"Could be Catastrophic", Dust Surprise Near the Sun | S0 News Dec.11.2020

El-Erian: Investors Making Money While 'Holding Their Noses'

Remote ZOOM Streamed Into The Lower Chambers: Mesa Council Study Session Tue 12.08.2020

There's something about one more so-called "study session" that tells so much about about the ongoing operational dysfunction of the sloppy way city government is conducted for public viewing. It's the last chance to ask questions or to make comments on items that were on the Final Agenda for December 15, 2020 - that scheduled date was somehow "scrubbed" off the calendar.

 

Only two items survived from the previous culling, when outgoing Council member Jeremy Whittaker had to remind Hizzoner John Giles that he made a request last week to take Item *4-k OFF the Consent Agenda for individual consideration.

There were only four online comment submitted for Item *6-b "MARIJUANA PROHIBITIONS" .

The rest of the 11:09 "Study Session" is filled with some happy-talk and a well-deserved recognition for Sunny O'Rourke ...but the featured screen-grab with District 4 Jennifer Duff in front of her chosen background of an empty Mesa Town Center tells everything IT'S EMPTY.

Mitch's Tears...A Real Crock of Staged Sympathies Intended For An Audience of Who?

Hoovering All Your Data > Everything Can Get Extracted

Tell me more lies >

New Report Shows Cellphone Encryption Isn't Really Stopping Cops From Searching Phones

Privacy

from the complaining-that-99%-access-isn't-100%-access dept

Thu, Dec 10th 2020 10:50am — Tim Cushing

We're still hearing quite a bit about law enforcement's supposedly endless string of losses to criminals and their device encryption. Citing facts not in evidence, consecutive FBI directors -- along with outgoing Attorney General Bill Barr -- have claimed the implementation of encryption has pretty much made it impossible to successfully prosecute criminals.

We know this isn't true for several reasons . . A new report shows just how little of an effect device encryption has had on law enforcement efforts. Some of the report's highlights are touched on by Lawfare's Susan Landau. We've heard the complaints encryption is keeping law enforcement out of seized cellphones. The reality is much more worrying. Not only is encryption not much of a barrier, but law enforcement tech allows investigators to access pretty much everything before trimming it down to what's been asked for in warrant affidavits.

. Some of the report's highlights are touched on by Lawfare's Susan Landau. We've heard the complaints encryption is keeping law enforcement out of seized cellphones. The reality is much more worrying. Not only is encryption not much of a barrier, but law enforcement tech allows investigators to access pretty much everything before trimming it down to what's been asked for in warrant affidavits.

These forensic tools are quite sophisticated. FBI Director Christopher Wray once complained that “warrant-proof encryption,” like that used on iPhones, prevents law enforcement access to crucial evidence. But Upturn found that the forensic tools copy all the data found on a cellphone. The tools then sort the data so that law enforcement can easily search through it. And MDFTs include some features that make law enforcement’s job even easier. For example, Cellebrite, perhaps the most sophisticated MDFT, can compare a facial image, such as from a police database, to any of the faces in photos stored on the phone. Others MDFTs classify text conversations by topic, such as drugs, money or family.

The MDFTs work on a variety of sophisticated phones. Cellebrite says it can extract data from “all iPhone devices from iPhone 4S to the latest iPhone 11 / 11 Pro / Max running the latest iOS versions up to the latest 13.4.1.” The company claims to be able to handle even locked iPhones and Android devices.

"Going dark" is nothing more than rhetoric. The reality is encryption isn't much of a roadblock. The report by DC think tank Upturn shows there's little standing in the way of law enforcement forensic extractions, no matter how much federal officials claim otherwise. The business of cracking/scraping phones is largely automated -- plug-and-play invasive searches that pretty much ignore efforts owners might make to secure their devices against government intrusion.

Mobile device forensic tools (MDFTs) are so powerful, Upturn recommends the ban on consensual searches of cellphones, given what investigators can access when they're deployed. . . .People may think these powerful tools will only be aimed at the worst criminals -- drug kingpins, child molesters, financial services firms, etc. BUT THEY'RE NOT. They're used for everything because they're cheap, easy, and convenient.

Law enforcement use these tools to investigate not only cases involving major harm, but also for graffiti, shoplifting, marijuana possession, prostitution, vandalism, car crashes, parole violations, petty theft, public intoxication, and the full gamut of drug-related offenses.

. . . Our records show that at least 2,000 agencies have purchased a range of products and services offered by mobile device forensic tool vendors. Law enforcement agencies in all 50 states and the District of Columbia have these tools. Each of the largest 50 police departments have purchased or have easy access to mobile device forensic tools. Dozens of district attorneys’ and sheriff’s offices have also purchased them. Many have done so through a variety of federal grant programs. Even if a department hasn’t purchased the technology itself, most, if not all, have easy access thanks to partnerships, kiosk programs, and sharing agreements with larger law enforcement agencies, including the FBI.

So, there's plenty of access. Funding isn't a problem. Vendors have solutions that scale because there's plenty of access and plenty of funding. But the complaints continue. And the complaints continue despite how much is being extracted with each deployment.

MDFTs pull every photo on the device, extracting metadata that shows when and where photos were taken. It pulls data from every app that generates it, including location data, which allows law enforcement to track movement without a warrant. The extraction tools can also pull deleted data, allowing investigators to perform digital trash pulls for additional evidence. . .

Then there's the third parties themselves. While the FBI and others complain about a lack of access, any data/communications stored by cloud services can be recovered without having to deal with device encryption.

The wealth of data available to law enforcement allows them to engage in fishing expeditions for evidence of other crimes. The only thing stopping them is the courts, so it's worth their while to dig through everything, considering the worst case scenario is a dismissed case, rather than fines, fees, sanctions, or anything else that might hurt them more directly.

A city or state might ban facial recognition searches, but cops can still do this without violating the specifics of the ban, thanks to built-in tools

> They can also look for anything else conceivably incriminating (or titillating) without having to screw with their tools' default settings.

> There's another "war" at play here -- one that's rarely referenced by law enforcement officials. Every vendor wants more customers, so they're always improving their tech. The healthy competition makes tools more powerful while dropping their price, ensuring equal access for law enforcement agencies across the nation. The public records obtained by Upturn show there's not a single state in the Union that doesn't have access to forensic tools capable of cracking or bypassing encryption. Funding isn't an issue, given the federal government's interest in making encryption a non-issue.

That means there's thousands of extractions a year --

There is no going dark. If legislators want to believe there is, they're going to have to do so by ignoring all the evidence to the contrary. What law enforcement wants is convenience -- the ability to crack open phones without having to hook them up to a machine or beat the submission out of an arrestee. The options are there and agencies are obviously using them. Every argument that says encryption is locking law enforcement out is not just disingenuous -- it's dishonest.

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Filed Under: access, doj, encryption, fbi, going dark, law enforcement, prosecutors

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Trump's Scary Scenarios (Continued) > Sycophant Henchman Senator Ron Johnson

One more warning from The Nation today: Delusional, Disruptive and Dangerous to Democracy

Senator Ron Johnson No Longer Has Constituents; He Has a Boss, a Don

He’s planned a hearing to promote fantasies about “irregularities,” and threatens to disrupt certification of the Electoral College vote.

By John Nichols

Senator Ron Johnson has stopped representing the people of Wisconsin on January 20, 2017. The two-term Republican decided on that day that he would serve one man: Donald Trump.   

Over the past four years, Johnson has done Trump’s bidding. No matter how reckless, extreme, or just plain crazy the presidential dictate may be, the senator has served as the boss’s most ardent lackey. And Johnson is not prepared to abandon his role as henchman . . .

The chair of the powerful Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee has now announced that he will convene a hearing to amplify the president’s false claims about “irregularities” in the November 3 election where voters replaced the Republican with Democrat Joe Biden . . . the Electoral College vote should be decisive. . .

The only reason anyone does not view the result as legitimate is because Trump and his lawyers keep lying about it. And contrary to what Johnson claims, allegations of irregularities have been fully examined, and fully rejected by the courts. So why is the senator from Wisconsin organizing this circus? The answer, unfortunately, is that Johnson seems to be setting himself up to launch a bigger circus next month on the floor of the Senate. On January 6, the Senate must certify the Electoral College vote.

Republican members of the House, led by Alabama’s Mo Brooks, plan to object. If they are joined by a member of the Senate, presumably Johnson, that will force a contentious debate and vote on the certification—continuing the assault of reality, and democracy, into 2021.

Johnson claims that he’ll decide whether to object based on what he learns at next week’s hearing. “I would say it depends on what we found out,” he tells reporters. “I need more information. The American people need more information.” But that’s a lie. The information has already been gathered, reported, reviewed, and analyzed. The issues have been resolved, at the polls, in the counts and recounts of ballots, and in local, state, and federal courts
. . .

None of this is sitting well with Wisconsin officials.

Representative Mark Pocan, a Democrat from Madison who is the former head of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, says, “[Johnson’s] desperate need for Donald Trump’s approval is beyond being a sycophant and bordering on being a cult follower or stalker. Either way, not a good look for a US Senator.”

Newly elected Wisconsin state Representative Francesca Hong is just a bit blunter. Voicing the sentiments of Wisconsinites who have grown increasingly frustrated with Johnson’s allegiance to Trump over the state he is supposed to be representing as they struggle with a pandemic and mass unemployment, she says,

“This delusional scum continues to crawl further into 45’s asshole instead of representing the people of WI who need survival checks and relief.”

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