4 ms·

I would add one more recommendation to their list: Public disclosure of the technique utilized by the MDFT to gain access. Such techniques should, at a minimum

• mhh__ 6y ago
  FOIA? The answers probably no but it doesn't hurt to ask. Assuming the techniques aren't already in the public somewhere or another, these things are pretty big sales, so I bet someone better on the phone than I could probably social engineer quite a lot of information about the outlines of what they're doing.
• jaywalk 6y ago
  The MDFTs are almost certainly using exploits to access the data. They're not going to disclose them, because it would stop their tools from working.
  • ISL 6y ago
    That's fine, so long as they're not selling them to be used without transparency against citizens.
• alistairSH 6y ago
  Such techniques should, at a minimum, be disclosed and vetted at trial. In the US, the government is probably going to ask for (and receive) some sort of national security waiver to sharing the details. Generally up to the judge to determine if that request is valid. Or, the law enforcement agency will use parallel construction to get a conviction without exposing their tech.
  • Throwaway1771 6y ago
    The second one, usually. Safe from potential pesky legal precedents.
  • ISL 6y ago
    If juries don't accept it, no waiver will ever yield a conviction.
    • alistairSH 6y ago
      True, but the judge has likely instructed them that the evidence is acceptable as presented (without technical details of the phone hacking). And jury nullification isn't common in the US.
      • ISL 6y ago
        A single nullification-event would get the attention of attorneys general nationwide.
      • AnimalMuppet 6y ago
        The judge can say that the evidence is admissible. It's up to the jury to decide what weight, if any, to place on the evidence. Now, true, the judge is probably not going to let the defense attorney, in closing arguments, say "That evidence came from a hack of the defendant's phone, which is a really invalid thing to do, so you should ignore that part of the evidence." Judges get really unpleasant with attorneys who cross the judge's lines on what they can and can't say in front of the jury. So this would probably be left to the jury to figure out on their own. I'm not sure how likely that is...
• PeterisP 6y ago
  From the courts' point of view, I don't see why that would be considered relevant. Assuming the phone was seized properly with a search warrant, there is no legitimate expectation of the secrecy of its contents, no matter how encrypted or secured, all of that data can be legitimately used as evidence and for general investigation purposes. There is some precedent where courts have used the safe analogy; disclosing the passcodes might be considered analogous to disclosing a safe combination, and forcing that disclosure may violate anti-self-incrimination provisions (such as 5th amendment in USA); however, there's no contest that if the officials are able get access to the safe (or, equivalently, the phone) without that information, they are allowed to do so, and the methods used for breaching the safe aren't really relevant, just as the specific methods for breaching the phone. The evidence would be admissible no matter what method was used so refusing to disclose the specific methods for drilling the safe (or breaching the phone security) would not invalidate the evidence. If the defence would demand that the specific method of breaching that safe must be publicized, any judge would throw that demand out as irrelevant to the case. The only thing that would matter is that the defence might contest whether the data that the prosecution claims to have been extracted from the phone was really on that phone. But the standard measures for convincing the judge and jury of that - mainly, careful documentation of provenance of any data and careful custody of physical items - generally don't require exposing the details of the specific method. And if the specific data isn't used as evidence but just as information to find some people or physical evidence, then there can be no contest at all if there was a valid warrant for searching the contents of that phone. The defence has no legal grounds whatsoever to demand that such techniques should be disclosed to the public. They might have legal grounds to require that the techniques used should be vetted, but this can (and is) easily done in a closed manner by having court-appointed experts doing the vetting and testifying "yep, we verified the tool and methodology used and the results match what was on the device" while being prohibited to disclose any commercial secrets about the techniques used.