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?

[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?

[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]

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.

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: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: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: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:Faraday cage

[Raenex]

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

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: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: Faraday cage

[houghi]

Haha. We made him type this.