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Destruction of evidence charges filed for remotely wiping iPhone
- umvi 8y agoI guess the police will learn to put the phone in a Faraday cage as soon as it's seized
- vuln 8y agoSell 'mobile' Faraday cages one for every squad car... Profit?
- lisper 8y agohttp://www.reynoldskitchens.com/aluminum-foil/ http://www.reynoldskitchens.com/aluminum-foil/
- MisterTea 8y agoAnd people called my hats crazy...
- vuln 8y ago[1] + this kind of pouch. Probably could sell them for at least 100$ a piece. 'battle tested' [1]https://i5.walmartimages.com/asr/15479a20-388b-4138-9f8c-1a1cee17513f_1.68da8590f42851e5d4bb9dda0ba2d89f.jpeg?odnHeight=450&odnWidth=450&odnBg=FFFFFF https://i5.walmartimages.com/asr/15479a20-388b-4138-9f8c-1a1...
- klodolph 8y agoIt would be hard to sell it for $100 if you can buy digital evidence bags for a couple bucks: https://www.arrowheadforensics.com/products/evidence-packaging/faraday-pouches-bags/cell-phone-faraday-storage-kit.html https://www.arrowheadforensics.com/products/evidence-packagi...
- TeMPOraL 8y agoPut a "5G-ready!" sticker on it, and you're back in business.
- toomanybeersies 8y agoJust use a chip packet instead? https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/11/27/australian-sacked-skipping-work-using-crisp-packet-hide-whereabouts/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/11/27/australian-sacke...
- mikeash 8y agoThe FBI has been doing this for some years now. There was an amusing story a while back about how Verizon put a new cell on top of the building where the FBI had their special shielded room, and the signal was so strong it was able to penetrate the shielding and some phones were lost. I could only find this brief mention here: https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/wireless/when-the-evidence-is-on-the-cell-phone https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/telecom/wireless/when-th...
- squarefoot 8y agoOne possible countermeasure: detect the lack of any electromagnetic field paired with no vibrations at all and colder temperature, ergo the phone isn't in someone's pocket in a no reception area but very likely was put in a shielded box. Phone sensors can reveal a lot of what is happening around them.
- chii 8y agoAnd everytime you put the phone in a safe, it gets wiped...
- gambiting 8y agoOr if you go hiking in the middle of nowhere with no signal, the phone wipes itself. Very useful thanks.
- Dylan16807 8y agoThat is not what the post says, thanks.
- gambiting 8y agoHow is it not? "detect the lack of any electromagnetic field paired with no vibrations at all and colder temperature" You go hiking far outside of civilization and go to sleep in a tent, there are no electromagnetic fields around you at all(that the phone can detect anyway), there are no vibrations at all, and the temperature is cold because the phone is not on your body. Or for a slightly more realistic example - I stayed with a friend recently who lives in a house from the 12th century - walls in there are about a meter thick, in certain rooms there is absolutely zero reception from any network, wifi doesn't penetrate at all. The no vibrations and low temperature points also apply there. What am I missing that the post apparently said?
- jki275 8y agoHe's suggesting some sensor checks, not giving a total framework to account for every edge case. If you were to implement something like this, you would take many cases, including edge cases, into account.
- onetimemanytime 8y agoCan they just take them offline? Or...at do they at some point need to be online for the evidence gathering? I wonder how can they prove that she did it? Or it's your phone, you know the password and let's try to convict you? If it was programmed to be erased before the phone was taken /crime committed she is not guilty I guess.
- rv-de 8y agoWith regards to the scene from "Snowden" where he places the phones in a micro wave oven. I was surprised to find that this doesn't work - at least not with my grandma's oven.
- bigzyg33k 8y agoThat's interesting - the microwave should insulate against them or it might be unsafe
- clubm8 8y agoWhat is the penalty for destruction of evidence? If it's less than the crime at hand, it's logical to wipe. I'm a little surprised the police don't have faraday bags or a room to store evidence in that doesn't allow radio signals in.
- JadeNB 8y ago> What is the penalty for destruction of evidence? If it's less than the crime at hand, it's logical to wipe. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoliation_of_evidence#Tampering_with_evidence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoliation_of_evidence#Tamperi... , in my non-lawyerly (hence probably imprecise) summary, the act of destroying evidence can be regarded as incriminating evidence.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dharmab 8y agoFines + up to 20 years at the federal level. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1519 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1519
- judge2020 8y agoI guess it didn't have a passcode? Just let the police try whatever they have, as long as you have the iOS 12 update that disables accessories and thwarts "GrayKey" there's no need to remotely wipe it.
- geofft 8y agoIt only locks out accessories if the device has been locked for over an hour, so make sure to lock your device at least an hour before getting arrested, or reboot it. Also make sure the option is enabled under passcode settings; I think it's disabled by default.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- reustle 8y agoWhat if I use the gmail/slack/whatsapp website instead of the app, and remotely log the phone out of google/etc if my device is seized. That way the data was only stored in RAM, and they shouldn't be able to access it once they get into the phone. Does that count as destruction of evidence?
- AndrewDucker 8y agoIf you deliberately do anything which will cause evidence to be placed beyond the reach of law enforcement then you are likely to be hit with charges. You can quibble over technical details, but at some point a judge will be asked if it fits the charge, and make a layman decision, not a programmer's one.
- mrsteveman1 8y agoThen again, if a browser cookie is the only thing providing access to "evidence" on a particular machine, then it wasn't actually on that machine to begin with. That's far from a mere technical detail, as it also means the person lacked any meaningful physical control of, or proximity to, the evidence. I recall there are some cases that centered on whether someone was aware of the existence of a browser cache and knew how to clear it. In that case the "evidence" really is on the local machine because that's what the cache is.
- coldtea 8y ago>That's far from a mere technical detail, as it also means the person lacked any meaningful physical control of, or proximity to, the evidence. That would still be irrelevant if their intention for getting themselves to "lack any meaningful physical control of, or proximity to, the evidence" is deemed by a judge to be malicious.
- benchaney 8y agoYou have badly misunderstood the point the GP was making. The person in question was always in a state of “lack[ing] any physical control of or, proximity to, the evidence”. They had no control of this in any way. This, by the way is why the technical issues are important, relying solely on the lay person interpretation is dubious. A court that issued ruling on issues it doesn’t understand is inherently unjust.
- piotrkaminski 8y agoI'm kinda curious how the law would treat a dead man's switch that automatically wipes the phone if you haven't unlocked it for N hours (say, 24 or 48). (Assuming it was set up well before any event that prompted the phone's seizure, of course.) Could they somehow charge you for not warning the police about the auto-wipe when they took your phone? Does the answer change if you were officially under arrest and had a right to remain silent? This seems like a pretty good idea in any case. If the seizing party can't crack the passcode anyway then it's a no-op. If they can then presumably they won't/can't do it right away, so it would add a bit of defense in depth.
- jedimastert 8y agoThat a good question. I don't know how related it is, but I haven't seen anything about the legality or illegality of warrant canaries[1], so there might be something to it. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary
- onetimemanytime 8y agoSo the law says NOT to notify users about secret subpoenas. If you do, no matter how cute you think your method is, IMO, you broke the law. Oh, but just I took a file offline. Nope. The law can be unjust but that's another thing.
- 6nf 8y agoBut I didnt even take a file offline. I just forgot to update it.
- onetimemanytime 8y agoSo you've updated it 45 times and the time you "forgot" to update coincided with the time you got the secret order?
- 8y ago
- 14 8y agoMaybe the detective should have to undergo some extra training? Though I guess they probably figured it out by now so no point but I mean seriously? In 2018 you are going to allow this to happen? Outsmarted by someone who sounds like a gangster. This has been an issue for years. I had a friend who was arrested for illegal fishing(5 fish out of season) and they took his phone. He was panicked because he didn't have a password on his phone and had done something that may have gotten him in trouble. For me being so experienced with tech at the time without even thinking said I would just remote wipe it if this happened to me. He said how. I said well just sign into google device manager. For those wondering he had some marijuana stuff which is now legal in Canada on his phone pictures of his plants or something nothing crazy. We were young and never thought about legal ramifications. But it seems like this has been possible for at least half a decade there should be standard procedure when taking a persons phone into custody.
- LogicX 8y agowait a second, i've seen this before...
- gronne 8y agoelaborate please.
- 14 8y agoNot really sure what you mean by that? I also knew my opinion would be unpopular here on HN, perhaps it was my tone I'm not sure, but really if I was the family of a murder victim and the detectives lost incriminating evidence on the phone in this way I would be upset. This has been in the news many times. We know better then that and in my opinion the detective screwed up. It appears almost everyone here knows about faraday cages it is common knowledge. So why did this happen again in 2018? Have a good day everyone
- jrochkind1 8y ago> Monday Update: Suspect in remote phone-wiping case denies wrongdoing, Nov. 12, 2018 > [https://dailygazette.com/article/2018/11/12/suspect-in-remote-phone-wiping-case-denies-wrongdoing https://dailygazette.com/article/2018/11/12/suspect-in-remot...] > "Our position is that my client didn't access anything to remotely delete anything," Smalls said. "My client wouldn't have any knowledge how to do that." That seems like something pretty easily disproven with a subpoena to Apple for records of whether a remote wipe command was issued, no? Which makes me think the defendent probably indeed didn't remote wipe. I wonder if it wiped itself after too many wrong password attempts (is that a thing they do?), or as the attorney suggests "days after her phone was seized, Grant got a new phone. Smalls said he didn't know if that had any impact on the data on the phone police had taken" -- does it auto-wipe the old phone in those circumstances sometimes?
- null0pointer 8y agoYes, there's an option to have your phone auto-wipe after 10 failed unlock attempts. However, I'm not aware of any way to have it auto-wipe by itself after n-days. Getting a new phone and signing into your Apple ID has no effect on the data stored on your old phone.
- manicdee 8y agoRemoving a phone that was previously associated with your Apple ID will remotely erase the device. You will get an email confirming the erasure the next time the device is turned on.
- btbuildem 8y agoSo data stored on a phone counts as "physical evidence"?
- pzh 8y agoWouldn’t they have to prove that there was any data on the device to begin with? Maybe Apple should provide a partial wipe option for locked devices.
- swebs 8y agoWhy wouldn't it be? It's the same as words on paper.
- colejohnson66 8y agoMore like encrypted words on paper
- mcfedr 8y agoBecause there is nothing 'physical' about it.
- swebs 8y agoThe phone is the physical evidence. Would you not consider a flash drive as physical evidence? Even at the most pedantic level, the data is still stored physically as the state of the logic gates.
- manicdee 8y agoHow long until we find out that attempting to use a Greybox will trigger the self destruct feature built into iOS by Apple as part of that patch where they disable USB data when the phone is locked?
- sbhn 8y agoBut GDPR says I can delete my data, I’m confused
- seangrant 8y agoNot in America
- notamerican 8y agoWell, not if you're physically located in in the U.S. at the tome, but the GDPR effects non-EU businesses and governments as long as the person involved is an EU citizen.
- vageli 8y ago> Well, not if you're physically located in in the U.S. at the tome, but the GDPR effects non-EU businesses and governments as long as the person involved is an EU citizen. In what court would you bring a case against the United States under the GDPR?
- cyphar 8y agoIf the business operates with the EU, this generally involves having a subsidiary in an EU country (most companies have subsidiaries in Ireland that own all of their "IP" for tax avoidance reasons, and thus can be very trivially fined as they operate as an EU company). I get your point, but practically most large companies have EU subsidiaries (and in many cases, structure their businesses to exploit the benefits of EU nations like Ireland) and thus must follow EU laws anyway.
- vageli 8y agoI was addressing the "governments" part in > but the GDPR effects non-EU businesses and governments specifically.
- briandear 8y ago
- CodeWriter23 8y agoDoes anyone know what the standard of proof is for destruction of evidence? It seems a simple defense in a case like this is to have previously shared ones iCloud password with their entire family. Each family member then creates reasonable doubt for any family member who is tried for the crime.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- mcfedr 8y agoBut who wiped the data anyway? Apple - sure she asked them to, but apple did it.
- coldtea 8y agoNobody cares about who did the mechanical act of destroying, especially since they (e.g. Apple) had no intent and where totally unrelated to the crime. So that wont fly as an excuse to a judge. In general pedantic splitting hair arguments will more likely turn against the person.
- billfruit 8y agoBut then if it was Apple who deleted, does it raise the question that they(Apple) didn't check if the data being deleted was evidence or not?
- DATACOMMANDER 8y agoYou can’t expect Apple to do an investigation of every phone they wipe at a customer’s request. What about Google Docs? Even if the user clicks the “delete” button, Google performs the physical act of deletion. So should clicking that button trigger a pop-up with the message, “Deletion will occur once we’ve verified that you are not under investigation by the authorities in your jurisdiction”? Or should it silently send the “deleted” document to an archive that Google must maintain indefinitely for the purpose of responding to subpoenas?
- jonstewart 8y agoHowdy, digital forensics software developer here. A few points: 1) yes, the police probably should have put the phone in a Faraday bag, but those aren’t perfect and municipal law enforcement generally doesn’t have the same equipment that state and federal police do. It doesn’t excuse the suspect allegedly taking action to destroy evidence; 2) this is probably about the boyfriend, who they suspect committed a shooting—-they charged the girlfriend with evidence tampering as a felony, and then the prosecutor has legal leverage to get her to testify against her boyfriend and take a gun off the street; 3) no amount of technical argumentation will save you from a prosecutor, judge, or jury if you do something that causes spoiliation of evidence—when your company is sued and your business systems are preserved/collected as a result, don’t even think about getting in the way.
- chapium 8y agoif police are collecting phones as evidence on the regular, having these bags should be standard
- hobbescotch 8y agoHow do you get into digital forensics dev? Seems like an interesting field.
- SEJeff 8y agoIt really depends. I have a friend that used to work for Kroll Ontrack under their forensics unit. She quit after a few years due to the disturbing amount of child porn she had to recover. She knew she was doing good stuff in putting those predators in prison, but it really eats away at you. She's now working on an internal infosec team at Verizon, a job she really loves. To answer your original question, she has a degree in computer forensics.
- jonstewart 8y agoI was laid off from a startup at the bitter, wretched end of the dotcom bust in the spring of 2003. Another company two blocks from my apartment in Pasadena, CA was hiring C++ engineers, and I was lucky enough to join Guidance Software to work on EnCase. It's a fun field: bits and bytes, a whole lot of 'em, and the requirement for perfection.
- cascom 8y agoI’m curious what sort of notice was given to this person that the phone was evidence. For example was she arrested, and had her phone on her, and then the police never returned it, or was there a search warrant/subpoena and she was given a receipt for items held under that order?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ChrisArchitect 8y agofollow-up article "Suspect in remote phone-wiping case denies wrongdoing -- Accused woman doesn't even know how to do that, her attorney says" https://dailygazette.com/article/2018/11/12/suspect-in-remote-phone-wiping-case-denies-wrongdoing https://dailygazette.com/article/2018/11/12/suspect-in-remot...