More iPhones subject to search warrants, iPads
too

post from Apple on 02 May 2012 04:03:47 PM. © Apple

A survey of court records reveals that a growing number of iPhones and iPads are the target of forensic examinations by federal agents. The trend shows how mobile devices are replacing computers in daily life, and also highlights ongoing search and seizure issues in the digital era.

A Spike in Search Warrants

A judge granted the first warrant to search an iPhone just months after the device was unveiled. In August of 2007, the Secret Service obtained permission to search Joseph Siddon’s phone after he was caught with dozens of fake ID’s at a Buffalo airport.

Since then, federal judges have granted many more warrants for investigations that range from bank scams to drug trafficking. The federal court system PACER shows 50 cases listing “iPhone” as the “defendant” but this number is likely higher and does not include state court cases.

The search requests have also become more frequent. While the record lists five warrants for 2009, this screenshot shows that number has been surpassed already this year:

Starting last year, federal agents began directing warrants at iPads as well. The first of these popped up in Wisconsin after an officer told a judge that ”An Apple 16 GB iPad which is in the care and custody of the DEA” was likely to contain evidence about an illegal sports betting ring.

Since then, there have been at least five other federal warrants aimed at iPads.

Smartphones and the police’s data-sucking vampire

The uptick in iWarrants reflects the simple fact that seizing a smartphone or tablet can be as valuable to authorities as grabbing a crook’s hard drive.

In many cases, the payload may be even greater. Police can get not only emails and browsers histories but a also plethora of social data from apps like Twitter and Facebook — much of which is permanently baked into the device.

As law student Amanda Brill explains in a recent paper, companies like Cellbrite provide police with forensic tools that can:

?[D]ump the entirety of your phone?all of your text messages, emails, videos, and photos ? even the ones you deleted ? Google Map queries?web searches, passwords, call logs?your phone?s entire file system.? This information is ?all timestamped, all geotagged, all providing a digital recreation of the way your physical existence projects itself into the cellular ether.?

The passage quotes tech site Gizmodo which described Cellbrite as “The Handheld Dracula that Sucks your entire life from your phone.”

Brill says the forensic technology can be deployed not only in a crime lab but “in the field” as well.

Fading Privacy rights

The reason we have search warrants in the first place is to ensure that the police and government must go through someone — a judge — before they can get into your stuff in the first place. The warrants also draw strict lines around what can and can’t be searched: Your car but not your house, for example, or your home but not your computer.

From this perspective, the surge in i-related warrants is actually a good thing. It shows that Fourth Amendment protections still exist for the places where, in the courts’ words, we have “a reasonable expectation of privacy.”

Unfortunately, those protections are not holding up so well in the bigger picture.

One big problem is a rule that lets police search without a warrant in the case of an arrest. This makes sense to ensure a suspect doesn’t have weapons or contraband but it is unclear why the exception should also let cops get into the contents of a smartphone. While some courts have put brakes on this practice, others have said it is fair game.

And in the cases where there is a warrant, courts are drawing no lines around which parts of the iPhone can be searched and which cannot. This is different from computer warrants which often set limits on what investigators can look for; police in a drug investigation, for example, might be able to search a hard drive for narcotics data but not for evidence of blackmail (unless there was probably cause for that too).

It may not make sense to allow police to search some parts of an iPhone but not others. But in age where our phones contain not just our own lives but those of our friends, it’s time to start redrawing some lines.

iPhone Search Warrant Example Copy

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Charles Arthur on Googles Street View Data
Collection

post from Daring Fireball on 02 May 2012 04:03:45 PM. © Daring Fireball

Charles Arthur:

And if there’s one thing that the last few years have taught us,it’s that the suggestion of a “rogue” worker having acted alone todo something which led to an intrusion is never correct. There hasto be a failure of management oversight as well.
And what did Google say? Initially, that the data collectionhappened “mistakenly”. No, it didn’t. Initially, that only“fragmentary” data was collected. No, it wasn’t: the first pageof the FCC report says that: “On October 22 2010, Googleacknowledged for the first time that ‘in some instances entireemails and URLs were captured, as well as passwords’.” That itwas the work of one engineer acting alone, and not in any waypart of how Google rolls.

Arthur posits that the problem is arrogance — his headline reads, “Google’s Problem Is That It Now Believes Itself Above Others — Even Governments”. I’d say it’s more of a reckless sense of entitlement regarding privacy. Google sees itself as entitled to all information. If they can see it, they can collect it. I can see their thinking (though I don’t agree with it): they were just driving around on public roads, collecting data that was in the air.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/may/01/google-street-view-data-fcc

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Run In Crowd - simple runner with crossplatform
multiplayer

post from prMac on 02 May 2012 02:58:00 PM. © prMac

Ursine Paw today is proud to announce the released new version of "Run In Crowd" - addictive runner with crossplatform multiplayer. Run In Crowd 1.1.2 is a game where you race alongside other players in a new world each day. Replayability based on a constant competition - you can track your rank, find your place in leaderboard and level generation - every day obstacles changed their place, size, also sky of color changed. Control is very simple - tap any point of screen to jump & double-jump.

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http://prmac.com/release-id-42190.htm

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GroupLogic's mobilEcho Empowers Regional Swiss
Government

post from prMac on 02 May 2012 01:35:00 PM. © prMac

GroupLogic(R), the industry's leading provider of software products that unlock the power of new enterprise platforms, announced today that the Regional Government of Basel-Stadt (GBS), Switzerland, successfully deployed its Mobile File Management (MFM) software mobilEcho in order to provide secure mobile file access for its 5,000 employees. The office was in need of a solution that would enable secure file access on mobile devices such as iPad and iPhone.

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http://prmac.com/release-id-42189.htm

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Profit Share

post from Daring Fireball on 02 May 2012 01:03:25 PM. © Daring Fireball

Horace Dediu on the just-completed quarter:

Apple captured 73% of phone industry profits and Samsung captured26%. HTC took 1%. Everybody else lost money.

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Read The Full Article:
https://twitter.com/asymco/status/197717085466542081

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Text-Only Instagram

post from Daring Fireball on 02 May 2012 12:03:33 PM. © Daring Fireball

A picture says 140 characters.

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https://twitter.com/textinstagram

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Milestone, International Integrator, Joins
Enterprise Device Alliance

post from prMac on 02 May 2012 12:00:00 PM. © prMac

Milestone Technologies, Inc. is a distinguished IT service provider and Apple system integrator providing solutions and services to Fortune 1000 companies around the world. As a partner of the Enterprise Device Alliance, Milestone will participate in the educational, research and interoperability activities that the EDA conducts and contribute its integration experience to help enterprises deploy, integrate and manage Macs, iPhones and iPads in a Windows environment.

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http://prmac.com/release-id-42181.htm

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Super Speller 3.0

Quiet Spark has released Super Speller 3, an update to the easy to use iPad app designed to help kids become better spellers. This update allows Super Speller to run on iPhone and iPod touches and also adds support for syncing over iCloud! Super Speller was created to help kids and parents looking for a better way to study for those weekly spelling or vocabulary tests. With Super Speller a spelling test can quickly be created using the same words your child will be tested on at school.

Read The Full Article:
http://prmac.com/release-id-42018.htm

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WebINK Relaunched: big changes are afoot!

[...]

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http://blog.extensis.com/web-fonts/webink-relaunched-big-changes-are-afoot.php

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Nova Golf Released Through Mac App Store

Welcome to Nova Golf, the finest golfing game on the Mac. A followup to Nuclear Nova Software's award winning game GL Golf, Nova Golf is sure to keep you entertained and immersed for countless hours. Redesigned from the ground up, Nova Golf has everything both casual/hardcore gamers and frequent/weekend golfers could want. To celebrate, Nova Golf is available through the Mac App Store and is at a discounted price for the first week.

Read The Full Article:
http://prmac.com/release-id-42188.htm

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