8 ms·

Devices being remotely wiped in police custody

81 points by msantos 12y ago

Someone1234 12y ago
As the article makes clear, they're just incompetent. However police-types seem to be very conservative by nature which can lead to a very technophobic workforce. It is pretty surprising how slowly police are changing with the times. You'd expect every major police force to have a "computer crimes" division, but they don't. Only really the MET (London's police force) has a decent computer crimes division. You often read about digital crimes (e.g. harassment, theft, fraud, etc) going completely uninvestigated because of how few "digital police" they have (e.g. 1/1000th the size of the officers investigating physical crimes). As a specific example, for almost a year when you Googled "UK passport renew" the first Google adword result was an obviously fraudulent one, yet nothing was done even though they had to have known about it. PS - I bet you could use Tasker (or a similar app) to wipe your phone if it didn't regain data access for a long period of time (e.g. 6-12 hours). So if they took your phone and shoved it into a bag, the phone still auto-wipes if they fail to turn it off. PPS - Although realistically you're best not storing the data on your phone at all. The UK police can force you to give up your encryption keys, however they would struggle to get your data off of a foreign owned-operated website.
- vinceguidry 12y ago
  > Only really the MET (London's police force) has a decent computer crimes division. It doesn't surprise me. Doing this stuff effectively is very hard, the number of people who could get up to speed quickly is small. It's not like your company's IT department. If I recall correctly, there was a sort-of mini bubble some years back where every force out there rushed to get a computer crimes division. We can all have fun imagining how most of those went.
  - bunderbunder 12y ago
    I suspect for most forces the payroll budget is nowhere near large enough to hire people with appropriate skills, either. I've lived in places where the chief of police's salary would be considered entry-level pay by IT professionals.
    - adav 12y ago
      This applies to every public sector job that's related to cutting-edge IT.
    - IgorPartola 12y ago
      Why does every small town police department need its own staff for investigating "digital" crime? A centralized agency would actually be much more efficient for this, one that can collaborate with the local police department to match physical and digital evidence, perform arrests, etc. Not that I want yet another acronym agency charged with investigating everyone on the Internet, but it seems a waste to have each police department try to set up its own digital forensics lab.
      - jahewson 12y ago
        In the UK a town (or what in the US would be called a "city") does not have its own police department. Instead the UK is divided into just 45 territorial police forces, typically the size of a county. So the parent comment is not as inefficient as it would be in a US context where each town has its own independent force.
- kauffj 12y ago
  You're 100% right except for one aspect: that it is surprising. The highest quality services are ones with multiple alternatives and low switching costs. Monopolies tend to provide poorer service and are more conservative because there is reduced incentive or pressure to change. Police are a perfect example of this; democracy is a weak lever. Edit: This is not inherently an argument against the provision of the police as a public good. It could be accomplished within democracy by stronger localization and flexibility in choice of provision (e.g. allowing neighborhoods to opt out / choose their own solution).
  - bunderbunder 12y ago
    I'm curious about how a system where law enforcement is supplied by a competitive market would work.
    - dazc 12y ago
      Don't go there. :)
    - dragontamer 12y ago
      It would diverge into racketeering, and then into Feudalism with different companies holding control of different regions. Although it'd be a libertarian distopia. Libertarians want it so badly but they don't really understand that it is how the world worked a thousand years ago.
      - fleitz 12y ago
        LOL, exactly why do you think we need so many licenses, etc. If we don't have racketeering right now, how come individual police officers are allowed to keep the proceeds of any drug money they 'find'? Also, don't most people pay taxes so the force 'protecting' them won't ostensibly take them off to jail? When the police break the laws that are supposed to protect you is there any recourse for the police, or do they investigate themselves? Exactly what we have is racketeering, however, we have no alternative forces from which to purchase protection. If you read any book on the modern nation state it will tell you that the state is defined as the organization with monopolizes and projects violence over a given geographical territory.
- paulornothing 12y ago
  In the US, I think the main issue has to do with most Police Departments only requiring a High School Diploma as an education requirement. I've had internships with Gov't agencies and volunteered at local PDs and it's a very common thread that a large portion of the workforce is computer illiterate. Sure higher education doesn't necessarily mean people will be proficient with computers but at least they will have exposure and familiarity. Also the people who make the decisions (higher ranking officials) are usually older and also phobic of technology.
  - dublinben 12y ago
    The problem also lies with compensation. If you have the skills to be a good computer forensics officer, you can make several times more money elsewhere.
  - mark-r 12y ago
    It's worse than that: some police departments will actively reject you if you're too smart. There are lots of stories about this which you can find with a quick search, including this one where someone was dismissed and lost their court case: http://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836 http://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/sto...
- skymt 12y ago
  I see the lack of seriousness with which law enforcement treats much digital crime as an aspect of the way society sees the Internet as less real and therefore unimportant. I also suspect this problem will disappear as those who grew up with pervasive computing gain influence.
- pjc50 12y ago
  I wouldn't describe this as "incompetent", I'd describe this as "the phone security working". There are techniques for tethering the phone and then downloading data from it, but arguably these rely on loopholes that Apple can and should be fixing. Phones don't have a concept of PACE. Until we can agree on a legal and technical system whereby the police have access to phones if and only if it's part of a criminal investigation, there are only two possibilities: too much police access, or no police access.
  - ende 12y ago
    No police access. Forever.
- mnarayan01 12y ago
  > You'd expect every major police force to have a "computer crimes" division, but they don't. I actually wouldn't. My (obviously potentially flawed) intuition would be that most "computer crime" could be handled by more centralized departments.
cwmma 12y ago
My takeaway was that somebody is selling a hard drive that will wipe itself if you go through a tunnel.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- sbierwagen 12y ago
  You'd figure the timeout would be pretty long, 4 hours or so.
  - antjanus 12y ago
    Right. Whenever evidence is collected, it's not going to be thoroughly analyzed/saved/etc right away. Especially not in a thoroughly sealed environment. Just an hour - 2 hour long timeout would be sufficient.
- Lord_Zero 12y ago
  Not just wipe, it will destroy itself. And as other users below stated there is a timeout before self-destruction. Ill bet its configurable too.
- NovaS1X 12y ago
  This was my exact thinking too.
dzhiurgis 12y ago
> pop it in a microwave oven Just popped my phone in the microwave oven. Was able to receive a call on 2G as well as 3G.
- sbierwagen 12y ago
  Huh. I seemed to recall that Snowden made guests put their phones in the refrigerator, which is the same principle. So I went and tested my phone in on the work fridge, and you could still make calls to it. Filing cabinet, ditto. Mylar antistatic bag, (which has a conductive layer, though not very conductive) ditto. Tried some conductive fabric, which we sell for e-textiles stuff, and which the manufacturer's datasheet advertises as providing some 85dB of RF attenuation, and sure enough I couldn't call my phone anymore.
  - Scorponok 12y ago
    I assumed the fridge was more about "make sure the microphone can't pick up anything from outside" than blocking radio signals.
    - gambiting 12y ago
      Yeah I think Snowden said that himself. It was about microphones mostly.
    - dzhiurgis 12y ago
      Well lets test that too then!
  - manicdee 12y ago
    Switched off, in a tin can, in the freezer. Tin can to block radio signals, freezer to block audio signals. And switched off so the "normal" operation of the phone doesn't drain the battery (i.e.: continually trying stronger signals to reconnect with the GSM/3G/4G infrastructure).
- asdf3asdf 12y ago
  You probably need to cook it a little more
jackgavigan 12y ago
Interesting article. I didn't realise "romance fraud" was a thing.
- SixSigma 12y ago
  It also swings both ways http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/jan/19/undercover-policeman-married-activist-spy http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/jan/19/undercover-policem...
- pjc50 12y ago
  It's an odd term, but I think what they mean is contracting non-romantic marriages in order to immigrate into the UK.
  - wcummings 12y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_scam http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_scam
furyg3 12y ago
> "We have cases where phones get seized, and they are not necessarily taken from an arrested person - but we don't know the details of these cases as there is not a reason to keep records of this," she added. Christ, this is the real story. Police seize items that don't belong to a suspect, apparently aren't important to an investigation, don't give them back to the owner, and don't keep records about these items.
- sbierwagen 12y ago
  Well, they're English cops. No bill of rights.
  - pjc50 12y ago
    Well, we have the bill of rights (1688), but that's not relevant. We do have both the Human Rights Act, and PACE: https://www.gov.uk/police-and-criminal-evidence-act-1984-pace-codes-of-practice https://www.gov.uk/police-and-criminal-evidence-act-1984-pac... PACE specifies exactly how it should be done, including records.
  - gcb0 12y ago
    heh. quaint comment. america is actually the most liberal (ie less protection from the gov to common people) of the developed countries. no matter how much your politicians and hollywood tries to sell it as freedom paradise
    - 01Michael10 12y ago
      "less protection from the gov to common people" is a liberal ideal?
      - gcb0 12y ago
        all those "less laws" and don't "tell me what to do" has its consequences. you will find out it works both ways.
rdudek 12y ago
Maybe slightly off topic, is there a program that would allow me to remote wipe a system if one gets stolen? Or automatically wipe out a system if it has not communicated with a central server for a set amount of time?
- gambiting 12y ago
  Hmmmmm neither Windows nor Mac OS allow for this, mostly because neither system can ensure a complete destruction of the partition its located on. However, there are plenty of laptops on the market(high-end Dells, Lenovos, HPs) which have built in GSM modems which can be issued a command remotely to wipe the hard drive.
- superchink 12y ago
  You might want to check out the Prey Project: https://preyproject.com/ https://preyproject.com/
rikkus 12y ago
Article provided courtesy of SecureDrives
- 01Michael10 12y ago
  No...
leni536 12y ago
Is it even possible with the battery taken out?
- pjc50 12y ago
  iPhone batteries are not easily removable.
troymc 12y ago
From the article: "A spokeswoman for Dorset police told the BBC: "There were six incidents, but we don't know how people wiped them." You'd think the police would know that some smartphones have a remote-wipe or kill-switch feature: it's something they'd tell people who report their smartphone stolen.
androidb 12y ago
This reminds me of a movie scene in Breaking Bad where they remotely "wiped" a laptop's content. Guess that's plausible now.
richardlblair 12y ago
The comment about putting devices into a microwave is false. If the microwave is from the 70's it will work, otherwise it will not. Don't believe me/want to downvote me? Put your cell phone in the microwave and call it from a land line...
- balabaster 12y ago
  I've tried this over the past few months with a number of different microwaves because we wanted to know if the microwave would function as a Faraday cage... we tried it with every cell phone in the house, we also tried it with the cordless land phone. It didn't work. My conclusion is that a modern microwave will not function as a Faraday cage [Edit for clarity: for communications equipment (WiFi, Cellular, Home Phone etc.)] - I realize that may be painting with a broad brush, perhaps some of them will, but those I tried did not. If someone has tried this successfully with a modern microwave, it would be useful to know what cellular/radio devices they tested and what make/model/year of microwave they used for their tests.
  - kec 12y ago
    Microwave ovens most definitely function as faraday cages, however they are specifically designed to attenuate 2.4GHz signals. Anything higher or lower which isn't a harmonic (integer multiple) of 2.4GHz is going to experience much less attenuation.
prof_hobart 12y ago
>If we can't get to the scene within an hour, we tell the client to pop it in a microwave oven Doesn't just switching it off achieve the same thing?
- Rylinks 12y ago
  switching it off might activate drive encryption
taybin 12y ago
"The hard drive is constantly looking for GSM [Global System for Mobile Communications] signals, if it is starved of them it it would destroy itself. It would see such a bag as a threat," said James Little, head of sales at SecureDrives" Don't take your laptop on the subway!
- polemic 12y ago
  Yeah, have fun shipping it, or since there are for the military, in a bunker, airplane, submarine, desert base...

81 points by msantos 12y ago

As the article makes clear, they're just incompetent. However police-types seem to be very conservative by nature which can lead to a very technophobic workforce. It is pretty surprising how slowly police are changing with the times. You'd expect every major police force to have a "computer crimes" division, but they don't. Only really the MET (London's police force) has a decent computer crimes division. You often read about digital crimes (e.g. harassment, theft, fraud, etc) going completely uninvestigated because of how few "digital police" they have (e.g. 1/1000th the size of the officers investigating physical crimes). As a specific example, for almost a year when you Googled "UK passport renew" the first Google adword result was an obviously fraudulent one, yet nothing was done even though they had to have known about it. PS - I bet you could use Tasker (or a similar app) to wipe your phone if it didn't regain data access for a long period of time (e.g. 6-12 hours). So if they took your phone and shoved it into a bag, the phone still auto-wipes if they fail to turn it off. PPS - Although realistically you're best not storing the data on your phone at all. The UK police can force you to give up your encryption keys, however they would struggle to get your data off of a foreign owned-operated website.

vinceguidry 12y ago
> Only really the MET (London's police force) has a decent computer crimes division. It doesn't surprise me. Doing this stuff effectively is very hard, the number of people who could get up to speed quickly is small. It's not like your company's IT department. If I recall correctly, there was a sort-of mini bubble some years back where every force out there rushed to get a computer crimes division. We can all have fun imagining how most of those went.
- bunderbunder 12y ago
  I suspect for most forces the payroll budget is nowhere near large enough to hire people with appropriate skills, either. I've lived in places where the chief of police's salary would be considered entry-level pay by IT professionals.
  - adav 12y ago
    This applies to every public sector job that's related to cutting-edge IT.
  - IgorPartola 12y ago
    Why does every small town police department need its own staff for investigating "digital" crime? A centralized agency would actually be much more efficient for this, one that can collaborate with the local police department to match physical and digital evidence, perform arrests, etc. Not that I want yet another acronym agency charged with investigating everyone on the Internet, but it seems a waste to have each police department try to set up its own digital forensics lab.
    - jahewson 12y ago
      In the UK a town (or what in the US would be called a "city") does not have its own police department. Instead the UK is divided into just 45 territorial police forces, typically the size of a county. So the parent comment is not as inefficient as it would be in a US context where each town has its own independent force.
kauffj 12y ago
You're 100% right except for one aspect: that it is surprising. The highest quality services are ones with multiple alternatives and low switching costs. Monopolies tend to provide poorer service and are more conservative because there is reduced incentive or pressure to change. Police are a perfect example of this; democracy is a weak lever. Edit: This is not inherently an argument against the provision of the police as a public good. It could be accomplished within democracy by stronger localization and flexibility in choice of provision (e.g. allowing neighborhoods to opt out / choose their own solution).
- bunderbunder 12y ago
  I'm curious about how a system where law enforcement is supplied by a competitive market would work.
  - dazc 12y ago
    Don't go there. :)
  - dragontamer 12y ago
    It would diverge into racketeering, and then into Feudalism with different companies holding control of different regions. Although it'd be a libertarian distopia. Libertarians want it so badly but they don't really understand that it is how the world worked a thousand years ago.
    - fleitz 12y ago
      LOL, exactly why do you think we need so many licenses, etc. If we don't have racketeering right now, how come individual police officers are allowed to keep the proceeds of any drug money they 'find'? Also, don't most people pay taxes so the force 'protecting' them won't ostensibly take them off to jail? When the police break the laws that are supposed to protect you is there any recourse for the police, or do they investigate themselves? Exactly what we have is racketeering, however, we have no alternative forces from which to purchase protection. If you read any book on the modern nation state it will tell you that the state is defined as the organization with monopolizes and projects violence over a given geographical territory.
paulornothing 12y ago
In the US, I think the main issue has to do with most Police Departments only requiring a High School Diploma as an education requirement. I've had internships with Gov't agencies and volunteered at local PDs and it's a very common thread that a large portion of the workforce is computer illiterate. Sure higher education doesn't necessarily mean people will be proficient with computers but at least they will have exposure and familiarity. Also the people who make the decisions (higher ranking officials) are usually older and also phobic of technology.
- dublinben 12y ago
  The problem also lies with compensation. If you have the skills to be a good computer forensics officer, you can make several times more money elsewhere.
- mark-r 12y ago
  It's worse than that: some police departments will actively reject you if you're too smart. There are lots of stories about this which you can find with a quick search, including this one where someone was dismissed and lost their court case: http://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/story?id=95836 http://abcnews.go.com/US/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-cops/sto...
skymt 12y ago
I see the lack of seriousness with which law enforcement treats much digital crime as an aspect of the way society sees the Internet as less real and therefore unimportant. I also suspect this problem will disappear as those who grew up with pervasive computing gain influence.
pjc50 12y ago
I wouldn't describe this as "incompetent", I'd describe this as "the phone security working". There are techniques for tethering the phone and then downloading data from it, but arguably these rely on loopholes that Apple can and should be fixing. Phones don't have a concept of PACE. Until we can agree on a legal and technical system whereby the police have access to phones if and only if it's part of a criminal investigation, there are only two possibilities: too much police access, or no police access.
- ende 12y ago
  No police access. Forever.
mnarayan01 12y ago
> You'd expect every major police force to have a "computer crimes" division, but they don't. I actually wouldn't. My (obviously potentially flawed) intuition would be that most "computer crime" could be handled by more centralized departments.

cwmma 12y ago

My takeaway was that somebody is selling a hard drive that will wipe itself if you go through a tunnel.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
sbierwagen 12y ago
You'd figure the timeout would be pretty long, 4 hours or so.
- antjanus 12y ago
  Right. Whenever evidence is collected, it's not going to be thoroughly analyzed/saved/etc right away. Especially not in a thoroughly sealed environment. Just an hour - 2 hour long timeout would be sufficient.
Lord_Zero 12y ago
Not just wipe, it will destroy itself. And as other users below stated there is a timeout before self-destruction. Ill bet its configurable too.
NovaS1X 12y ago
This was my exact thinking too.

dzhiurgis 12y ago

> pop it in a microwave oven Just popped my phone in the microwave oven. Was able to receive a call on 2G as well as 3G.

sbierwagen 12y ago
Huh. I seemed to recall that Snowden made guests put their phones in the refrigerator, which is the same principle. So I went and tested my phone in on the work fridge, and you could still make calls to it. Filing cabinet, ditto. Mylar antistatic bag, (which has a conductive layer, though not very conductive) ditto. Tried some conductive fabric, which we sell for e-textiles stuff, and which the manufacturer's datasheet advertises as providing some 85dB of RF attenuation, and sure enough I couldn't call my phone anymore.
- Scorponok 12y ago
  I assumed the fridge was more about "make sure the microphone can't pick up anything from outside" than blocking radio signals.
  - gambiting 12y ago
    Yeah I think Snowden said that himself. It was about microphones mostly.
  - dzhiurgis 12y ago
    Well lets test that too then!
- manicdee 12y ago
  Switched off, in a tin can, in the freezer. Tin can to block radio signals, freezer to block audio signals. And switched off so the "normal" operation of the phone doesn't drain the battery (i.e.: continually trying stronger signals to reconnect with the GSM/3G/4G infrastructure).
asdf3asdf 12y ago
You probably need to cook it a little more

jackgavigan 12y ago

Interesting article. I didn't realise "romance fraud" was a thing.

SixSigma 12y ago
It also swings both ways http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/jan/19/undercover-policeman-married-activist-spy http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2011/jan/19/undercover-policem...
pjc50 12y ago
It's an odd term, but I think what they mean is contracting non-romantic marriages in order to immigrate into the UK.
- wcummings 12y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_scam http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_scam

furyg3 12y ago

> "We have cases where phones get seized, and they are not necessarily taken from an arrested person - but we don't know the details of these cases as there is not a reason to keep records of this," she added. Christ, this is the real story. Police seize items that don't belong to a suspect, apparently aren't important to an investigation, don't give them back to the owner, and don't keep records about these items.

sbierwagen 12y ago
Well, they're English cops. No bill of rights.
- pjc50 12y ago
  Well, we have the bill of rights (1688), but that's not relevant. We do have both the Human Rights Act, and PACE: https://www.gov.uk/police-and-criminal-evidence-act-1984-pace-codes-of-practice https://www.gov.uk/police-and-criminal-evidence-act-1984-pac... PACE specifies exactly how it should be done, including records.
- gcb0 12y ago
  heh. quaint comment. america is actually the most liberal (ie less protection from the gov to common people) of the developed countries. no matter how much your politicians and hollywood tries to sell it as freedom paradise
  - 01Michael10 12y ago
    "less protection from the gov to common people" is a liberal ideal?
    - gcb0 12y ago
      all those "less laws" and don't "tell me what to do" has its consequences. you will find out it works both ways.

rdudek 12y ago

Maybe slightly off topic, is there a program that would allow me to remote wipe a system if one gets stolen? Or automatically wipe out a system if it has not communicated with a central server for a set amount of time?

gambiting 12y ago
Hmmmmm neither Windows nor Mac OS allow for this, mostly because neither system can ensure a complete destruction of the partition its located on. However, there are plenty of laptops on the market(high-end Dells, Lenovos, HPs) which have built in GSM modems which can be issued a command remotely to wipe the hard drive.
superchink 12y ago
You might want to check out the Prey Project: https://preyproject.com/ https://preyproject.com/

rikkus 12y ago

Article provided courtesy of SecureDrives

01Michael10 12y ago
No...

leni536 12y ago

Is it even possible with the battery taken out?

pjc50 12y ago
iPhone batteries are not easily removable.

troymc 12y ago

From the article: "A spokeswoman for Dorset police told the BBC: "There were six incidents, but we don't know how people wiped them." You'd think the police would know that some smartphones have a remote-wipe or kill-switch feature: it's something they'd tell people who report their smartphone stolen.

androidb 12y ago

This reminds me of a movie scene in Breaking Bad where they remotely "wiped" a laptop's content. Guess that's plausible now.

richardlblair 12y ago

The comment about putting devices into a microwave is false. If the microwave is from the 70's it will work, otherwise it will not. Don't believe me/want to downvote me? Put your cell phone in the microwave and call it from a land line...

balabaster 12y ago
I've tried this over the past few months with a number of different microwaves because we wanted to know if the microwave would function as a Faraday cage... we tried it with every cell phone in the house, we also tried it with the cordless land phone. It didn't work. My conclusion is that a modern microwave will not function as a Faraday cage [Edit for clarity: for communications equipment (WiFi, Cellular, Home Phone etc.)] - I realize that may be painting with a broad brush, perhaps some of them will, but those I tried did not. If someone has tried this successfully with a modern microwave, it would be useful to know what cellular/radio devices they tested and what make/model/year of microwave they used for their tests.
- kec 12y ago
  Microwave ovens most definitely function as faraday cages, however they are specifically designed to attenuate 2.4GHz signals. Anything higher or lower which isn't a harmonic (integer multiple) of 2.4GHz is going to experience much less attenuation.

prof_hobart 12y ago

>If we can't get to the scene within an hour, we tell the client to pop it in a microwave oven Doesn't just switching it off achieve the same thing?

Rylinks 12y ago
switching it off might activate drive encryption

taybin 12y ago

"The hard drive is constantly looking for GSM [Global System for Mobile Communications] signals, if it is starved of them it it would destroy itself. It would see such a bag as a threat," said James Little, head of sales at SecureDrives" Don't take your laptop on the subway!

polemic 12y ago
Yeah, have fun shipping it, or since there are for the military, in a bunker, airplane, submarine, desert base...