10 ms·
Apple health data used in murder trial
- nicolashahn 9y agoNote to self: if I'm ever going to murder someone, turn off my phone, or at least the things in my phone that track what I'm doing and where I am.
- tjoff 9y agoSo they will see that the phone was on continuously for two years, then the night of the murder it was switched of for 6 hours and has been on ever since. Not at all suspicious... (this is data your service provider already has, and I wouldn't be surprised if this is already used to flag weird behaviour)
- QAPereo 9y agoEven better, I find that not murdering people is a much easier solution to this problem.
- Fnoord 9y agoMurder is -obviously- a hyperbole (though I'm sure a certain H. Reiser would agree). You can make a case for anything voluntarily involving destroying your privacy. Compare to GDR. You were always watched, period. The same's true now, but its partly voluntarily. Is it desirable? You should decide on that on a case-by-case scenario. Schneier wrote several essays on this matter (here's one [1] and a more recent one [2]) and his latest book, Data and Goliath also covers this subject. Interestingly the more we centralise on our smartphones, the more difficult voluntarily leaving it home becomes. We already put all kind of NFC cards like our bank and public transport on our phones these days. What's next, unlocking the car via NFC? [1] https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2006/05/the_eternal_value_of.html https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2006/05/the_eternal... [2] https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2016/03/data_is_a_toxic_asse.html https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2016/03/data_is_a_t...
- QAPereo 9y agoI’m not arguing against privacy, or for this kind of abusive tech used in the system. I’m just saying that this particular story doesn’t make for a great exemplar, anymore than the guy who was nailed because of his smart water meter. There are plenty of examples of surveillance abuse and slapdash prosecution without having to rely on this.
- baud147258 9y agoMy brother is building appartement buildings. In some they are using NFC card as access key for the appartements. So you might one day enter your home with your phone (without adding IoT or something, out of the box).
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mattmanser 9y agoDropped it in the toilet?
- digi_owl 9y agoCould have sworn that phone radios have a unique identifier independent of the customer id (stored in a sim or the phone depending on the network tech).
- jsjohnst 9y ago> Could have sworn that phone radios have a unique identifier independent of the customer id Of course they do, multiple ids in fact (IMEI/ICCID/MEID). Not sure how that’s relevant in this thread though.
- baud147258 9y agoOr establish a pattern of leaving your phone (on) at home a few times per week, so when you're doing your murder without your phone, it does not look out of place. You'll just have to provide an alibi on what you were doing and why you didn't take your phone.
- SiempreViernes 9y agoOr just solve your problem by non murderous means, since you have the leisure to plan for it several months in advance?
- baud147258 9y agoSo hire a killer with bitcoins you mined & mixed months earlier? /jk
- slavik81 9y agoTurning off your phone leaves a hole in the data, but that hole can say a lot. The start and end times and locations are known, and can be correlated with other events to suggest why the hole exists and what might have happened during that gap. That sort of circumstantial evidence was a part of the recent Laura Babcock murder case.
- QAPereo 9y agoThat evidence also speaks to premeditation, and mens rea.
- kevin_thibedeau 9y agoOr it could just mean that your battery died.
- QAPereo 9y agoSure, unless like most people you’re obsessive about not letting that happen. If your phone dies just long enough to hide your location during a crime there’s other evidence of you committing... ...let’s just say you’d better be perfect in every other aspect of that crime.
- kevin_thibedeau 9y agoI'm not. My battery died yesterday and I managed not to kill anybody.
- tqkxzugoaupvwqr 9y agoThe US military has used phones’ on/off state in the Middle Eastern war theaters as an indication of potential terrorist activity. Based on other meta data like the number of hops to a known terrorist phone number (phone number A contacted phone number B which contacted phone number C which has contact with a terrorist’s phone number) and the temporal proximity to (assumed) terrorists switching their phones off and on, you got a terrorist rating. If you were unlucky, you got drone-murdered. I can’t find the exact source but this article[1] describes the practice of drone-murdering potential terrorists, and the Talibans counter-strategy. [1] https://www.rt.com/news/nsa-drones-civilian-casualties-383/ https://www.rt.com/news/nsa-drones-civilian-casualties-383/
- lern_too_spel 9y agoLeave them at home for an alibi.
- privong 9y ago> Leave them at home for an alibi. Presumably that isn't a great alibi though. The activity on those devices probably wouldn't match the "normal" activity when one is home, so I suspect it would be easy for a prosecutor to argue that the devices were just left at home.
- tomalpha 9y agoA good point, but normal for some people might be to leave it untouched whilst at home.
- tomalpha 9y agoNow that is quite interesting. As others have pointed out turning a phone off could provide evidence against you. Leaving it at home, or having someone else carry it with them could provide an alibi. It’s a truism, but location data for a phone only proves where the phone was. Or where the phone thought it was. I wonder how quick a prosecutor might be to point this out. Especially when they might be less quick to do so if the location data suggested your phone was at the scene of the crime.
- zodPod 9y agoAnd move out of the US
- freeflight 9y agoBetter to just leave it on and at home, maybe have it stream some movies/series from Netflix or something, that way it would even serve as an alibi. "Never left my house, spend the whole evening watching XY on my phone in bed, you can check the content providers logs!".
- protomyth 9y ago... prop it up on your bed at a good viewing angle and have something lightly vibrate the bed periodically ... That way the damn things accelerometer has some data - Law & Order style shows need to up their game in the smartphone era.
- QAPereo 9y agoThis could work, but if not then you’ve handed the prosecutors ironclad evidence of your premeditation.
- protomyth 9y agoWell, yeah, but the phone is going to tattle anyway you look at it. Frankly, the advice is more useful to people who are worried about being tracked than an idiot planning murder. I get the feeling a domestic abuse case is going to be a better bet to use this technique to buy time to get away before we see someone try to hide a murder. Those child tracking tech items are probably going to be a gold mine for abusive partners.
- idrios 9y agoI know it's implied in your comment, but I hope that upon discovering someone was playing Netflix at home and not watching it, that the conclusion is still only "he was not at home while his Netflix is playing" and not "he put on Netflix to premeditate a murder." If he lies and says he was at home then that's perjury, which only may be evidence of premeditation. I know this whole thread was tongue-in-cheek, but when someone's life is on the line for murder you do need to remember that you're trying to prove that a person did it, and it's not sufficient to disprove the ways that they didn't do it.
- ozten 9y agoPerhaps it as improved, but last time I looked HealthKit data is buggy and end user editable. Seems like one of those things that is useful, but not definitive.
- mtgx 9y agoChances are the prosecutor can manipulate that evidence to look good to the judge/jury much better than the defense lawyer can make a counter-argument for why it cannot be used in court. At least that has been the trend with stingrays and other bleeding-edge surveillance technology that is poorly understood by judges. The prosecutors are backed by government and FBI resources (including technical expertise). Your average defense lawyer isn't. Hell, the FBI was even teaching prosecutors and the police to say that using a stingray was under NDA with the company providing it and therefore they couldn't talk much about using it in court (but still benefited from the gathered evidence). https://www.scmagazine.com/fbi-stingray-nda-instructs-police-to-use-parallel-construction/article/528046/ https://www.scmagazine.com/fbi-stingray-nda-instructs-police...
- optimuspaul 9y agoI'm not able to edit my health kit data. perhaps some apps that integrate can do it, but the ones I use do not and I'm not able to in the health app itself.
- rmwaite 9y agoYou can absolutely edit your health data.
- zodPod 9y ago>Age will play a part in sentencing. The maximum for someone under 18 is 10 years, whereas the adult sentence for such a crime could be up to 30 years. Up to 30 years for rape and murder? 30 years is a long long time but that's a max sentence for this crime?! What in the world? EDIT: I agree that 30 years is effectively life just living in the US where they typically give people one (or sometimes multiple) life sentences for crimes like this has made my judgement odd.
- philwelch 9y agoEurope has much lighter sentences than the US. Norwegian musician Varg Vikernes was sentenced to 21 years for murder and multiple counts of arson and was released on parole after 14 years.
- mschuster91 9y ago... and now he's spreading vile Nazi crap. To be honest, I have no idea what to do with people like him... they certainly don't deserve to be running around free and they're a danger to society, but locking someone up for life is absolutely inhumane too.
- digi_owl 9y agoSince then Norway has introduced a sentence class that can effectively jail someone for life. Every 5 years after the main sentence the person is reviewed to see if releasing him would be a risk to society. And if deemed such a risk, the sentence is extended by another 5 years.
- DanBC 9y agoNorway may implement that in a sensible way, but the UK recently scrapped a similar sentence because it was linked to a bunch of injustices. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imprisonment_for_public_protection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imprisonment_for_public_protec... People would go in for a minor offence, but be seen as high risk, and then stay in for many years.
- bobsil1 9y agoIf you drill down on the motion log in the iOS Health app, it's very granular, like a web server log.
- ixacto 9y agoJust another "refugee youth" that's gaming the system. He deserves the death penalty. At least that is what he would get in the USA/Texas. It doesn't matter what age he is, a crime is still a crime. Europe with it's leniency is insane in cases like this, where there is no doubt about the rape/murder. Btw this is why many people in the United States support the GOP/Trump as corrupt as they are. Yes I know that we are all more likely to die of heart disease/cancer than being murdered, but letting these "refugees" into their county is just insane.
- Max_Mustermann 9y agoThis guy had even been previously condemned of sexual violence in Greece, and sentenced to 10 years... "Wegen einer Gewalttat an einer jungen Frau im Jahr 2013 war K. in Griechenland zu zehn Jahren Gefängnis verurteilt, im Oktober 2015 aber vorzeitig gegen Auflagen entlassen worden."
- tzahola 9y agoWait a sec. If he had been sentenced to 10 years for sexual violence, then how is he 17 years old? Did he escape from prison?
- karmahodler 9y agoEurope is tired and sick. You can’t blame the tick or the flea for sucking on a sick animals blood.
- dang 9y agoIdeological rants will get you banned on HN regardless of which flavor you favor. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't do this again.
- TuringNYC 9y agoA more troubling use of the data, not mentioned in the discussion so far, would be query driven usage, for example: Prosecutor: OK, lets query all phones with activity showing X among men in this geography and find ourselves a suspect. This type of use would be very troubling to everyone because, given enough N value, you can always find some people to fit a criteria. Then, it becomes a matter of making a case that fits very narrow criteria. Hard to defend against, possibly very expensive to defend against. Now, in the US, for these types of cases you need to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. But in reality, many people with limited funds for expensive lawyers, when faced with 30year sentences, will just plea bargain for 2 years -- which is not something that needs proof beyond a reasonable doubt. In summary, using phone data to independently support an already strong case might be a good way to set innocent people free. Using phone data to find culprits might be a great way to innocent people to get a false accusation just based on statistics and the laws of querying on large datasets.
- stfwn 9y ago> Let's query all phones with activity showing X among men in this geography and find ourselves a suspect. Afaik this technically impossible with Apple Health at this point. > Many people with limited funds for expensive lawyers will plea bargain for 2 years Plea bargains rarely (if ever) happen in the Netherlands, and I suspect they don't in Germany either. The reasoning behind this is probably that when the state sues they should go for justice, not victory. Plea bargains may incentivize strong arming, bluffing tactics and money politics that don't belong in a court room.
- Xylakant 9y agoPlea bargains (Verständigung in Strafsachen, § 257c StPO) happen in Germany, but not in murder cases, though a sentence might be reduced for a cooperative accused. They are more common in complicated financial crimes or small scale crimes like theft. There’s also a limited frame in which the judge decides on the punishment, it would be extremely odd that a potential sentence of 30 years is reduced to 2 years. Having less extreme prison sentences and a right to a paid lawyer reduces the pressure on the defendant.
- 9y ago
- tpush 9y ago"The suspect - identified by a hair found at the scene of the crime - refused to provide police with the PIN code to his phone so investigating officers turned to an unnamed cyber-forensics firm in Munich, which broke into the device." Really interested in knowing how they got in (and what model of iPhone it was.)
- lern_too_spel 9y agoEspecially since Apple claimed this was impossible in 2014. https://www.google.com/amp/appleinsider.com/articles/14/09/17/apple-says-incapable-of-decrypting-user-data-with-ios-8-even-for-government-agencies/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/appleinsider.com/articles/14/09/1...
- grzm 9y agoThe forensics team may have been able to brute force the PIN, depending on the settings, if I'm reading this correctly: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/03/there-are-ways-the-fbi-can-crack-the-iphone-pin-without-apple-doing-it-for-them/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/03/there-are-ways-the-f... (Please use direct links rather than amp links.)
- lern_too_spel 9y agoWhich again contradicts Apple's statement from 2014. My link is also a direct link to a faster loading page. I tried to load the appleinsider.com page, and it hung for nearly ten seconds waiting for a response from the server before I gave up. It's not worth my time, and it's not worth the reader of my comment's time.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- ubernostrum 9y agoThe main problem with a lot of these stories is that there are combinations of iPhone models, operating systems, and settings which are believed not to be breakable by general law enforcement agencies, and others which are known or strongly suspected to be. Apple tends to make its claims regarding latest iPhone model combined with latest iOS version combined with particular settings. Thus, for example, in the San Bernardino case, the fact that the phone in question was a 5C mattered. The 5C is not just an older phone, it has different security-oriented hardware inside, and that does change the security characteristics of the device. Also, the Apple statement you keep pointing to said that Apple, as of iOS 8, is unable to retrieve or reconstruct the key used to encrypt the phone's storage. Which is true -- Apple cannot do that, and has designed things so that Apple cannot do that. What the FBI wanted in that case was not for Apple to supply a key or a passcode (which they don't have). What the FBI wanted was for Apple to create and sign and load a custom firmware which would disable anti-brute-force protection for the passcode, allowing the FBI to determine the passcode via brute force. Apple could do that, but refused to do so. And for completeness' sake, that avenue is no longer available on more recent phones with more recent versions of iOS; performing an iOS update now requires the passcode, regardless of whether the update is initiated from the phone or from a connected device (even one previously designated as trusted).