{"id":16723,"date":"2012-10-25T18:06:28","date_gmt":"2012-10-25T17:06:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=16723"},"modified":"2012-10-25T18:06:28","modified_gmt":"2012-10-25T17:06:28","slug":"how-the-police-copy-and-keep-your-phone-secrets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/how-the-police-copy-and-keep-your-phone-secrets\/","title":{"rendered":"How the Police copy and keep your phone secrets"},"content":{"rendered":"

The police routinely copy and keep the contents of suspects\u2019 mobile phones, according to this week\u2019s\u00a0Sunday Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In under half an hour the police could get from your phone your call history, all your text messages and your whole contacts book and put them into a vast database, the article claimed. And there the information stays, even if you are released without charge after a night in the cells.<\/p>\n

The disturbing report claimed that as many as 22 English and Welsh police forces, including the Metropolitan Police and British Transport Police, are using off-the-shelf technology to do this. It claimed that the Metropolitan Police alone have 16 extraction terminals across London with 300 officers trained to use them.<\/p>\n

In many ways it is a golden age for detective work. The police can access data from all kinds of sources\u00a0because smartphones are both incredibly versatile and ubiquitous.\u00a0Besides the emails and candid snaps from a night out, they can trawl your apps like Facebook or LinkedIn.<\/p>\n

The Sunday Times report suggests that British police forces are treating the contents of citizens\u2019 phones like they treated peoples\u2019 DNA.\u00a0For much of the previous decade British police collected DNA from arrested suspects and kept the samples even after the suspect was acquitted. In this way they collected and stored\u00a01 million samples before the law stopped them.<\/p>\n

In 2008 the European Court of Human Rights\u00a0overturned a House of Lords ruling<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0decided it is illegal for the police to store innocent citizens\u2019 DNA.\u00a0The Sunday Times\u2019<\/a>\u00a0argues that\u00a0\u2019there is a direct parallel\u2019 between keeping DNA records and \u2018keeping the mo0bile phone data of those who have never been convicted of any offence.\u2019<\/p>\n

Civil liberties group\u00a0Big Brother Watch<\/a>\u00a0agrees. They are adamant it is outside the law, saying so both to the paper and in\u00a0a letter sent to Christopher Graham the Information Commissioner<\/a>\u00a0in May this year.\u00a0Recently\u00a0Graham told a committee<\/a>\u00a0of MPs and Peers he\u00a0is investigating the legality of this mass data storage.\u00a0He said: \u2018This may not only circumvent existing safeguards but also put the personal information of third parties who are not suspected of any wrongdoing into the hands of the police.\u2019<\/p>\n

While the authorities argue the legality of this new policing technique users can take steps protect their data.<\/p>\n

Certain handsets have sufficient encription to keep some content safe says Rick Ferguson fromcyber security company Trend Micro<\/a>.\u00a0The Metropolitan Police is using a product called Aceso made by British company\u00a0Radiotactics<\/a>, he told the Bureau.<\/p>\n

\u2018Depending on the handset, you can configure it to reduce the amount that is withdrawn,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n

But ultimately if your device is seized no matter what you do at least some of your data will be exposed.<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The police routinely copy and keep the contents of suspects\u2019 mobile phones, according to this week\u2019s\u00a0Sunday Times. In under half an hour the police could get from your phone your call history, all your text messages and your whole contacts book and put them into a vast database, the article claimed. And there the information […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1614,18,1615],"tags":[55],"class_list":{"0":"post-16723","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-surveillance-big-brother","7":"category-latest-news","8":"category-uk-news","9":"tag-uk-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16723\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}