So, we already crossed the point of no turning back, as the digital technology nowadays is so pervasive that we cannot imagine our lives without computers, cell phones and even refrigerators without access to the internet.
Is It the same refrigerador used by Indiana Jones as a Fallout shelter in that awlful movie?
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And what about tin foil?
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methods etc…
Lucky Guy.
Yep, even when it’s the result of someone filling out the form the wrong way - and recognizing that.
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I think we are now well past the point where general society can continue to ignore the privacy debate. As long as most people don’t care, then the Intelligence community and Law enforcement will continue to move the standards.
Their strategy has been to ALWAYS complain when they are denied access to any technology that might enhance an investigation. Lately, the highest representatives of the FBI are complaining that they are being impeded in investigating the contents of cell phones that are powered off, when they lack cooperation of the owner.
This is odd, because Most cell phones don’t really contain much information. Almost all interesting info is available external to the phone. The interesting info is at Apple. At Google. In the cloud. Most useful info and capability doesn’t require access to the phone and cooperation of the owner.
What the general public doesn’t realize is how much we have lost. You can tell how much has been lost by tracking the “critical to an investigation” things that Law Enforcement DOESN’T complain about. Like:
- They don’t complain about being able to access anybody’s email.
- They don’t complain about being able to access anybody’s web browsing history.
- Or the history of their Internet searches.
- Nor do they complain about not being able to plant malware on an active computer or cell phone.
- They don’t complain that they can’t tell who has which cell phone.
- And, they never complain about not being able to track the current location of a cell phone.
- Nor, (as in this discussion) the cell phone’s past location history.
Our society has depended on the assumption that mass surveillance is inherently limited by economic factors. But, that is not true. The more you automate and scale up mass surveillance, the cheaper it gets. Especially if you can get your victims to shoulder all the expense of the tracking equipment.
We need good privacy regulation with teeth. Ten years ago would not have been too soon.
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Robbery is not the profession of choice for intelligent criminals. Might I instead suggest hedge fund management or, perhaps, slum rentals management?
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Politics?
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This is incorrect. There is useful info inside and outside the phone. The person’s contacts are in the phone, as well as the recent calls and texts. An investigator could possibly piece this info together from external sources, but it is much easier just to get it at the source: on the phone.
The phone’s IMEI is on the phone. Yes, an investigator could possibly get the number externally with lots of legwork. Or… Get it direct from the phone. Etc… The phone itself is a wealth of information. It’s not a surprise to me that LEOs make such a big deal about gaining access.
Example:
I found a phone in a snowdrift in 2006. I’m always looking for fun projects, so I dried it out (thoroughly) and saw that it booted up OK after that. It was one of those old camera phones (Motorola v360). I determined the previous owner already had a new phone by the way it came up on the network and disconnected (probably duplicate IMEI), so I put it in airplane mode for my hacking projects.
It had a password on it, which using the Motorola dev tools I obtained without much issue (5683–“LOVE”, Hackers the Movie much?). It did not have the person’s personal information on it, so I didn’t know who it belonged to. There was a bunch of pictures of the guy smoking pot with his friends, pictures of his girlfriend, etc.
I was able to figure out all the guy’s information, name, home address, etc. by looking up his contacts on social media and then finding him in the pictures on their friend list. Confirmed by the presence of the girlfriend (they were MySpace official).
Turns out the kid had since gone away to join the marines. And he had left a phone in a snowdrift with a bunch of pictures of him doing drugs.
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Public records requests have revealed that on at least four occasions, the Raleigh-Durham police obtained warrants…
@doctorow Raleigh and Durham share an airport but are otherwise unrelated in municipal terms. In particular (with respect to the article body), their police departments are separate. (They each have their own share of controversies, which I will not enumerate here…)
How does that work anyway? Based on what are these warrants made secret?
Excellent story. You used info both inside and outside the phone. You are about twenty levels of hacker above me. I can change a CD in my car, yes I still play music from CDs in my car.
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People don’t want to sacrifice freedom and privacy for security? You don’t say… 
I agree that there is info that would be useful to the FBI in a phone. But, I think it is less than you stated:
- Contacts: Are a mixed bag. External call metadata is easily available. It can’t be tampered with by the suspect. It probably doesn’t require a warrant. It is in standard format. It is easy to analyze and automate. The external info tells you who they actually called and when. However, the internal contact list tells you who they might have called, but didn’t. This info may not be available elsewhere, but it is probably of less value in an investigation.
- Recent calls and texts: This one might be a win for local data. The external text metadata has all the advantages of external call metadata, but the internal data has the actual content of recent texts. Of course Facebook Messenger is external. And Google messaging is external. But, normal cell phone texts are fairly transient. I think the only other place that cell text content is reliably available is in the Intelligence community’s mass monitoring projects. And law enforcement still may have issues accessing info from the Intelligence community.
- Phone IMEI: This one seems to be a bit of a red herring. The Amici curiae briefs from Carpenter VS US indicate that the police either don’t need IMEI or they can trivially get it external to the phone.
In most cases, the external metadata and provider info is easier to access; better organized; more reliable; more trustworthy, and more informative that the actual local contents of a modern cell phone.
Allowing everybody BUT the public to set the parameters of the privacy debate has caused us to lose most of our privacy rights. You can see this most clearly by looking at how the 3rd party doctrine has been shaped.
The current prevailing law in the US, is that an individual must exert control over information, in order for it to be private. If information about an individual is held by a 3rd party, then the individual has lost the right to control it. It doesn’t matter if the information is sensitive or revealing. Once it is in the hands of a 3rd party, then the individual can not assert a right of control.
Currently there are only a couple specific exceptions to the 3rd party doctrine. For example, an individuals health information has some specified protections, even after it passes to a 3rd party. But the evolution of the 3rd party doctrine has caused us to lose control over almost all of our information, any time it is handled by a 3rd party.
Currently, the highest representatives of the FBI are complaining that they are being impeded in investigating the contents of cell phones that are powered off, when they lack cooperation of the owner. They are asking for legal and technical power dictate when and how an individual can attempt to control information about themselves on their own devices.
This new legal theory is that individuals should not be allowed to control their own information AT ALL. The desires of Law Enforcement should always supersede an individual’s right to privacy. That we have no inherent right to privacy. That we only have as much privacy as allowed by law enforcement. I think they sincerely believe that the 4th and 5th Amendments are an extended typographic error. If the FBI is successful, it will eliminate the tattered remnants of our privacy.
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I almost always agree with that. I think we have given up too much of our way of life I the name of security, from terrorists in particular. But… my son was robbed a couple of years ago, and kidnapped and forced to take money out of his bank at an ATM. During that experience he could hear the perp’s phone using Google maps to navigate to the bank. This was around 3 or 4 AM, so there can’t have been many people navigating to that address at that time. That is a narrow enough criteria for me, that the police ought to have gotten that info from Google.
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