{"id":590,"date":"2015-10-13T01:30:18","date_gmt":"2015-10-13T01:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/?p=590"},"modified":"2024-12-23T07:48:51","modified_gmt":"2024-12-23T07:48:51","slug":"encrypted-smartphones-challenge-investigators","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/encrypted-smartphones-challenge-investigators-590\/","title":{"rendered":"Encrypted Smartphones Challenge Investigators"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Encrypted<\/a><\/p>\n

Law-enforcement officials are running up against a new hurdle in their investigations: the encrypted smartphone.<\/p>\n

Officials say they have been unable to unlock the phones of two homicide victims in recent months, hindering their ability to learn whom those victims contacted in their final hours. Even more common, say prosecutors from New York, Boston and elsewhere, are locked phones owned by suspects, who refuse to turn over passcodes.<\/p>\n

Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance says his office had 101 iPhones that it couldn\u2019t access as of the end of August, the latest data available.<\/p>\n

The disclosures are the latest twist in a continuing dispute between law-enforcement officials and Apple Inc. and Google Inc., after the two tech companies released software last year that encrypted more data on new smartphones. The clash highlights the challenge of balancing the privacy of phone users with law enforcement\u2019s ability to solve crimes.<\/p>\n

\u201cLaw enforcement is already feeling the effects of these changes,\u201d Hillar Moore, the district attorney in Baton Rouge, La., wrote to the Senate Judiciary Committee in July. Mr. Moore is investigating a homicide where the victim\u2019s phone is locked. He is one of 16 prosecutors to send letters to the committee calling for back doors into encrypted devices for law enforcement.<\/p>\n

The comments are significant because, until now, the debate over encrypted smartphones has been carried by federal officials. But local police and prosecutors handle the overwhelming share of crimes in the U.S., and district attorneys say encryption gives bad guys an edge.<\/p>\n

Encrypted phones belonging to victims further complicate the issue, because some families want investigators to have access to the phones.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if people are not terribly sympathetic to law-enforcement arguments, this situation might cause them to think differently,\u201d said Paul Ohm, a Georgetown University Law Center professor and former prosecutor.<\/p>\n

Last week, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey told a Senate hearing that the administration doesn\u2019t want Congress to force companies to rewrite their encryption code. \u201cThe administration is not seeking legislation at this time,\u201d White House National Security Council spokesman Mark Stroh said in a written statement Monday.<\/p>\n

Some independent experts say the handful of cases that have emerged so far isn\u2019t enough to prove that phone encryption has altered the balance between law enforcement and privacy. In many cases, they say, investigators can obtain the encrypted information elsewhere, from telephone companies, or because the data was backed up on corporate computers.<\/p>\n

—————————————————————————————————————————————————–<\/p>\n

\u2018<\/span>In the past this would have been easy for us. We would have an avenue for this information, we\u2019d get a subpoena, obtain a record, further our investigation.\u2019<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2014Evanston Police Commander Joseph Dugan<\/span><\/small><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

—————————————————————————————————————————————————–
\n\u201cIt depends on what the success rate is of getting around this technology,\u201d said Orin Kerr, a George Washington Law professor.<\/p>\n

Apple encrypted phones by default beginning with iOS 8, the version of its mobile-operating system released last fall. The decision came amid public pressure following former national-security contractor Edward Snowden\u2019s revelations of tech-company cooperation with government surveillance.<\/p>\n

With iOS 8, and the newly released iOS 9, Apple says it cannot unlock a device with a passcode. That means Apple cannot provide information to the government on users\u2019 text messages, photos, contacts and phone calls that don\u2019t go over a telephone network. Data that isn\u2019t backed up elsewhere is accessible only on the password-protected phone.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have the greatest respect for law enforcement and by following the appropriate legal process, we provide the relevant information we have available to help,\u201d Apple wrote in a statement to The Wall Street Journal.<\/p>\n

Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook is an advocate of encryption. \u201cLet me be crystal clear: Weakening encryption, or taking it away, harms good people that are using it for the right reasons,\u201d he said at a conference earlier this year.<\/p>\n

Only some phones, such as the Nexus 6 and the Nexus 9, running Google\u2019s Android Lollipop system are encrypted by default. Google declined to comment about the role of encryption in police investigations.<\/p>\n

Three of the 16 district attorneys who wrote to the Senate\u2014from Boston, Baton Rouge and Brooklyn\u2014told the Journal they were aware of cases where encrypted phones had hindered investigations. Investigators in Manhattan and Cook County in Illinois also have cases dealing with encrypted phones. Investigators say, however, they have no way of knowing whether or not the locked phones contain valuable evidence.<\/p>\n

Mr. Moore, of Baton Rouge, thinks there might be important information on a victim\u2019s phone. But he can\u2019t access it.<\/p>\n

Brittany Mills of Baton Rouge used her iPhone 5s for everything from sending iMessages to writing a diary, and she didn\u2019t own a computer, her mother said. Ms. Mills, a 28-year-old patient caregiver, was shot to death at her door in April when she was eight months pregnant.<\/p>\n

Police submitted a device and account information subpoena to Apple, which responded that it couldn\u2019t access anything from the device because it was running iOS 8.2. Mr. Moore thinks the iCloud data Apple turned over won\u2019t be helpful because the most recent backup was in February, two months before her death. The records he obtained of her phone calls yielded nothing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen something as horrible as this happens to a person, there should be no roadblock in the way for law enforcement to get in there and catch the person as quickly as possible,\u201d said Barbara Mills, Brittany Mills\u2019s mother.<\/p>\n

Investigators in Evanston, Ill., are equally stumped by the death of Ray C. Owens, 27. Mr. Owens was found shot to death in June with two phones police say belonged to him, an encrypted iPhone 6 and a Samsung Galaxy S6 running Android. A police spokesman said the Samsung phone is at a forensics lab, where they are trying to determine if it is encrypted.<\/p>\n

The records that police obtained from Apple and service providers had no useful information, he added. Now the investigation is at a standstill.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the past this would have been easy for us,\u201d said Evanston Police Commander Joseph Dugan. \u201cWe would have an avenue for this information, we\u2019d get a subpoena, obtain a record, further our investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barbara Mills is committed to making sure more families don\u2019t have to see cases go unsolved because of phone encryption. \u201cAny time you have a situation of this magnitude, if you can\u2019t depend on law enforcement, who can you depend on?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Law-enforcement officials are running up against a new hurdle in their investigations: the encrypted smartphone. Officials say they have been unable to unlock the phones of two homicide victims in recent months, hindering their ability to learn whom those victims contacted in their final hours. Even more common, say prosecutors from New York, Boston and … Continue reading Encrypted Smartphones Challenge Investigators<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[60,52,199],"class_list":["post-590","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-apple","tag-encryption","tag-phone-encryption"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=590"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":593,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590\/revisions\/593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}