Cellebrite Asks Cops To Keep Its Phone Hacking Tech 'Hush Hush' (techcrunch.com) 39
An anonymous reader shares a report: For years, cops and other government authorities all over the world have been using phone hacking technology provided by Cellebrite to unlock phones and obtain the data within. And the company has been keen on keeping the use of its technology "hush hush." As part of the deal with government agencies, Cellebrite asks users to keep its tech -- and the fact that they used it -- secret, TechCrunch has learned. This request concerns legal experts who argue that powerful technology like the one Cellebrite builds and sells, and how it gets used by law enforcement agencies, ought to be public and scrutinized.
In a leaked training video for law enforcement customers that was obtained by TechCrunch, a senior Cellebrite employee tells customers that "ultimately, you've extracted the data, it's the data that solves the crime, how you got in, let's try to keep that as hush hush as possible." "We don't really want any techniques to leak in court through disclosure practices, or you know, ultimately in testimony, when you are sitting in the stand, producing all this evidence and discussing how you got into the phone," the employee, who we are not naming, says in the video.
In a leaked training video for law enforcement customers that was obtained by TechCrunch, a senior Cellebrite employee tells customers that "ultimately, you've extracted the data, it's the data that solves the crime, how you got in, let's try to keep that as hush hush as possible." "We don't really want any techniques to leak in court through disclosure practices, or you know, ultimately in testimony, when you are sitting in the stand, producing all this evidence and discussing how you got into the phone," the employee, who we are not naming, says in the video.
Yeah... sure! (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, we wouldn't want your wanton disregard for civil liberties to negatively impact your stock value.
As much contempt as people have for police, much more contempt is due for the corporate technology companies and federal agencies/funding which back them.
While cops can at least present a pleasant face of "we're here to protect and serve" - and have the consensus of the public ire to be concerned with - the same is not true for these companies which give them technologies to violate liberties or tanks to tread on people with a knowing wink.
Re:Yeah... sure! (Score:5, Insightful)
To be more precise, this specifically is a civil liberties concern.
Evidence has a chain of custody requirement. You have to demonstrate how and where you got it, or it can be considered inadmissible. (That all depends, of course, on scrupulous and competent courts...which, from experience, many are not.)
What this company is asking is for the police to obfuscate the truth - either because the approaches used are illegal, or they simply want to protect their IP, or the desire to remain out of the limelight.
Re:Yeah... sure! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly!
Re: (Score:2)
They ask the police to obfuscate the truth because the police use this tool for parallel construction.
I prefer the actual legal term: PERJURY.
Re:Yeah... sure! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yeah... sure! (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand, there is a good chance that these companies are saving lives, especially when CP is involved. Having a master key for a legal search warrant is what the police should have had in the first place.
Stockholm syndrome? So used to abuse that you've kinda come to like it? Police should not have a master key for a legal search warrant. You're essentially saying (if it's digital) they should be able to knock down any door without having to check with any other authority. The specific reason search warrants exist is so that cops can't go busting in anywhere without thought or provocation just because they feel like it. If you think handing them the ability to do that won't be abused, I'd like to ask you to read any history book on any police force that has ever existed and then think again.
I won't even entertain the government sponsored, "Oh my, think of the children!" nonsense. It's not every really about that. It's about control and privacy raping for the general population just because. The children are a convenient heart-tug for the gullible and idiotic. It bears as much resemblance to the reality of what they'll use it for as unicorns and dragons.
Re: (Score:3)
That some people use encryption to hide their nefarious deeds is of negligible relevance in light of the greater number of people using it for perfectly legitimate purposes. Your rights may be nothing more to you than currency that you want to trade for a veneer of safety, but the rest of us don't think the government can be trusted with the level of power they would have if they had back door access into every system. You should be ashamed at your failed attempt in using child exploitation victims as props
They should borrow Harris' NDA language (Score:5, Insightful)
https://www.techdirt.com/2018/... [techdirt.com]
The FBI set the first (and second!) rules of Stingray Club [techdirt.com]: DO NOT TALK ABOUT STINGRAY CLUB. Law enforcement agencies seeking to acquire cell tower spoofing tech were forced to sign a nondisclosure agreement [techdirt.com] forbidding them from disclosing details on the devices to defendants, judges, the general public sometimes even prosecutors.
Re: (Score:2)
A very dubious Gestapo document does not protect them from perjury charges.
If we actually prosecuted the kings men.
Phone data? (Score:1)
They'd find some of my contacts, not all, and little else. There are far too many good reasons to never use a phone for anything personal / confidential. I'm constantly amazed that people think phones are so safe and private.
Re: (Score:2)
Add some Furry porn.
If they want to snoop, they should suffer.
Re:Phone data? (Score:5, Insightful)
Part of the point of all of the surveillance is to cause folks to self-sensor, we know we have no privacy, so we don't do anything that even strays into the gray areas. Constant fear. Eventually you reach the point where NOT opening you phone for a cop becomes incriminating in itself, or even having too little on your phone when they do unlock it becomes suspect (like folks getting pulled over for driving suspiciously too well while high on melanin). With the tech being so "Hush-Hush" it becomes impossible to even know how much to trust the results. Is Cellebrite allowing injection of incriminating data, akin to drug dogs that trigger on demand?
Part of the point of making wire taps hard to get is so that we CAN have private and confidential conversations. Both business and personal correspondence flowing freely is valuable to society. The more we operate in a society where you start expecting to have all your data freely accessed and leaked by both public and private parties the worse things get in every way.
Re: (Score:1)
And if you have a feature phone...
RUN
Perjury (Score:3)
Is this guy advising officers to perjure themselves?
Re: (Score:2)
My girlfriend is a member of the legal community. She and her colleagues often refer to the conduct of police officers under oath as "testi-lying".
Re: (Score:2)
To be clear: police officers don't have to be advised or encouraged to lie...it's as natural to them as breathing.
18 U.S. Code 1030... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is my surprised face emoji ---> (:|)
18 U.S. Code 1030 - Fraud and related activity in connection with computers
(a)Whoever—
(2)intentionally accesses a computer without authorization or exceeds authorized access, and thereby obtains—
(C)information from any protected computer;
shall be punished as provided in subsection (c) of this section.
There is only one reason to keep something like this quiet from the public and that is if it is used illicitly for parallel construction.
Re: (Score:2)
They use this for parallel construction.
Note (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Translation (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
soon to be greatly accelerated by "AI".
Re: (Score:2)
You mean it's never a Republican loyalist demanding the police have more power to search, confiscate, arrest and perjure? The last US Republican president is facing four indictments. The one before that (Bush Jr) has never been indicted but is linked to over 250 war-crimes.
Everyday, an Anonymous Coward declare that leftist sympathizers are ruining the country. The newspapers, while shouting the rightness of anti-left policies, carry a different story.
How can they keep it secret? (Score:2)
Re:How can they keep it secret? (Score:4, Insightful)
In the US, a particular form is evidence laundering, where one police officer obtains evidence via means that are in violation of the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, and then passes it on to another officer, who builds on it and gets it accepted by the court under the good-faith exception as applied to the second officer.[2] This practice gained support after the Supreme Court's 2009 Herring v. United States decision.[2]
Jurors can ask rude questions (Score:2)
Remember that if you are ever on a jury, you're free to ask any relevant question. If in doubt, keep badgering until the judge warns you're in danger of being in contempt. Then invite your fellow jurors to find the defendant not guilty because the state is obviously trying to hide something.
Re: (Score:2)
This is not quite true. A trial jury can only ask for clarification from presented evidence, and only as part of their deliberations, not in open court.
Now, a grand jury has more latitude, but their deliberations and questions are secret, unless released by a judge.
Israel (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Why are Israeli companies so adept at this type of software?
They see themselves as under attack by enemies who have the expressed intent of eradicating their country, and they consider civil liberties to be unnecessary impediments to their goal of destroying these enemies by any means possible.
Re: Israel (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You say "companies" as if there is a pattern of such companies. Would you care to elucidate, or are you simply indirectly calling Jews bad?
hypocrisy abounds (Score:2)
and with that, the US have the audacity, THE AUDACITY, of talking shit about China doing the same
Did they just commit a crime (Score:2)
Did they just advise law enforcement to withhold evidence from the defense?