Michigan: Police Search Cell Phones During Traffic Stops

reply to post by macman


I understand sir and my comments were not directed towards you. I agree with your comment that if it is used legally it is a good tool.

If my reply was towards you, it was my mistake and it was directed towards the OP.

I apologize for any misunderstanding.

I used to use one of these devices on a daily basis. If you have ever been to a Verizon Wireless store, you might have noticed the CellBrite being used to transfer data from one phone to another.

The one that I used, was capable of transferring information via USB cable, Infrared, and Bluetooth technology. It was also capable of retrieving passwords if someone forgot it.

Using this tool during a traffic stop is downright ridiculous and unconstitutional!

reply to post by areyouserious2010


No worries.
Just had the reply to as me.

Bypass password protections? Wouldn't that be considered a "Locked Safe"....

Plus wtf happened to protection from illegal search and seizure?!!?

reply to post by Vitchilo


As I understand it, the emergency managers are there for a short time, new elections are held, and I guess they coordinate that...and then leave the ensuing mess for the newly elected people to handle. Has anyone got a link to where this bill is online so we can read it? I want to know exactly what is in it, before I take what anyone says as fact. (Often, things are misunderstood or blown out of porportion...etc, etc.)

As for the police and cellphone crap. that HAS. GOT. TO. STOP.

As a Michigander myself, I'm proud of my state, but this...this disgusts me.

reply to post by Vitchilo


I know that in WA state, and also where I'm from in NJ, that police have been searching cell phones for years. I've seen it done, and seen a friend get arrested for information the police found-- which evidently led to a search and seizure. It has been my understanding that if you have a lock on your phone, the police can only go that far into your phone's OS... If your phone is not locked, then it's an open book.

The officer that explained it to me spoke of it as though it was the same as, say, your trunk or your glove box-- if its locked, they need a warrant. If its not, and they have any suspiscion whatsoever, they can search.

reply to post by macman

Also, same as if a cop smells burning pot and can enter your home. Open discovery and destruction of evidence.

Theres a difference, if he smells pot thats probable cause to search........

But walking up and down cars at a stoplight ? I dont see how thats legal, when its not a designated point

So.... no one here is going to question a 500,000$ plus FOIA request? A request that is 13% of the michigan state police budget?

How about we put the cell phone extraction disscussion on hold, and ask why the government is bullying the ACLU, through monetary means? This is a blatant attempt by the state police to hide information by pricing it out of anyones range or means.



And just to add, smelling pot outside a home in not reasonable cause, as per a recent(1 or 2 years) supreme court ruling. Smells cannot be isolated in the outdoors in any legal way. smells can drift/waft, ect. Unless the LEO is sticking his head into the house and confirming it's origin(or into a car window at a stop) he can't do anything. Cops could search entire apt complexes if smell outside was probable cause.

I wonder how these scanners are applied procedure wise? Is it a matter of the police having to ask for access to the phone BEFORE they can use it or does the damn thing just scan you phone from a distance without actually being attached to your phone using TEMPEST technology? and lastly, is anyone at all surprised that a device like this would find its way into the day to day operational sruveillance of the population by the government? Are these hooked up to ECHELON too?

Owning an iPhone myself, I already knew this tidbit, but it is now public knowledge that the iPhone makes a timestamped GPS log of everywhere it goes. It does this at the OS level, there is no setting to turn it off, except to disable GPS itself (I have not tested to see if it still activates and logs anyway).

www.foxnews.com...

EDIT: nevermind on disabling GPS, it also logs cell tower triangulation. So the only way to stop that is to put the phone into "airplane mode"

Originally posted by CosmosKid
I wonder how these scanners are applied procedure wise? Is it a matter of the police having to ask for access to the phone BEFORE they can use it or does the damn thing just scan you phone from a distance without actually being attached to your phone using TEMPEST technology

It doesn't scan from a distance, the phone is plugged into the device. It doesn't matter if there is a password, etc. You can boot an iPhone into "DFU" mode which basically just makes it a raw disk, and then the entire filesystem can be copied off.

In addition, SMS messages are kept in a database file, and when you delete one (whether sent or received), it stays in the database and is simply marked as deleted.

So, by using this device, they can read all your text messages, including ones that you deleted, and also timestamped GPS log (that the OS handily keeps in a file) and tell everywhere you have been, all without getting a wiretap warrant or having someone follow you.

Simple: Keep a "spare" cell phone in your car which is used *only* for these instances. Tell the cop you forgot to pay your phone bill so it may or may not currently be able to make calls. Keep some stupid photos in there, pulled off the internet with geotags that locate themselves in Antarctica.

Make sure it stays in "airplane mode" all the time.

"Sure officer, here's my cell phone. Have at it!"

Originally posted by ManBehindTheMask
reply to post by macman

 

Also, same as if a cop smells burning pot and can enter your home. Open discovery and destruction of evidence.

Theres a difference, if he smells pot thats probable cause to search........

But walking up and down cars at a stoplight ? I dont see how thats legal, when its not a designated point

Considering they mistaken "Tomato plants, Sunflower seed plants, weeds" for pot AND that moron that baked brownies and ate half of one with his wife then thought they were dieing of and overdose... I seriously doubt their ability to "smell" pot... Its easy to say OHHH I SMELL POT NOW I GOTTA SEARCH YOU... you can't prove otherwise cuz all he has to say is awww well the smell could of got carried by the wind from one of the nearby house...


Order old cellphones from ebay that doesn't have bluetooth, IR, SIM cards... use the CDMA type phones and open it up and disconnect the usb port wires if the phone charge by USB. The charger will only use 2 wires out of 4... so use a meter and find which one and get rid of the two others... when he'll try to hook his gadget up its just going to give him errors...

If you have a GSM phone and the police ask you for it, take out the SIM card and hand him the phone keep the card. For anything on there to be used against you he needs to have a complete snapshot of the entire physical memory of the phone + SIM in 1 shot the reason is because the checksum number of the file is required in court to be considered valid. If he force you to hand him the card just smile snap it in half and and it over to him... If he copy the phone memory only without the card it can't be used against you because your phone number is contained on the SIM and if he copy both separately its not valid because he can't prove that the number belongs to the set of information collected... he needs to have a complete snapshot of both with an unaltered checksum for the information collected to be considered else its useless...

Now for the juicy part, you just load a worm in your phone memory and add a couple nude pics of some random lady from the net and when buddy will try to show his "found" pictures of some random guy's wife to his cop buddies when he load it on his PC he gets infected and you just compromised and entire police station...

BOOM GOES THE DYNAMITE!

I wish I'd live in the US I would on purpose seek out one of those checkpoints so I could snapshot my cell memory before and after the checkpoint to see if those f***** instead of extracting info's aren't uploading you a nice little tracker at the same time...

Wouldn't be hard neither once you have the Cellebrite's firmware to find flaws in it and make a homebrew firmware that detects it and if possible if there's a flaw that can be exploited in the Cellebrite's firmware to crash the Cellebrite completely... they would loose all the s*** they gathered during the day... wouldn't they be pissed lol...

I think that might be a good idea to a cellphone worm that infect as much phones as possible and only seeks out to crash Cellebrite units when connected.

Originally posted by Cryptonomicon
Simple: Keep a "spare" cell phone in your car which is used *only* for these instances. Tell the cop you forgot to pay your phone bill so it may or may not currently be able to make calls. Keep some stupid photos in there, pulled off the internet with geotags that locate themselves in Antarctica.

Make sure it stays in "airplane mode" all the time.

"Sure officer, here's my cell phone. Have at it!"

edit on 20-4-2011 by Cryptonomicon because: tidbit

Seeing as there are so many people who hack iphones, and other 'smart' phones-- I'm certain that, even though it is hardwired into the iphone, a work-around to prevent it from logging/sending the location data can and, most likely, will be created. Those that hack iphones are just as, if not more, paranoid about such things than others.

Originally posted by CosmosKid
I wonder how these scanners are applied procedure wise? Is it a matter of the police having to ask for access to the phone BEFORE they can use it or does the damn thing just scan you phone from a distance without actually being attached to your phone using TEMPEST technology

No your missunderstanding what TEMPEST is, TEMPEST is a NSA project that was derived from a concept paper made by a guy called Van Eck the theory was that you could grab the electromagnetic signal that leaks through a monitor/monitor cable and then be process so that the signal is re-sync'd and the image is recreated. In essence its eavesdroping on devices that leaks EM flux. But they can't use that to read a hard-disk or physical memory from a distance don't worry


The same principle can be applied to sniff data keys of PS2 keyboards of a whole house through a regular power outlet only instead of being grabbed via RF you have to be physically plugged in there.

Although I remember having read a basic of concept attack that could use RF to sniff keyboard keys I prolly have this saved somewhere here if your interested in learning I might be able to find it out.

Originally posted by HispanicPanic
WOW. this is COMPLETE AND UTTER BULL$4!T!!! if i got pulled over and they asked to see my phone its going to be an INSTANT NO. and i have NOTHING to hide. as a matter of fact, if i get pulled over and they ask to see my phone i will pull out a small tupperware bowl of water and instantly drop my entire phone inside of it while its on, take it out break it into as many pieces as i can and say here now you can see it. THAN i would sue the crap out of this state and make the entire case WOLRDWIDE. this world really is going to CRAP

and for the record, i live 5 mins outside of lansing...

edit on 19-4-2011 by HispanicPanic because: (no reason given)

Nah nah...maybe it's the "never one that likes drama" in me but you wanna know how to handle a situation like that?

Cop: Okay sir/ma'am I am going to need you to produce your cell phone for scanning.

You: What cell phone? Sorry call me old fashioned, call me conspiracy theorist, but never saw the purpose in getting one of those dang things in the first place...with the risk of getting brain cancer too!! No thank you. Excuse me...being that we are talking about a phone, that is what I am looking for right now. Do you know where the nearest pay phone is please sir/ma'am? Seems you can't find one anywhere these days no more!

Cop (that by this time wants nothing more but to get this stop over with and stop talking with your boring a$$): Ummm no sorry I don't....you have a nice day.





Nothing beats beating HIGH TECH with LOW TECH baby!!

The Michigan State Police issued an official statement today about the use of DEDs

April 20, 2011 - Official Statement: Use of Cell Phone Data Extraction Devices
Contact: Tiffany Brown, Public Affairs Section, (517) 241-0970
Agency: State Police

LANSING. Recent news coverage prompted by a press release issued by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has brought speculation and caused inaccurate information to be reported about data extraction devices (DEDs) owned by the Michigan State Police (MSP).

To be clear, there have not been any allegations of wrongdoing by the MSP in the use of DEDs. The MSP only uses the DEDs if a search warrant is obtained or if the person possessing the mobile device gives consent.

The department*s internal directive is that the DEDs only be used by MSP specialty teams on criminal cases, such as crimes against children. The DEDs are not being used to extract citizens' personal information during routine traffic stops.

The MSP does not possess DEDs that can extract data without the officer actually possessing the owner's mobile device. The DEDs utilized by the MSP cannot obtain information from mobile devices without the mobile device owner knowing.

Data extraction devices are commercially available and are routinely utilized by mobile communication device vendors nationwide to transmit data from one device to another when customers upgrade their mobile devices. These DEDs have been adapted for law enforcement use due to the ever-increasing use of mobile communication devices by criminals to further their criminal activity and have become a powerful investigative tool used to obtain critical information from criminals.

Since 2008, the MSP has worked with the ACLU to narrow the focus, and thus reducing the cost, of its initial Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. To date, the MSP has fulfilled at least one ACLU FOIA request on this issue and has several far-lower cost requests awaiting payment to begin processing. The MSP provides information in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act. As with any request, there may be a processing fee to search for, retrieve, review, examine, and separate exempt material, if any.

The implication by the ACLU that the MSP uses these devices "quietly to bypass Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches" is untrue, and this divisive tactic unjustly harms police and community relations.

Originally posted by angrywhitechick
The Michigan State Police issued an official statement today about the use of DEDs

April 20, 2011 - Official Statement: Use of Cell Phone Data Extraction Devices
Contact: Tiffany Brown, Public Affairs Section, (517) 241-0970
Agency: State Police

The MSP only uses the DEDs if a search warrant is obtained or if the person possessing the mobile device gives consent.

Oh how I just LOVE whenever I hear that one....and especially when it is put into such a context as to somehow actually make us believe that we are somehow really empowered with that old novelty called...what was that....argh it escapes me at the moment, one second here let me think...oh yea RIGHTS!! by making it sound like we actually gots us some rights by making us think "Okay yea that's better SEE they need to actually OBTAIN A SEARCH WARRANT FROM AN ACTUAL JUDGE BEFORE THEY CAN GO THROUGH MY PHONE!!!"


Okay please allow me to break that down for you and tell you how it REALLY HAPPENS


Cop: Okay sir/ma'am I need to access your cell phone for a scanning (and if you would have paid any attention to the post I made just before this one, you won't be having this problem...but I digress).

You: Ummm...okay like...I think that I saw on a...ummm commercial in between American Idol that you can't just do that because....ummm....YEA because I HAVE RIGHTS!! (yea that's it). You can't just do that because you need a.....ummmmmm....a SEARCH PASS!!

Cop: You mean a search WARRANT?

You: Yea a SEARCH WARRANT! See I gots me some rights up in hur yo!

Cop: Okay sir/ma'am I am going to need you, for your SAFETY (of course) to step out of your car so that I can obtain the necessary search warrant okay?

You: Oh...what?!? You mean you are actually going to make me wait, detain me here UNTIL YOU CAN GET THE SEARCH PASS?!?!

Cop: It's search WARRANT (you idiot), and YES I will be calling in for a warrant to be issued, now I need you to step out of the car until the warrant is obtained.

You: But...but...I am going to miss the season finale of Dancing with the Stars!! How long will this take? Like 5 minutes or something?

Cop: It all depends on how quickly we can get a judge at this time of night to give us the authorization we need, so it could be anywhere from 30 minutes to 3 hours. Okay this is the last time I am going to ask you to step out of the vehicle as you are now CLEARLY resisting arrest (as he begins to reach for his stun gun...if you're lucky it will only be the stun gun).

You: Okay ummmm....arrgh...ugh.....(as you wrestle with it in your head as to what you want to do...and the funny thing is the COP KNOWS WHAT YOU ARE GONNA DO buwhahaha). Okay officer HERE...HERE IS MY PHONE GO AHEAD!!

So....again...I just LOVE it whenever I see things worded in articles/news releases that are in such a way that makes us feel like we have any rights!! WE ARE SLAVES AND WILL CONTINUE TO BE SLAVES UNTIL THIS ENTIRE SYSTEM IS BROUGHT DOWN!! Oh how far we have come in having any resemblance of what rights our forefathers fought and died for so that we could have

I'm tempted to dig up one of these old phones and stash it in the car. I would love to see the reaction, should I ever be asked to produce my "cell phone" for scanning...