"I'm thinking there's probably a wealth of information that just got tucked into your pocket," Norton says. "Something that we'd like to get our hands on."
from the brute-force-attacks-that-don't-involve-SWAT-members,-battering-rams dept
Law enforcement agencies really want to see your phone's contents. I mean, they really want to. Martin Kaste at NPR has a story on law enforcement and smartphones which contains the following quote from a Rolf Norton, a Seattle homicide detective.
"I'm thinking there's probably a wealth of information that just got tucked into your pocket," Norton says. "Something that we'd like to get our hands on."
The article at one point focuses on the fact that once a cop does get his (or her) hands on your smartphone and IF they can get into it, they are left with a huge amount of data that will be largely useless or meaningless.
Neither the intelligence to make use of all that cell data nor the nebulous constitutional issues are stopping the police with this effort.
Blindly diving into the contents of someone's smartphone exposes a whole lot of information, and if officers aren't exactly sure where this incriminating data is located, they'll probe around until they can find it. Armed with just enough "belief and information" to be dangerous, they'll easily be able to make the case that all contents are "relevant" until proven otherwise. This obviously raises privacy concerns, but again, there's no specific protection in place for these contents, which some courts have argued contain no "expectation of privacy" thanks to constant "checkins" with third party providers and services.
Guilty until proven innocent, yet again, really. Cops don't care about your privacy. The quote at the beginning of the post highlights this.
The constitution is not going to protect your data if the cops can get their hands on your phone:
Companies such as Guidance Software and Cellebrite sell products to law enforcement that "image" smartphones. The products can pull data off in bulk for use as evidence. BrickHouse Security in New York sells products like this for iPhone and Android. CEO Todd Morris says the handset manufacturers don't support this, so it's a constant effort to keep the forensic software up to date.
Cops have always hated our constitutional freedoms. Their war on drugs has worked on the 1st and the 4th since before Nixon made reefer madness a central philosophy of the GOP.
The war on drugs has been a war on the constitution. Americans have been trained to gleefully - and regularly - piss away their 4th Amendment rights out of concern to get a job.
Now we have the 'war on terror': a complete and total Siamese twin of the WOD. It has lead another full-on assault against the Constitution and is at the root of all the goddamned spying we are supposed to tolerate. This smartphone hacking they wish to do is just a tiny but noticeable subset of all that.
We are still 'guilty until proven innocent MOMENTARILY by a piss test or a good review of our smartphone.
I am due for a new phone and I am sorely tempted to get a total POS cheapie that only makes calls, but even those are tapped, recorded, stored, sifted and can be used to triangulate your location.
It's almost looking like "Game Over" for personal privacy.
Our government and our police hate our freedoms.