Michigan Police Search Cell Phones During Traffic Stops
thenewspaper.com
thenewspaper.com
If they need your iPhone address book they can get a search warrant. (Our historical understand is that they do need a reason for asking for that sort of thing, and that your papers and effects enjoy a strong presumption of privacy.)
While I agree that's our right as protected by the 4th, some states have determined that only probable cause is required to confiscate and search cell phones (e.g. California). In those states refusing to consent will not help (except of course if you plan on taking the case to SCOTUS).
"Sure officer, here's my phone, you're welcome to fiddle with the password screen until you wipe the device."
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/01/warrantless-...
Anyone know what Michigan's Freedom of Information laws are like? Half a million seems ridiculously high for a FoIA-type request.
Relevant text: A government agency may charge a fee for the necessary copying of a public record for inspection or providing a copy of a public record to a requestor. A public body may also charge for search, examination and review and the separation of exempt information in those instances where failure to charge a fee would result in unreasonably high costs to the public body. The fee must be limited to actual duplication, mailing and labor costs. The first $20 of a fee must be waived for a person who is on welfare or presents facts showing inability to pay because of indigency.
(italics mine) Translation: The $500k "fee" is another denial/delay tactic
All they have to do to drive up the costs is pay a secretary to duplicate by manually transcribing digital data as ones and zeroes.
"Hello I stopped you because you were going 85 in a 70 mph area. Please give me your license, insurance, and cell phone"?
What laws govern police asking for things?
From what I've gathered, police can ask for all kinds of things that they legally have no right to (searches, being let in, etc), but you can still ignorantly comply. They can even legally lie about shit to persuade you.
You haven't committed any crime. Who's supposed to be serving who here?
Traffic violations are violations of the law and thus are criminal matters (though generally misdemeanors).
You can tell the difference by whether there is a County/State/Federal prosecutor involved. Prosecutors don't bring civil claims to court.
First sentence reads: "In the United States, most traffic laws are codified in a variety of state, county and municipal ordinances, with most minor violations classified as civil infractions."
They all at some point will have the source code available, though until that occurs I've only got redphone / textsecure installed. Great apps., great developer.
and encrypting folks are not real smart..they make human mistakes like all of us..
Wonder if they sell to private individuals?; they only seem to list military, law enforcement and intelligence agencies as their target customer on their site.
To defeat over 3000 models of phones it would need to have about 2000 different connection types, based on my experience trying to plug in and extract information from various manufacturers extortionately priced dongle custom connectors.
I found myself inadvertently helping a friend today who's abusive manipulative ex-partner has been sexting their 14yr old daughter and I was helping her recover the messages to present to the police; could seriously have used one of these and avoided a heap of hassle with drivers, cables, custom software. (The NZ police don't seem to have these devices yet)
I've actually tried to isolate a phone from the network for testing. Its much more difficult that it seems like it should be. I'm wondering if such a thing works or if this more of a gimmick.
The only reliable way I've found of making sure my iphone is truly off the air is to take it to San Fran(1)...
(1) I'll be here all week. Try the veal.
http://oduinn.com/blog/2010/02/11/unveiling-mozillas-faraday...
Or you could stick it in a microwave. (I've used this to test if my home 'repaired' microwave is leaking radiation. Stick your phone in it and close the door. Call it. If it rings, chuck your microwave out :-) If it doesn't, well, I wouldn't stake my life on it not leaking and I'd still get it tested professionally.
Only problem with this microwave trick is that it's hard to push the buttons once the door is closed! You can use it to test your microwave, but not your phone unless your app doesn't need any interaction. Also, an app that encrypts on loss of signal would be of limited use where I live in NZ. The Vodafone network drops in and out so often you'd flatten the battery on the phone real fast with all that encryption action.
Microwaves don't do much more than excite water molecules. Those excited molecules would manifest as a simple perception of increased heat if there's somewhere your microwave is leaking. If you're not feeling that, you're safe.
Hmm. It actually can only report the SNR. I'll have to look into how it comes up with this number. Thanks for the microwave tip. Might be handy.
http://www.cellebrite.com/ufed-support-center/downloads.html
The "Apple iPhone Passcode Bypass instructions" document explains that they can bypass your iphone User Lock, but they need access to a plist file from the iTunes installation on the machine which the phone syncs to, which is often unlikely to be available at a routine traffic stop.
Of course, even that wouldn't justify anything but getting your last few minutes of chat log off the phone...