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IANAL but I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works. A judge won’t throw out evidence just because a tool doesn’t “adhere to application security best practices”.

IANAL but I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works. A judge won’t throw out evidence just because a tool doesn’t “adhere to application security best practices”. They’ll need to be convinced that the specific evidence they’re reviewing is compromised or unreliable.

toomuchtodo 5y ago
Agreed! I’d like to see it tested in court. Tools used in the justice process must be held in the highest regard considering someone’s freedom hangs in the balance. The courts forced a breathalyzer manufacturer to release their source code, so there is precedent for critical review of such tools. https://nccriminallaw.sog.unc.edu/breathalyzer-source-code/ https://nccriminallaw.sog.unc.edu/breathalyzer-source-code/
- jakelazaroff 5y ago
  I would like to see that as well. But I think that sidesteps what I’m saying, which is that it’s probably not sufficient to show that the tool used to gather evidence might, under certain circumstances, be susceptible to malicious interference.
  - salawat 5y ago
    Nope. As soon as one case has reasonable doubt introduced, it's precedent. Now judges will balk at backpropagating it to previous cases before the exploit possibility was made public knowledge; however, one could make the case a recheck effort should be initiated, because in the grand scheme of things, Moxie is technocally a disinterested party. Those who have direct stake may have been keeping this potential capability in their back pocket for strategic use.
    - jakelazaroff 5y ago
      Well, we won’t know until this actually gets tested in court. But frankly, I’m putting my money on the analysis from the Stanford lawyer with subject matter expertise, not random armchair lawyers on HN.
strogonoff 5y ago
> A judge won’t throw out evidence just because a tool doesn’t “adhere to application security best practices”. They’ll need to be convinced that the specific evidence they’re reviewing is compromised or unreliable. If the tool doesn’t “adhere to application security best practices” then the evidence is compromised and unreliable. Take a wild guess at how many states and other well-funded actors have been quietly deploying their anti-Cellebrite defences in the wild until Signal has made theirs public. If Signal was able to obtain Cellebrite, what is the chance they weren’t?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Beldin 5y ago
Maybe in the USA. In Europe, evidence in criminal court cases needs to adhere to standards such as chain of custody. Which Cellebrite obviously fails given this research - their tool's output could be manipulated.
- jakelazaroff 5y ago
  And someone could have opened an evidence bag and resealed it, but my guess is you don’t see courts throwing out evidence unless there’s reason to believe that actually happened.
  - salawat 5y ago
    There is, in fact, a current court case around a Sheriff's deputy accused of planting methamphetamine related paraphenelia in over 162 cases. See the ongoing Zachary Wester affair. That's falsely implicating 162 innocents of a felonius crime, tarnishing their future prospects for life, which reulted in plea bargains being accepted because the accused could not get sufficient legal representation to make the prospect of a successful legal defense doable, and a completely innocent of the charge individual didn't want to run the risk of amplification of sentence just for exercising a civil right. Besides being an example of why plea bargains make a mockery of our legal system; "just take this lesser charge that we don't have to really work at proving it so we can be done with it, because think of how bad the sentence will be if you make us work at it", it demonstrates that even procedures as they are now are such that an officer/prosecutor have and are willing to exploit their capability to manufacture suffering for those they serve for personal gain. The System is getting shocked by it's vulnerability to the untrustworthy agent currently. So I wouldn't discount some fundamental reassessments of procedure down the road.
    - acdha 5y ago
      It is a travesty but I think that case works more for the person you’re replying to: it was evidence of misconduct (the prosecutor noticing his body cam footage didn’t match his reports) which called that into question, not just saying someone _could_ have tampered with the evidence. This will work the same way: if there’s corroborating evidence, it’s likely to be as futile as the original article’s author predicts, but if there is something speculative which has only unconfirmed evidence from Cellebrite it might be enough to get that thrown out.

toomuchtodo 5y ago

Agreed! I’d like to see it tested in court. Tools used in the justice process must be held in the highest regard considering someone’s freedom hangs in the balance. The courts forced a breathalyzer manufacturer to release their source code, so there is precedent for critical review of such tools. https://nccriminallaw.sog.unc.edu/breathalyzer-source-code/ https://nccriminallaw.sog.unc.edu/breathalyzer-source-code/

jakelazaroff 5y ago
I would like to see that as well. But I think that sidesteps what I’m saying, which is that it’s probably not sufficient to show that the tool used to gather evidence might, under certain circumstances, be susceptible to malicious interference.
- salawat 5y ago
  Nope. As soon as one case has reasonable doubt introduced, it's precedent. Now judges will balk at backpropagating it to previous cases before the exploit possibility was made public knowledge; however, one could make the case a recheck effort should be initiated, because in the grand scheme of things, Moxie is technocally a disinterested party. Those who have direct stake may have been keeping this potential capability in their back pocket for strategic use.
  - jakelazaroff 5y ago
    Well, we won’t know until this actually gets tested in court. But frankly, I’m putting my money on the analysis from the Stanford lawyer with subject matter expertise, not random armchair lawyers on HN.

strogonoff 5y ago

> A judge won’t throw out evidence just because a tool doesn’t “adhere to application security best practices”. They’ll need to be convinced that the specific evidence they’re reviewing is compromised or unreliable. If the tool doesn’t “adhere to application security best practices” then the evidence is compromised and unreliable. Take a wild guess at how many states and other well-funded actors have been quietly deploying their anti-Cellebrite defences in the wild until Signal has made theirs public. If Signal was able to obtain Cellebrite, what is the chance they weren’t?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Beldin 5y ago

Maybe in the USA. In Europe, evidence in criminal court cases needs to adhere to standards such as chain of custody. Which Cellebrite obviously fails given this research - their tool's output could be manipulated.

jakelazaroff 5y ago
And someone could have opened an evidence bag and resealed it, but my guess is you don’t see courts throwing out evidence unless there’s reason to believe that actually happened.
- salawat 5y ago
  There is, in fact, a current court case around a Sheriff's deputy accused of planting methamphetamine related paraphenelia in over 162 cases. See the ongoing Zachary Wester affair. That's falsely implicating 162 innocents of a felonius crime, tarnishing their future prospects for life, which reulted in plea bargains being accepted because the accused could not get sufficient legal representation to make the prospect of a successful legal defense doable, and a completely innocent of the charge individual didn't want to run the risk of amplification of sentence just for exercising a civil right. Besides being an example of why plea bargains make a mockery of our legal system; "just take this lesser charge that we don't have to really work at proving it so we can be done with it, because think of how bad the sentence will be if you make us work at it", it demonstrates that even procedures as they are now are such that an officer/prosecutor have and are willing to exploit their capability to manufacture suffering for those they serve for personal gain. The System is getting shocked by it's vulnerability to the untrustworthy agent currently. So I wouldn't discount some fundamental reassessments of procedure down the road.
  - acdha 5y ago
    It is a travesty but I think that case works more for the person you’re replying to: it was evidence of misconduct (the prosecutor noticing his body cam footage didn’t match his reports) which called that into question, not just saying someone _could_ have tampered with the evidence. This will work the same way: if there’s corroborating evidence, it’s likely to be as futile as the original article’s author predicts, but if there is something speculative which has only unconfirmed evidence from Cellebrite it might be enough to get that thrown out.