4 ms·

Can you elaborate on "whether messages could have been deleted"?

thrower123 6y ago
Some of the exchanges seemed rather nonsensical, to my mind, like there were pieces missing. It's not like the default Android SMS app indicates that messages have been deleted. And there was no provenance information provided as to where or when they were collected.
- neodymiumphish 6y ago
  This is a difficulty that comes with most law enforcement interactions with victims, now. For example, the military is required to offer an attorney to a victim before conducting an interview. Often, these attorneys jump straight to "you can't have any evidence from my victim" without a detailed description of what you're seeking. This usually means we can only get screenshots from his/her phone of conversations between victim and subject, along with any contemporaneous conversations with other witnesses. I hate this, because screenshots come out looking like trash and it's very difficult with most messaging apps to show the timestamps for all messages. Eventually, this pendulum is going to swing (when cases start getting thrown out for this lack of timestamps/evidence of deleted messages, etc) and law enforcement (at least in the military environment) will have a bit more support in pulling relevant (and only relevant) data from victim devices for the purpose of evidence collection. One additional thing about screenshots: They can be totally faked, and the "contact" can't be validated from conversation screenshots. For example, if you buy a burner phone, you can create a whole conversation as though the burner phone is the assailant, then change the contact's number to the real assailant. Some chat apps keep the whole conversation, despite the number change, in the same chat and make it impossible to tell which number sent the messages. Cellebrite indicates the number (assuming we're talking about SMS here) where the message came from, even if the contact changes.
  - tfehring 6y ago
    Military law enforcement is going to have more leeway to conduct warrantless searches of the devices of people who haven’t even been accused of a crime? On what basis? I’m skeptical, but if you’re right that’s horrifying.
    - neodymiumphish 6y ago
      That's not what I'm saying. The problem is that a victim might ordinarily be willing to give cops her phone because it would help us to gather evidence early on that we can take action on quickly. With the "Special Victim Counsel", military cops often get turned down for reasons like "well we don't want all of her photos and other conversations to be used against her by the defense". This forces our hand to the point where all we're allowed to obtain are screenshots of the victim's messages or select content that she and her attorney decide on. By itself, limiting the conversations to just the specific, probative ones between her and the subject would be great, but when we also end up with only the content we can screenshot and send ourselves, it really makes the resulting exhibits seem shoddily-obtained. My preference would be a process whereby cops run the Cellebrite extraction, then produce a report that's limited to the content the victim and her counsel agree to, like conversations between her and Bob, and conversations between her and Sally, but nothing more. This way, at least we have some data that is verifiable and detailed (would show the to/from numbers, contact info, times, etc). These are consent-based searches, not warrantless.
    - atat7024 6y ago
      Shockingly common for people to not understand the consequence of the US' overly complex legislative.
    - Wohlf 6y ago
      Because military law is fundamentally separate from US law, most civil rights are suspended for members of the uniformed services during their service period. Off the top of my head the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th (to an extent) amendments do not apply to those under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Servicemembers can be compelled to what would be considered unreasonable search and seizure by their commanding officer, it doesn't even require a judge.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  SMS messages are logged by telcos. It's pretty easy to get corroborating evidence.

Some of the exchanges seemed rather nonsensical, to my mind, like there were pieces missing. It's not like the default Android SMS app indicates that messages have been deleted. And there was no provenance information provided as to where or when they were collected.

neodymiumphish 6y ago
This is a difficulty that comes with most law enforcement interactions with victims, now. For example, the military is required to offer an attorney to a victim before conducting an interview. Often, these attorneys jump straight to "you can't have any evidence from my victim" without a detailed description of what you're seeking. This usually means we can only get screenshots from his/her phone of conversations between victim and subject, along with any contemporaneous conversations with other witnesses. I hate this, because screenshots come out looking like trash and it's very difficult with most messaging apps to show the timestamps for all messages. Eventually, this pendulum is going to swing (when cases start getting thrown out for this lack of timestamps/evidence of deleted messages, etc) and law enforcement (at least in the military environment) will have a bit more support in pulling relevant (and only relevant) data from victim devices for the purpose of evidence collection. One additional thing about screenshots: They can be totally faked, and the "contact" can't be validated from conversation screenshots. For example, if you buy a burner phone, you can create a whole conversation as though the burner phone is the assailant, then change the contact's number to the real assailant. Some chat apps keep the whole conversation, despite the number change, in the same chat and make it impossible to tell which number sent the messages. Cellebrite indicates the number (assuming we're talking about SMS here) where the message came from, even if the contact changes.
- tfehring 6y ago
  Military law enforcement is going to have more leeway to conduct warrantless searches of the devices of people who haven’t even been accused of a crime? On what basis? I’m skeptical, but if you’re right that’s horrifying.
  - neodymiumphish 6y ago
    That's not what I'm saying. The problem is that a victim might ordinarily be willing to give cops her phone because it would help us to gather evidence early on that we can take action on quickly. With the "Special Victim Counsel", military cops often get turned down for reasons like "well we don't want all of her photos and other conversations to be used against her by the defense". This forces our hand to the point where all we're allowed to obtain are screenshots of the victim's messages or select content that she and her attorney decide on. By itself, limiting the conversations to just the specific, probative ones between her and the subject would be great, but when we also end up with only the content we can screenshot and send ourselves, it really makes the resulting exhibits seem shoddily-obtained. My preference would be a process whereby cops run the Cellebrite extraction, then produce a report that's limited to the content the victim and her counsel agree to, like conversations between her and Bob, and conversations between her and Sally, but nothing more. This way, at least we have some data that is verifiable and detailed (would show the to/from numbers, contact info, times, etc). These are consent-based searches, not warrantless.
  - atat7024 6y ago
    Shockingly common for people to not understand the consequence of the US' overly complex legislative.
  - Wohlf 6y ago
    Because military law is fundamentally separate from US law, most civil rights are suspended for members of the uniformed services during their service period. Off the top of my head the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th (to an extent) amendments do not apply to those under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Servicemembers can be compelled to what would be considered unreasonable search and seizure by their commanding officer, it doesn't even require a judge.
kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
SMS messages are logged by telcos. It's pretty easy to get corroborating evidence.