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Government Cellphones Privacy United States Politics

Delays In Unlocking Cellphones Seized In Inauguration Day Protests? (buzzfeed.com) 163

Cellphone data may play a key role in prosecuting people arrested at inauguration day protests, according to an article shared by Slashdot reader Mosquito Bites. A U.S. attorney acknowledged that "the government recovered cell phones from more than 100 indicted defendants and other un-indicted arrested" in a filing last March, adding "The government is in the process of extracting data from the Rioter Cell Phones pursuant to lawfully issued search warrants, and expects to be in a position to produce all of the data from the searchers Rioter Cell Phones in the next several weeks."

But 11 weeks later, it's a different story. Prosecutors "have provided defense lawyers with access to hundreds of hours of video footage from January 20, but have yet to turn over data extracted from more than 100 cell phones seized during the arrests, according to lawyers who spoke with BuzzFeed News." In addition, they report that now more than half the 200-plus defendants "are vowing not to cooperate with prosecutors, even in the face of a new set of felony charges that carry stiff maximum prison sentences."
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Delays In Unlocking Cellphones Seized In Inauguration Day Protests?

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  • by Frosty Piss ( 770223 ) * on Saturday June 10, 2017 @08:45PM (#54594179)

    In a similar way to the "mistakes" this young lady who leaked classified made, so to did most of these demonstrators.

    Seriously, if you're going to participate or be part of the leadership of an organized protest, consider all your "command and control" participants use - get this! - "burner phones", and then at some point, ditch them.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      And be seen using a flip phone? Never. How many of these anti capitalist leftist protesters were using $1000 iPhones? Hell use regular HF radios with keywords.

      • Seriously, if you're going to participate or be part of the leadership of an organized protest, consider all your "command and control" participants use - get this! - "burner phones", and then at some point, ditch them.

        And be seen using a flip phone? Never.

        The horror! The horror!

      • by Nethead ( 1563 )

        Last year on ebay I picked up three UHF Motorola MT2000 handheld radios with encryption that were surplus from the CHiP SWAT team for about $300. Secure professional comms are available at an affordable price if you study a bit and look around. You may have to do a bit of hacking to get them to your frequencies of choice, but all that info is out there (batlabs.com). Granted I've been hacking Motorola radios for decades but the bar isn't that high. I also have 800MHz Jedi (yes, that is what the interna

    • Re:Bad Planning (Score:4, Insightful)

      by markdavis ( 642305 ) on Saturday June 10, 2017 @10:14PM (#54594407)

      >"Seriously, if you're going to participate or be part of the leadership of an organized protest, consider all your "command and control" participants use - get this! - "burner phones", and then at some point, ditch them."

      Or better yet, protest but don't break the law...

      NOT that I am excusing this ridiculous delay in getting their phones back because it is wrong. But something tells me that is pretty typical nowadays for any phone seized during an arrest in which they want data, too.

    • Depends on who we're talking about and what they did.. If they were the people who committed "violence"* in the protests, they knew what they were doing and knew the were breaking some laws and yes should have thought of this. If it was people showing up to chant and hold signs, and the "crimes" they committed were bogus crap made up, of course they wouldn't think to use burner phones. Hopefully these are the first camp and not the second camp, but I'm not optimistic enough to believe the US government woul
      • The prosecutors want to try people in groups which doesn't seem right:

        there are still many more legal battles to come before these cases go to trial, such as whether evidence was lawfully collected and whether defendants should be tried in groups, as opposed to individual trials for each person.

        The charges come in groups too - this seems to imply 1060 acts of property destruction:

        The latest indictment ... charged 212 defendants with at least eight counts: one count of inciting or urging others to riot, one

    • If they remain anonymous, they don't get the associated fame/infamy. What good is a trophy, if it doesn't have your name on it?

    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Should have understood what happens with the National Special Security Event
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
    • by mOzone ( 1447147 )

      they arent that smart ...smashing windows in a federal building carry heavy fines ..might as well smashed up a mail van and drove it into local FBI building ..would have made a better youtube video and gotten same amount of time

  • wait, what? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 10, 2017 @08:47PM (#54594189)

    more than half the 200-plus defendants "are vowing not to cooperate with prosecutors

    Why would anyone cooperate with their prosecution?

    Do I misunderstand something here? Typically you cooperate with your defence and are adversarial with your prosecution, no?

    • by Anonymous Coward

      In the same way that millennials can be both male and female at the same time, they can self-identify as prosecutors while being defendents.

      • by lucm ( 889690 ) on Saturday June 10, 2017 @10:41PM (#54594467)

        they can self-identify as prosecutors while being defendents.

        Let's be clear: defendents that identify as prosecutors cannot understand the burden of prosecutors as well as prosecutor-born prosecutors. They shouldn't be allowed to invade the space created for those who have been prosecutors over the course of a lifetime; access to this space should be granted according to experience, not identity.

        That's why there should be only two kinds of courtrooms; one for the prosecutor-born prosecutors, and one for everyone else. Obviously the defendents, cisdefendents and self-identifying defendents don't need dedicated courtrooms since they have experienced a life of privilege.

    • The prosecutors are pulling the plea deal they give everyone now. Only a fraction of criminal cases make it to trial. The DA doesn't have the resources or budget to decrypt the phones and hopes everyone takes the deal.

      • Or assuming that the government does have the ability and can do so fairly trivially, it's probably not worth letting the world know that they can do it over a few people protesting. Didn't the FBI basically drop a case against a guy running a child porn site so that they didn't have to reveal their software in court a few months ago?
    • Why would anyone cooperate with their prosecution?

      Because prosecutors use a certain tactic so often, they named a whole category of games after it: the Prisoner's Dilemma.

    • Why would anyone cooperate with their prosecution?

      They might be more inclined to cooperate with someone else's prosecutor.

    • Re:wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Saturday June 10, 2017 @09:24PM (#54594279)

      Why would anyone cooperate with their prosecution?

      Because even if you have done nothing wrong, government prosecutors can threaten you with bogus charges and bankrupt you with legal expenses. So they offer you a plea deal to rat on other protestors, and if you got nothin' on anyone else, you will need to make something up. Meanwhile, those other protestors are being offered deals to rat on you. The loser is the guy that holds out the longest out of a misguided sense of honor.

      • My question is, was it worth it?

        And, because I know people like to willfully ignore what I said... I will repeat it.

        Was it worth it, really?

        And lest the right try to argue, I served for eight years. I really, really want to know if they felt it was worth it, but more specifically I want to know after the sentencing.

    • by AK Marc ( 707885 )

      Why would anyone cooperate with their prosecution?

      Almost all people charged with a crime, confess. Why? Torture. The original definition was "causing or threatening harm to extract a confession" Note, getting the "truth" was never the goal of torture. Threatening someone with increased jail time (harm) if they don't confess meets the original definition of torture.

    • Do I misunderstand something here? Typically you cooperate with your defence and are adversarial with your prosecution, no?

      Yes you misunderstand something here. If you know you're guilty of something then co-operating with the prosecution will likely get you the best outcome, especially when it ensures a worse outcome for someone else.

    • Only a few of them will GET to cooperate with the prosecution.

      More than half 'vow not to' doesn't matter. I'll bet offers are already 'off the table', as the prosecutors have all the cooperation they need. More than likely the riot's 'leadership' has sold out 'the troops'. That's how it usually works.

    • by Artagel ( 114272 )

      The prisoner's dilemma: each prisoner does not know if another is going to cooperate. Cooperating results in a plea deal for reduced punishment, but inflicting full punishment on the non-cooperating prisoner.

      The typical scenario is that underling is offered a deal to provide evidence against his boss. The ultimate boss is the one that is the target of full punishment.

      If you don't turn over the password to your phone's data, the prosecutor isn't going to be able to use it to verify your story. Even if you pr

  • ... the cell phones have been cracked and the gov't has decided that the data obtained would be better used in further investigations rather then the current prosecutions. So they don't turn it over to the defense as a part of discovery. They don't even admit that they've got it.

    • by AHuxley ( 892839 )
      Why tell the world about methods? If a person accepts a deal?
      Thats one less person going to court, finding an expert to talk about how the phone data was extracted in open court.
      Or asking how the government worked with the phone, the phone maker, a 3rd party to get data from the phone.
      Better to just offer deals or wait to see how many can afford court time, lawyers and have found court ready experts.
      Questions of how the phone data was decrypted, extracted or accessed might see gov experts mention me
  • Whenever you see the word "lawful", you know something bad for the common people is being done in the name of DUH LAW.

    Remember boys & girls: "rule of law" just means "rule of lawyers". All the great human calamities of the 20th century - the trenches of WWI, the Armenian genocide, the Jewish holocaust in Germany, the atomic holocaust at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the allied firebombing of Berlin and Tokyo, Stalin's purges, the American chemical warfare against the Vietnamese people, the Soviet war agains

  • by Anonymous Coward

    "are vowing not to cooperate with prosecutors, even in the face of a new set of felony charges that carry stiff maximum prison sentences."

    "Confess now or we will hurt you thrice as much!" FTFY

  • "prosecuting people arrested at inauguration day riots "
    Showing up with clubs, hammers and then proceeding to smash/burn storefronts, cars, limos and anything else is NOT protesting.
  • "Let's all show up with wearing black masks and black clothes so the one who smashes stuff cannot be identified", "Whahhhhttttt. You are arresting all of us in black masks and black clothes."
    • by Agripa ( 139780 )

      "Let's all show up with wearing black masks and black clothes so the one who smashes stuff cannot be identified",
      "Whahhhhttttt. You are arresting all of us in black masks and black clothes."

      It works for the police.

  • Smashing windows in fed buildings in downtown DC carry's heavy fines ..like smashing windows in a post office or a mail van or FBI building etc
    that Starbucks was renting from the federal government ..and in the end did it do any good? it was like a triple failure

    I had a friend who was 83 years old he CCW into a post office and someone noticed a bulge in back of his jacket ..at 83 he went to jail ..feds do not play

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