Police Can Get Access to Your Cellphone Data Even After the Supreme Court Ruling

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/police-can-get-access-to-your-cellphone-data-even-after-the-supreme-court-ruling

by sinak • 12 years ago

63 30 12 years ago

fivethirtyeight.com

diafygi2• 12 years ago

The two ways mentioned in the article for how they can still do it are:

1) Ask the telco nicely.

2) MITM with things like stingray.

#1 can be solved by telcos starting to say no, which might be easier to do now that you can blame it on economic fallout (e.g. Verizon losing the Germany contract). #2 will likely be solved by a successful court challenge by the ACLU.

Not hopeless, in my opinion.

danielweber2• 12 years ago

How do either of those get the data stored on the phone?

diafygi2• 12 years ago

Presumably, they would sniff traffic coming from your phone, which is what the article is talking about.

crunchcaptain• 12 years ago

Here are some ideas:

-QUANTUMINSERT -> SS7

-CANDYMAN -> GOPHERSET

-WAP push

-Vuln. via specially-crafted SMS/MMS

-APN update

alexandros• 12 years ago

It's important to keep in mind that the phone holds more than location, call logs, and text messages though. It holds our photos, email, apps, the apps' storage, browsing history, and everything we do on the mobile internet. Putting that off limits is definitely a victory.

pling3• 12 years ago

Or you could just stop using the tools that incriminate you? Voting with your feet works pretty well.

nodata• 12 years ago

pling: Or you could just stop using the tools that incriminate you? Voting with your feet works pretty well.

What a stupid thing to say.

Are you seriously suggesting that people "just" opt-out of modern life?

Shivetya• 12 years ago

A little extreme. However they fail to mention that the police can take your phone and if it is not locked at the time they take it they can disable the locking feature.

Hence, if your truly paranoid about the authorities I suggest giving the ability to remote wipe your phone to someone whom you implicitly trust with instructions do so within whatever criteria you deem necessary.

A small amount of paranoia is good, too much and you need help

a3n• 12 years ago

You could also stop using pen and paper, which will be exposed when a warrant is served.

TallGuyShort• 12 years ago

Or you could just stop having anything to hide, right?

talmand3• 12 years ago

Such laws aren't necessarily designed to give you an out when police are looking for incriminating evidence.

It's also there to prevent a government agency from accessing your personal materials to find something to hold against you in a form of retaliation for some transgression or power play.

walshemj• 12 years ago

Badly worded title tracking location and meta data is not the same as searching your phone for incriminating evidence.

danielweber2• 12 years ago

The title feels link-baity. The headline could say "what the police can get and how they can get it" but that wouldn't have been as clickable.

graycat2• 12 years ago

A question?

How does the 'tracking' of the movements and location of a cellphone by the cellphone towers and/or WiFi networks work?

Or, The tracking by the towers works all the time so that the cellphone network will know how to send an incoming call to the phone? If so, is there a way to turn off the phone so that it can't receive calls and can't be tracked, noticed, or followed by the towers?

superuser23• 12 years ago

1) Yes, your phone regularly communicates with the nearest cell towers and the phone company can't help but know which one. However, this is imprecise - resolution of a few blocks.

2) Most smartphones have GPS-based location services that use, well GPS, plus the combination of WiFi networks and their signal strengths. To get reasonable speed, this data needs to be cached locally, but only the data for where you've actually been can fit. This is the reason for the huge fallout a couple years ago about "Your iPhone is tracking your movements!" This cache can be read with physical access (and the device's PIN).

3) Yes, turning off the phone will do that. Unless you are a specific target, in which case law enforcement may have issued a software update just for you that makes the phone only appear to shut down. The only way to be sure is to take out the battery or not takke te phone with you.

keithpeter3• 12 years ago

Under your heading 3) I'm just wondering how long it is before someone makes a copper coated metal tin just the right size for each make of smart phone. Just open the lid when you want to make a call or 'sync' with your network of friends.

Could be fun if it went viral. Could even have pictures of your favourite politician on the lid, Theresa May for the UK model I imagine.

Zigurd• 12 years ago

I do not think an "update" is needed. All of the functionality for a room bug is in all baseband processors: control of alerting on an offering call, control over LEDs and display lighting (or telling an application processor about an offering call), connecting, speakerphone, etc. All that is needed is knowledge of what is probably an extension of the GSM call control messages, and the ability to inject that message into the telephone network.

graycat2• 12 years ago

Thanks.

afarrell• 12 years ago

The police can get access to your cell phone data from the phone directly too. Its just that when they try to present the data as evidence in criminal court, you can prevent that by filing a motion to suppress that evidence. The police won't be punished for the search unless you sue them in civil court.

The same thing is true of the NSA, but the NSA never presses criminal charges, so it is only vacuously true.

talmand3• 12 years ago

It's not just about cell phone usage, but what data exists on your phone that doesn't leave the phone.

Police Can Get Access to Your Cellphone Data Even After the Supreme Court Ruling

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