, in which case you'll probably be caught no matter what you do.

can apple face accessory charges?

[Joe_Dragon]

can apple face accessory charges? if they can say put a phone / account into can't be remote wiped mode?

Compromising videos

[Anonymous Coward]

She probably just wanted to destroy her large collection of home made scat porn. The police would have vomited their coffee and donuts in their mouths if they saw her big chocolatey Cleveland steamers.

Police theft

[Anonymous Coward]

So? Whats the big deal? The police stole her phone and she remotely wiped it to secure her data.

Run, Forrest, Run! U can't win APK!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never impersonated you. Did you ever think that you have more than one enemy on /.? All your recent posts prove you're so panicked by attacks on your imaginary reputation. You've become /.'s plaything, we make you dance all day long with only a few well targeted posts.

In reality nobody respects you. Go ahead and paste your 2+ year old list of quotes from /. about your hosts file engine, I can contact each one and debunk it. You've quoted everyone out of context, or their minds have changed in the 2+ years since you quoted them, or they've been manually copying the text files for hosts and ignoring your useless utility.

At this point I demand an apology for your spurious and false accusations. Be a man and not a coward! Own up to your ill shit.

ZIP

P.S. => I never actually down-modded you. That joke went over your thick head. Jokes are not the same thing as lies. Lies are what you post every day. I've never lied on /.

Re:Run, Forrest, Run! U can't win APK!

[Anonymous Coward]

APK can't win? APK doesn't have to try ZIP! You defeat yourself numerous times shown here https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...

Just write a security app and be done with it

[nehumanuscrede]

Of course you'll have to call it a " security " or " privacy protection " app before Apple would even consider such a thing on the App Store.
Make sure to think of a catchy name for it. . . .

Conditions:

1) User has not logged into phone in $user_defined number of hours ( user is detained )
2) No signal ( cellular or wifi ) present ( phone is in a signal denied environment )
3) User has the paranoid feature enabled

#2 is fun because they have to choose to either leave the phone connected to a network ( risking a remote wipe ) or denying the connection and running the risk of the phone wiping itself. Decisions, decisions . . . . . .

User selectable payloads:

a) Phone wipes itself
b) Phone rekeys with a random password ( user plausible deniability - I really don't know the password )
c) Phone overwrites data with random gibberish or lyrics from your favorite anti-police music ( NWA can help you out here )

If you're the forgetful criminal type, you can always add a setting to flash a warning, beep, vibrate, whatever telling you bad things are about to happen to your phone if you don't log into it soon.

Done.

Or you could, you know, leave your damn phone at home if you plan on doing something stupid. . . . . .
( # 2 answer right behind don't do anything stupid to begin with )

*afterthought*

This whole " they-might-wipe-the-phone-remotely-so-put-it-in-a-shielded-bag-or-faraday cage " thing wouldn't be an issue if there was a user removable battery in these things.

Just sayin . . . .

Re:Just write a security app and be done with it

[iTrawl]

wouldn't be an issue if there was a user removable battery in these things

Don't these things have a power button to turn them off?

Re:Just write a security app and be done with it

[CanadianMacFan]

Your app wouldn't have worked in this case because a network was available (it had to be in order for the remote wipe to work).

Re:Just write a security app and be done with it

[Anonymous Coward]

Remote-wipe is already provided by Apple, so his app doesn't need to offer it. His app is a countermeasure to a shielded bag or a faraday cage.

ZIP = JEALOUS "Lil' Jowie" mere "ne'er-do-well"

[Anonymous Coward]

See subject & WHY? OK: "I'm a much better programmer than APK, as has been proven." - by Anonymous Coward ZIP on Monday October 08, 2018 @11:27PM (#57449082)

FROM https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...

You're a BETTER programmer than I, quoted saying so below? WHERE'S PROOF OF WORK YOU DO EVEN /.ers LIKE & USE?

It's NOT!

* I have DOZENS of /.ers saying they like & use my work - praising it & it's good effects on more speed, security, reliability & anonymity PLUS 100,000++ users of it worldwide - DO YOU??

HELL NO!

You also LIED trying to "take credit" for a SOLUTION to C++ string buffer overflow issues I SOLVED WAY BEFORE YOU https://tech.slashdot.org/comm... proof's right there scumbag punk you are.

I also shot you to pieces on your github LIE @ the root of all that too (yes that's you too scumbag) https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...

LIAR ZIP says he has no account "For what it's worth I don't have an account, so I don't have mod points" https://news.slashdot.org/comm...

Yet LIAR ZIP says he downmods my posts (IMPOSSIBLE MINUS AN ACCOUNT on /.): "I down-modded a few of your post on other threads to save you some embarrassment." - by Anonymous Coward "ZIP" on Thursday October 11, 2018 @11:31AM (#57461058) FROM https://yro.slashdot.org/comme...

ZIP HIDES THIS DOWNMODDING IT TWICE as it EXPOSES his bullshit https://news.slashdot.org/comm...

APK

P.S.=> CodeSigning you "praise" (I don't for GOOD REASONS & I use something better) can & HAS been STOLEN & ABUSED https://www.helpnetsecurity.co... MY METHOD CAN'T BE (upmodded +2 INTERESTING in CODING FOR DEFCON no less) https://it.slashdot.org/commen... ... apk

use case

[Tom]

This, actually, is exactly what remote wipe was invented for: To prevent your data falling into the wrong hands, with you deciding who "wrong hands" are or better: Not having to decide but simply being able to wipe whenever you want.

The police should really be able to anticipate this. What you can't take the SIM card out? While they will probably successfully sue for destruction of evidence (because it is), let's not for one second pretend that this is not exactly the use case of the feature.

Re:use case

[Opportunist]

What's missing is plausible deniability. The next version should have a self destruct mechanism that sets the battery on fire.

Ok, it would only work as plausible with Samsung devices, but hey, it's the staple of the industry to copy features from the competitor.

Re: use case

[Anonymous Coward]

Bonus points if setting the phone on fire is an elaborate plan to burn down the entire evidence locker, lol.

Story is racist

[Anonymous Coward]

We should be celibrating the fact that this oppressed minority is breaking gound into a field that used to be the exclusive domain on heterosexual males. This corageous female is showing that women can be just as effective at killing mofos from cars as males are. We need to give her the medal of freedom.

Of coarse it is a crying shame that Donald Trump is forcing women to turn to crime. It is also a shame he is supplying these guns to women. Even though the Donald is forcing women to turn to crime, she is turning things around and being the best criminal she can be.

Do they know what was on the phone

[Anonymous Coward]

If not, how can remote wiping it be an offense?

And I would have my lawyer challenge the charge on fifth Amendment grounds

Re:Do they know what was on the phone

[Anonymous Coward]

And your lawyer would lose. There's only about 200 years of precedent here: You cannot be compelled to testify against yourself, but lawfully obtained and admitted evidence can and will be used against you in court, just like the cops say on TV.

Chug, is that you?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought I recognized that homo writing pattern.

I like a suicide option

[hyades1]

When going into an environment where it might be helpful not to have information on one's phone fall into the wrong hands, a phone that would lobotomize itself if certain conditions weren't met would be very nice to have.

If there isn't already an app for that, there should be.

Re:I like a suicide option

[CanadianMacFan]

Use the GPS to determine the distance to the nearest police station and if it hits zero then wipe the phone.

Re:I like a suicide option

[hyades1]

I can think of a couple of problems with just that exactly, but I really like the concept. A few tweaks and I think it would be a lovely addition to any security conscious individual's smart phone.

Working as designed

[Opportunist]

When someone who you do not want to have your phone information is in possession of your phone, you can wipe it. Sounds like pretty much what the idea behind the feature was.

Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, at least there is some suspect, like, it was not a weaponized drone.

From the series: "useful things technology brings to us".

Charges Brought != Proof

[Anonymous Coward]

Charges brought don't equate to proof.

It seems that they'd have a rather hard time proving that she specifically remote wiped the phone.

ON the other hand, there is a very high probability that she's a total piece of shit that fully deserves to be crushed under the weight of all charges. But, having proof would be critically important to me.

Key words

[Anonymous Coward]

The key words here are "might have" contained evidence, the case sounds like it is on some pretty shaky ground (no evidence, no other suspects, no injuries, no weapon, etc). There could just have easily have been a few naughty pictures on the phone that she, in a moment of stupid, wiped because she didn't want a bunch of idiots ogling over them. And that's assuming she wiped it, I wouldn't be surprised if we find out that the police accidentally wiped it while trying to get at its contents and blamed it on the suspect (see Hollywood FL case) or it was wiped by default when she tried to get a new phone and ticked a wrong checkbox. I'm also curious how the phone was collected, was it taken during a properly warranted search of her home/car or grabbed off her on a street corner via "exigent circumstances" (IE: theft).

Resist

[Anonymous Coward]

After reading about the cops shooting a security guard to death I'm glad she did it. Resist the police!

If you're free to go, then why not your possession

[Anonymous Coward]

If they didn't keep her in jail, why does she not get to keep her phone? Unless the phone was obtained illegally by her, why can she go free but not her phone.

Did she get to keep her clothing? Her house keys? Her whatever other personal effects? Why not her phone. What is the difference.

I guess it has memory when those other items don't? The sooner we can get AI and not permit unjust detention of our electronic devices the better. :P

This should fall on the police

[Murdoch5]

The phone was seized but left connected to the cellular network, allowing anyone who had access, to wipe the phone. The correct procedure, even if it's not official, would be to cut off all network access from the phone, so that no one or no service can access it. The fact the police didn't make this common sense move, should make them liable for the tampering and not the person who wiped it.

What Evidence

[maxbuzz]

If they don't know what was on her phone, how do they know there was evidence of a crime?

Re:What Evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't, which is why she's charged with "tampering with evidence", not "tempering with evidence of a crime".

Re:What Evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

That sounds a little like "resisting arrest", when there is no reason for an arrest to start with, and disturbingly often no real resistance either.

The GPS coordinates

[Anonymous Coward]

The GPS coordinates of the phone should be stored on another Apple server. That way, the suspect can be proven to have participated in the drive-by, even if the phone is wiped.

Re: The GPS coordinates

[Anonymous Coward]

What? So every person in that area is guilty of committing a drive by?

You are an idiot.

Re:That's heavy handed but a faraday bag would wor

[Anonymous Coward]

A faraday bag will only protect against a remote wipe.

You may still have an app set to do a local wipe. For example, when the app notices it is in a faraday cage (no radio signals presents - no gps/wifi/gsm all at the same time) or when it is being put in 'flight mode' without the proper passcode first. Or if too much time passes and nobody enter the "don't wipe today" code.

A better wipe app will not only wipe, but plant a pre-planned fake history so the thing doesn't seem wiped.

There's a simple solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Add an option you can set where if phone has not been unlocked for 12 hours, it is automatically wiped. That pretty much rules out third party specialists unless they are in town and on 24 hour call, and putting it in a Faraday bag won't matter.