I found this link about a serious violation of privacy in the State of Michigan in a worrisome Blogmocracy article about another significant threat to our electronic privacy, namely Apple iPhone secretly records owners’ every move. It followed another article, Exiting Detroit, about the endless and evidently irreversible decline and fall of the city of Detroit. It sure looks as though there are fewer and fewer reasons to visit, do business in, or live in, Michigan, and more and more reasons to avoid the entire state.
Similarly, if Apple shows so little regard for their customers’ privacy, I would suggest buying from a competitor until such time as Apple changes its ways. Vote with your wallet and vote with your feet!
Michigan: Police Search Cell Phones During Traffic Stops
(h/t: Da_Beerfreak)
ACLU seeks information on Michigan program that allows cops to download information from smart phones belonging to stopped motorists.
The Michigan State Police have a high-tech mobile forensics device that can be used to extract information from cell phones belonging to motorists stopped for minor traffic violations. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Michigan last Wednesday demanded that state officials stop stonewalling freedom of information requests for information on the program.
ACLU learned that the police had acquired the cell phone scanning devices and in August 2008 filed an official request for records on the program, including logs of how the devices were used. The state police responded by saying they would provide the information only in return for a payment of $544,680. The ACLU found the charge outrageous.
[...]
A US Department of Justice test of the CelleBrite UFED used by Michigan police found the device could grab all of the photos and video off of an iPhone within one-and-a-half minutes. The device works with 3000 different phone models and can even defeat password protections.“Complete extraction of existing, hidden, and deleted phone data, including call history, text messages, contacts, images, and geotags,” a CelleBrite brochure explains regarding the device’s capabilities. “The Physical Analyzer allows visualization of both existing and deleted locations on Google Earth. In addition, location information from GPS devices and image geotags can be mapped on Google Maps.”
The ACLU is concerned that these powerful capabilities are being quietly used to bypass Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches.
“With certain exceptions that do not apply here, a search cannot occur without a warrant in which a judicial officer determines that there is probable cause to believe that the search will yield evidence of criminal activity,” Fancher wrote. “A device that allows immediate, surreptitious intrusion into private data creates enormous risks that troopers will ignore these requirements to the detriment of the constitutional rights of persons whose cell phones are searched.”
[...]
Read it all.
But that’s not all, folks!
Jury to decide if Pastor Terry Jones can protest outside the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, Michigan. Last I checked, the First Amendment is not subject to jury disapproval.
Originally published on 1389 Blog.
Tags: ACLU, Apple, Cellebrite, Dearborn, Detroit, First Amendment, IPhone, Michigan, Privacy
Point 1 – Apparently Google system phones (Android?) do much the same thing as the iPhone.
Point 2 – Carry a “dumb” phone and don’t put any more on it than absolutely necessary. If it has a camera, don’t use it. They take crappy pictures anyway.
Terry Jones is NOT giving up.
He said he will return to dearborn and exercise his First Amendment rights Next Friday.
http://www.clickondetroit.com/news/27624669/detail.html
They want to extort a $45,000. ‘peace bond’ from him before he gets his ‘permit’ to stand in front of a mosk.
What b.s. So now we have to pay to stand on a corner. If a mosk is near?
I’m sure it is all muzz on that “jury.” Look how they are grabbing power illegally.
This is the way it goes in islam. Dearborn is a no-go zone for the infidel. The muzz see it as their domain and now they are making the rules right here in America.
Well, NOT for Terry Jones. I applaud him.
Admins:
I just set up a Caturday post featuring the cats of the Mount Athos monastic community (with information about monastic life there as well).
Please schedule it for today if you possibly can.
Thanks!
I wonder if the tracking information is still accessible from a jailbroken phone?
1389AD wrote:
hmmm. i wonder if i can live there. imagine the peace and quiet.
@ 1389AD:
Set up for 8 PM tonight!
A more serious problem is letting comcast register and track the mac address of all your internet devices.
When I was working for the Government I had a co worker that had a large Jones for insisting all campaigns on the internet have components for tracking citizen information. He wanted pivot tables and database access so he could what if and who does want on the data. He wanted First names and last names from the public. This guy was ethical I would day. but the 3-4 people that replaced him had no such ethics in place.
Governments needs to be minimized and forced to attend to Interstate highways, National Defense, and Foreign Trade. The drug war is a lost war
The Muslims use fear to trample our rights. It seems to be the reverse of the “cry fire” doctrine. Your rights end when they infringe on the rights of others so your right to free speech by yelling fire in a crowded theater is curtailed by the risk to life and limb of the theater goers, unless of course there really is a fire. This stems from the Supreme Court ruling Schenck v. United States . Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.’s opinion stated:
The Muslims curtail your rights with the threat of violence if you say or do anything that offends them therefore presenting a clear and present danger. It’s a pervasion of the law. I’m not telling anyone here anything you don’t already know but rather I’m trying to frame the problem in such a way that maybe it can be addressed. For instance if this perversion is carried to its logical extreme any speech that offends anyone can be curtailed. The left tried this after Gabby Giffords was murdered. Maybe we should throw it back at them. Since I have no free will or self control should Obama open his mouth and say anything I disagree with, especially after reading it in an LGF2 thread or after listening to Rush Limbaugh, I will be driven into such a frenzy that I will have to kill innocents. Therefore Obama must be prevented from exercising his right to free speech. Hey, I can’t help it; I’m a TEA Party member.
@ Rancher:
UH Rancher, Giffords was not MURDERED! Assassinated Yes, Murdered not!
Last time I checked she was still breathing. I have voted against her ever time she ran (Yes, I am in AZ-8) but never wished her dead!
@ AZOlddog
amn, as I replayed it in my mind I considered her dead. I’m still amazed she didn’t die. I’ll say a prayer for her continued recovery. My bad, good catch. The irony is they used the attack to try and stifle Rush and the TEA Party who had absolutely no effect on the leftist clown who shot her. They cried for civility but threw civility out the window when public unions were threatened.
Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit points out that Smartphone Searches Not So Smart[sic] and without a warrant most likely illegal.
I don’t know about MI but in Minnesota what they are doing in MI is illegal without a warrant. Proper handling of ‘Digital Evidence’ is a very big deal and many steps are in place and taken to insure it is done right.
(Thanks 4d h/t
)
@ Mike C.:
How long before even the “dumb” phones start filing all this information? I don’t even use the speed dial feature on mine. It’s my understanding now that even “dumb” phones are GPS-capable. I wonder if there is any way to disable the GPS feature, and not otherwise cripple the phone?
I can see one way to fight back against that sort of snooping. Get a broken smartphone of eBay or some other vending site. Take most of the guts out, and install a bank of capacitors, plus a small switching power supply to charge them up to about 600 volts. Lead the 600 volts to whatever pins on the mini-USB connector would be most likely to do terminal damage to the Cellebrite device.
If the cop demands to search you smartphone, say, “Well, you can do it, but I’m warning you, it might damage your gadget there; I’ve been getting shocks off it lately.” Cop’s going to say, “Sure, buddy. Tell me another one.” Right?
AZOlddog wrote:
Technically, she was not assassinated either, it was and attempted assassination.
Alberta Oil Peon wrote:
As the speed of CPU’s increase along with the growing size of memory both coming at reduced cost expect the writers of advanced mobile operating systems to include this as a ‘feature’ for all new logging systems.
I have no cell phone/
@ Alberta Oil Peon:
They can get many details from non-smartphones also. Though I don’t know if they can use that mobile device to do so.
As I recall, the movements of the RIRA Omagh bombers were tracked based upon their cell phone records and what cell towers they connected to. Sort of a primitive version of GPS.
@ Bagua:
But nothing on the level of a GPS enabled smart phone. It is possible to turn the GPS off, but they could still track what cell towers it last connected to.
Bagua wrote:
There is also the question of what does it mean to turn something off now days. In too many cases all turning off a feature only hides its output from the user while it is still running in the background.
@ Da_Beerfreak:
Good point.
I see a couple of issues here that need answers.
1.) Why is this data being collecting in the first place?
2.) Who benefits from having this data collected?
3.) Who owns this data once it has been collected?
4.) Who has a right to see the data after it has been collected?
And last but probably the most important question.
5.) Who can give legal consent to allow a search of the collected data?
@ Da_Beerfreak:
Just to make it really clear. I’m talking about personal data being collected by electronic devices we have bought for our own use. i.g. computers, gps units, cellphones, pagers, PDAs…
Not the data being collect by the MI State Police.
Kirly wrote:
Nope, sorry, it’s males only.
Wish there were an equivalent place for female monastics somewhere.
1389AD wrote:
IIRC they are called ‘Convents.’
Da_Beerfreak wrote:
works for me.
Alberta Oil Peon wrote:
lol and i can build something like that