US prosecutors charge Atlanta man after GrapheneOS phone wipes itself during airport search

[mbrowne5061]

I truly wonder what goes through the contorted thought process of backwards logic like this. If an officer accidentally left a pocket knife in reach of an shoplifting suspect and that suspect picked it up and stabbed three people to death, does the error mean the suspect shouldn't be charged with murder?

Ignoring that you jumped from "destruction of evidence" to "shoplifting" to "mass stabbing", and jumped from "their training sucked" to "they should be charged with a crime"

Yeah, I would expect the cop to be held civilly liable by any victims families if they left a weapon within reach of suspect in some situations; e.g. the cop is mid-arrest, leaves a weapon in reach, stops for whatever reason, and then the suspect goes on a stabbing spree. Granted, I have no idea if a court would uphold that civil suit - that would be highly dependent on the exact details of this hypothetical case - just that I would expect one to be filled and at least make it to an initial hearing.

But we're not talking about either shoplifting or assault, now are we? Nor are we talking about charges of any kind for any cop. We're talking about the collection of evidence, and a cop having very poor training in executing that collection. The simple fact is either the cop needs to be back to training, or CBP training needs to be updated to "don't put in codes yourself".

This is a masterclass in being confidently wrong about both technology and the law.

First, you cannot "just clone" a locked, highly encrypted modern phone without the passcode; the hardware security is literally designed to prevent that.

There is absolutely nothing stopping someone from doing a bit-level clone of an encrypted device. Encryption can stop you from reading the contents of that duplication, but cloning is completely possible.

As for the hardware of modern phones "preventing" that through something like USB or other "normal", non-destructive means, there are literally firms setup to get around these hardware limits:

Cellebrite Inseyets

Explore Cellebrite's mobile forensics suite for advanced digital investigations. Uncover critical data swiftly and securely.

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Mobile-Phone Cloning Tools Need to Be Subject to Oversight — and the Constitution | ACLU

www.aclu.org

Once they have physical possession of your device, you should assume it has been cloned and it is only a matter of time before they can read the contents of that clone.

Second, legally, the blame for destroyed evidence falls squarely on the suspect who provided the deceptive self-destruct code, not the officers who used it when supplied.

Inventing a conspiracy theory about agents sabotaging their own case to chase a legal precedent doesn't make you look clever, it just proves you did zero research before typing.

If a cop mishandles evidence in a case, it becomes inadmissible, even if the suspect "tricked" the cop into mishandling it. The cop should have had the training to not mess around with any collected evidence. That's why they aren't charging him for whatever may have been on his phone (if anything), but with evidence tampering. But I highly doubt the govt. case has any legs since it was ultimately the cop who put in the code, and not the suspect after being arrested.

 

[mbrowne5061]

I think you could find that innocent people don't set their devices to wipe.

Innocent people don't wipe their phones during an interrogation

I have my phone set to wipe if it receives a pass-phrase via SMS. I don't trust anyone with all the financial information on my device.

Granted, if I sent such a text message after the device was seized as evidence of a crime, I would fully expect to be charged with evidence tampering. And I would also think the cops would be dumb for not putting the cellphone in a faraday bag or disabling all its antennas to prevent just such a thing.

 

[Endymio]

Ignoring that you jumped from "destruction of evidence" to "shoplifting" to "mass stabbing", and jumped from "their training sucked" to "they should be charged with a crime"

It's called argument by analogy. Would you like an explanation of the concept?

Yeah, I would expect the cop to be held civilly liable by any victims families if they left a weapon within reach of suspect in some situations

A moot point, as you were suggesting the criminal liability for the act shifted from the perpetrator to the police. Did you forget the contents of your own post?

We're talking about the collection of evidence, and a cop having very poor training in executing that collection. The simple fact is either the cop needs to be back to training ... There is absolutely nothing stopping someone from doing a bit-level clone ...

Oops! You're forgetting this was a routine stop, and the individual in question was not a suspect of a crime. Border agents inspect tens of thousands of electronic devices a day; you wish them to clone every one? Next time think before you post.