How End-to-End Encryption Is Not Preventing Policing, Arrest, or Conviction

I have been a layman judge in Helsinki district court for years and I agree. End-to-end encryption rarely prevents police work because security is much more than using the right app.

Free advice to criminals, activists, and freedom fighters:

i. Delete messages frequently.

ii. The crime phone and personal phones should never be on at the same location. Please leave your phone at home or shut it down completely. Having multiple burners to commit crimes may not help when you have your regular phone near them frequently. "These 10 burners can't be identified but somehow this guy's phone always uses the same cell tower."

iii. Don't use social media with your crime pals. Cops look trough contacts.

iv. Verify that your "crime pals" also do all the same. Don't trust, verify. People are weak at following protocols. Take their phone and do it yourself.

Police investigators have very limited resources. They prioritize work according to the seriousness of the crime. They give up on investigating smaller crimes if gathering evidence requires significant work. Taking a phone to a forensics lab and getting location data from the operator is a relatively easy way to get evidence.

Almost all small time gen-z criminals incriminate themselves in social media and phone records. It's common for even hardened organized crime to have years of WhatsApp history on their phones documenting the crimes with photos, locations addresses. All they have to do is delete all history every few months, and they would get at most 1-2 years suspended sentence, but get 6-7 years instead.

E2E is a tool and a subtle, highly-technical one. It does help criminals but only if they are sophisticated enough to use it correctly.

In this case, obviously the rioters are not the most sophisticated people around, to put it that way, and they don't really consider E2E or online footprints so the whole discussion is moot.

...in the UK riots