As Apple continues to update its iPhones with new security features, law enforcement and other investigators are constantly playing catch-up, trying to find the best way to circumvent the protections or to grab evidence. Last month, Forbes reported the first known instance of a search warrant being used to unlock a suspect’s iPhone X with their own face, leveraging the iPhone X’s Face ID feature.
But Face ID can of course also work against law enforcement – too many failed attempts with the ‘wrong’ face can force the iPhone to request a potentially harder to obtain passcode instead. Taking advantage of legal differences in how passcodes are protected, US law enforcement have forced people to unlock their devices with not just their face but their fingerprints too. But still, in a set of presentation slides obtained by Motherboard this week, one company specialising in mobile forensics is telling investigators not to even look at phones with Face ID, because they might accidentally trigger this mechanism.
The security mechanisms on modern phones are complex legal problems for law enforcement, and one example in the article highlights just how far law enforcement is willing to go: UK police enacted a fake mugging to steal a suspect’s phone as he was using it, so it would be unlocked. The officers then proceeded to endlessly swipe so it wouldn’t lock itself.
Crazy.
Based on the examples you gave us I would argue that modern security mechanisms and the endless ambition of officers to crack them is posing a complex legal problem for us free citizens.
That’s only a problem if you actually believed we “citizens” were free in the first place.
Oh, it’s even worse. Allow me to present the current situation in Germany: Our government has opened a ZITis (Zentrale Stelle für Informationstechnik im Sicherheitsbereich) – “Central Office for Information Technology in the Security Sphere”. Their prime objective is to perform important tasks like “password search” and “evaluation of smartphones”. Currently federal and local police agencies are using 7 different software tools, and ZITiS, as a new central services provider, wants to change that.
And now guess who pays for all this.
Right! The tax payer! Those who are spied on are providing the money to pay the spies and their overpriced toys!
A few details here:
https://www.neweurope.eu/article/germany-opens-zitis-cyber-surveilla…
Of course, as this is a “cyber surveillance agency”, they won’t go into detail about how tax money is spent, which external companies are involved, what they are building (or buying), and how the results will be used.
Of course, they “think about the children”. They do not think about how their actions will impact normal people, and how their legal rights are possibly being offended. In my opinion, they just hope that the “I don’t care” attitude of the general public will prevail and extend, so they can do whatever they want. At the same time, they tell you about “privacy” and “data protection”, about “security” and “safety”, but in reality, none of that will matter.
So what can a regular person do if he doesn’t want his smart devices to be messed with? There are certain professions who have to protect the identity of their clients, their sources, their co-workers. What they’d need is a smartphone that’s totally locked down, making every kind of access compicated. No finger, no face, no words, no gestures, only something the owner knows (and therefore can forget!) could be part of a solution. I say “part of” because it’s neccessary, but not sufficient. There is no need to make it too easy to get spied on, or to “plant evidence”. However, it is no actual protection against this kind of abuse. Simply claiming something was found on a smartphone, and then writing this into the court papers, is usually enough to turn an innocent person into a suspect. And from being a suspect, being guilty isn’t that far away…
And: Yes, I know, “privacy” and “smartphone” doesn’t even match. 😉
technologies are great, but this was really funny to read, haha. I can only laugh to keep from crying, to be honest. I’m just glad https://writingcheap.com/paper-writing.html don’t use any face or touch id’s, but their privacy is on top because it’s really important for customers ordering assistance with any writing works.