
Google Is Making Android as Difficult to Hack as iPhone–and Cops Are Suffering - doener
https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2019/05/23/google-keeping-cops-out-of-android-like-apple/#73f1bdd318cc
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elmerfud
And... I don't feel bad for the cops at all about this. Really they need to go
back to good old fashion police work instead of this kind of sting and sweep
operation.

They caught the guy selling. Charge him, don't use that as an excuse to open a
fishing expedition on his life. Warrants are supposed to be specific, and
since there can be certain unknowns about physical locations prior to issuing
then courts for a long time have allowed this to be somewhat vague. For a
specific phone the warrant should identify it specifically by serial number or
imei or some other thing that specifically identifies that device. When
searching it again should be specific as to what and where they are looking.
Really what we should be doing is having a detailed third party post review of
all these warrants to determine the truth of the matter that was sworn too.
When the law is used to override a persons rights there needs to be harsh
accountably.

Police using this argument of, they are bad therefore we need to stop it, is
eroding freedoms and privacy. There is far too much of the ends justify the
means going on in modern law enforcement. Our courts are far to slow to catch
up and understand the technology.

Sad thing is that people who aren't "bad" don't see a problem with this
overreach because it's unlikely to directly effect them, and when it does
people will pass it off as an anomaly.

Anyone who has their life subjected to an open ended investigation will be
found to have engaged in crimes.

~~~
SamReidHughes
It's almost unsporting. But these people aren't "'bad,'" they're meth dealers,
and part of protecting innocent people is investigating crimes.

If the phone search reveals information identifying other drug dealers, that's
a good thing.

In some sense a decent compromise is that the phone search can only be used
for evidence about other people. But only in the sense that it's unsporting.
There's another option: don't commit crimes. It's pretty easy to not be a drug
dealer. Protection against unreasonable search and seizure is about protecting
people from harassment, trespass, and invasion of privacy -- not to protect
them from the law.

~~~
elmerfud
It is exactly about protection from the law. I think you should reread my last
sentence. You are making the ends justify the means argument, that always ends
up in a police state.

Warrants require probable cause. Without post review accountably we can not be
certain that all parties are acting properly. On occasions warrants and the
evidence collected will be tossed out during trial. Is our law enforcement
held accountable for that? My research says no, they are shielded from it and
thus there is no downside for bad warrants.

Consider one of your friends maybe a drug dealer and you don't know it. The
police find records connecting you to them. Now you're under investigation,
and crimes will be found if they want thento be found, and you're sucked in to
a very expensive legal defence. Consider the more money the state spends on an
investigation the more pressure there is to indict people regardless of actual
crimes. Here is a prime example of this kind of crazy overreach.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMartin_preschool_trial](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMartin_preschool_trial)

Yes, he's a drug dealer and people should not break the law, but as you begin
to investigate everything, everyone is a criminal.

~~~
SamReidHughes
He got caught selling meth, that's probable cause for searching his phone for
evidence of other crimes. For example, where did he get the meth? What were
his prior locations?

> Consider one of your friends maybe a drug dealer and you don't know it. The
> police find records connecting you to them. Now you're under investigation,
> and crimes will be found if they want thento be found, and you're sucked in
> to a very expensive legal defence.

I have had friends who were drug dealers and I didn't know it. Somehow this
didn't result in the gestapo breaking into my house, when they got busted by
the police. Police have investigated crimes involving people that have friends
for over a century, so I don't buy your hypothetical scenario.

~~~
elmerfud
They did not specify the place or the items in the warrant. That's a big deal.
On an electronic device you can be very specific as to what you're looking for
not an open ended everything on this nonspecific device.

Please read the link I posted if you blindly trust our Justice system to
always do what's right. There are counter examples to your anecdote.

~~~
SamReidHughes
Operating by citing individual examples is dysrationalism. There is a trade-
off here, with an entirely different kind of police state formed when the law
can't track down organized crime because you won't even let it look at
evidence rightfully in its possession.

------
annon2252019
Back when apple was in news for going up against the FBI and refusing to build
a custom OS to help decrypt phones, Qualcomm had an all-hands meeting where
somebody asked the president of QCT what Qualcomm’s policy was for decrypting
phones for governments.

Christiano Amon was very candid. I don’t remember his exact words but it was
along the lines of “if the police come asking for something, it’s a good idea
to give it to them”

Having watched that response first hand, I’m deeply skeptical of this unnamed
“forensics expert” claiming that androids are more secure than iPhones.

Using a throwaway account via tor for obvious reasons.

