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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.
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.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
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.
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.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
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.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
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
Your ad here. Ask me how!
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.
By using the airplane mode button. The one which shows up on the lock screen.