It was bound to happen. After all the charades about cell phone security after San Bernardino attack a few years ago, Police and Secret Service have finally cracked your phone – PB/TK
Hunting for evidence, Secret Service unlocks phone data with force or finesse –Aliya Sternstein Correspondent
—On July 20, 2014, a missing Conway, N.H., teenager walked back into her home, ending a heinous nine-month-long kidnapping ordeal.
About a week later, police arrested Nathaniel Kibby at his home and charged him with the abduction. During a warranted search, investigators confiscated several mobile devices that may have contained valuable information in the case.
But there was one smartphone they couldn’t crack, a password-protected ZTE. That’s when New Hampshire State Police turned to the Secret Service, which has become a go-to federal agency to help police departments with warrants to extract data from password-protected smartphones and other devices for criminal investigations.
The information on the ZTE contained “a huge piece of evidence,” says Sgt. Michael Cote, a New Hampshire State Police detective. In May, Mr. Kibby pleaded guilty to kidnapping and rape, among other charges. A judge sentenced him to consecutive prison terms totaling 45 to 90 years.
As smartphones are interwoven into daily life – collecting text messages, emails, phone numbers, photos, location data, and chat logs – they can be incredibly important to criminal investigators. And since many of the phones that police confiscate are locked by passwords or contain encrypted data, law enforcement agencies are looking for new and creative ways of getting that evidence out.
Continue to csmonitor.com article: http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Passcode/2017/0202/Hunting-for-evidence-Secret-Service-unlocks-phone-data-with-force-or-finesse
