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The FBI used a suspect's face to unlock his iPhone in Ohio case
When Apple debuted Face ID with the iPhone X last year, it raised an interesting legal question: can you be compelled to unlock your phone by looking at it? In an apparent first, Forbes reports that the FBI got a suspect to unlock his phone during a raid in August.
In August, the FBI raided the home of Grant Michalski, looking for evidence that he had sent or received child pornography. They were armed with a search warrant [warning: this documentation contains explicit descriptions of sexual abuse] which allowed them to search Michalski's computer for evidence, and during the raid, agents recovered his iPhone X.
The agents who found the iPhone asked Michalski to unlock the device via Face ID, which he did. They "placed the [phone] into airplane mode and examined it by looking through the files and folders manually and documenting the findings with pictures."
The facial unlocking was voluntary (or so they claim), and the Columbus Police and FBI have devices capable of bypassing the phone's passcode protection. So much for security.
Also at AppleInsider.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Monday October 01 2018, @03:05PM (7 children)
Argh, another "think of the children" case. The info didn't say that the accused abused any children himself, or even that he was a known sex offender. It said only that he sent and received pictures. Maybe he is a baddie. But it is presuming a lot to suppose that the only reason for any man to have such pictures is that he is a pedophile who is willing to abuse children to get his kicks. Everyone is just one spoofed link away from child porn ending up in their browser's cache, and one virus infection away from having their computer used to distribute child porn. We also know that some police plant guns on citizens. The ones who would do that, why wouldn't they plant child porn as well?
The fear is so bad that any man who works with children is automatically suspect, basically guilty and can never prove his innocence no matter how many years he gives exemplary service and never does anything bad. You want to do what? Work in a day care, where you'd have to change baby girls' diapers?? You pervert!! It's okay for women to change diapers, but not for men.
Note also that this is election season. I find it just a little suspicious that we're hearing about this particular kind of offense at this time. How convenient for the "tough on crime" candidates who are running for reelection. The police could easily be feeling pressure to score a few sensational busts.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 01 2018, @03:31PM
This is also held as catch-22 "evidence" that women are superior beings. Well, some kind of circular logic.
There's the stuff from WSWS about the CIA Democrats. Everything happening right now, especially with 24/7 coverage of Kavanaugh and the apparent lack of time in the 168 hours in a week to cover the real reasons we should reject Kavanaugh--his support for torture, police overreach, disregard for the text of the Constitution, and possible perjury (perjury which isn't even being investigated)--, is a cynical political and propaganda ploy to boost Democratic voter turnout. And it might work. And given the completely debased and unprincipled state of the Republican Party... what else could one practically hope for.
If it doesn't work... I don't know. I think I've run out of fucks to give. No matter who wins, we're still getting a police state.
Well, one could hope that the working class immediately cease giving votes to either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party. The Libertarian Party and the Green Party are better alternatives. The only thing keeping the Republican Party and Democratic Party in power is the mass hypnosis of a self-fulfilling prophecy maintained by human susceptibility to propaganda. Neither of those two major parties gives a damned about the working class, and both of them want austerity and war.
Goddamned tragedy. There are way more in the working class than the bourgeoisie. Yet we dance like marionettes.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Monday October 01 2018, @03:52PM (4 children)
So the short version of your argument appears to be: Possession and/or distribution of child pornography should not be a crime. Maybe not, but right now it is under US law. If you have a problem with that, that's something to bring up to your Congresscritter's office, not a reason for the FBI to suddenly not have a right to investigate this dude's actions.
I'm guessing that if you sat on his jury in any trial that arose from this, you'd nullify, am I right?
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday October 01 2018, @04:07PM
The suspect need not actually possess or provide any CP, it's the simple communication that is a felony
It's in the Wikipedia first amendment article
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 01 2018, @04:15PM (2 children)
If the fact of possession were the only fact established by the prosecution, I would nullify if I were in the jury box. Call me a pedophile then. I'm already apparently an incel because I've only had sex with men. Homosexuality in men is already linked, according to the homophobic authoritarians, with pedophilia.
So plant some CP on me.... after all, that's all you have to do to prove that yet another homosexual incel is also a pedophile. Right? Because police would never do such a thing as planting evidence? (Do I really need to link you to article after article documenting police getting caught planting "evidence?")
The reason is that the idea of contraband is itself flimsy and dangerous, precisely because of the ease of planting evidence. We should go after those who can be proven to be willful (that mens rea thing) distributors. Mere possession of anything only provides an easy way for power to be abused.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday October 01 2018, @08:01PM (1 child)
I'm not a real believer in this argument, but it should be mentioned.
Theory is, if there weren't people out there seeking, and oftentimes willing to pay for, CP, the producers wouldn't be producing it. Thus - possessions contributes to actual child sexual abuse.
In my limited research, monetary profit is at best a tertiary concern for most producers of CP. One CP ring was discovered in which CP was traded like-for-like. The only way to "buy" the stuff, was to produce and trade your own stuff. And . . . I suppose that particular CP ring supports the theory I've already mentioned.
Whatever theory you might work with, I'm certain that a lot of child porn is not porn at all. If a naked child runs through the room when a photo is snapped, that child's bare buttocks constitute child porn in the eyes of some law enforcement. It doesn't matter how, or why, that bare-assed child managed to run into the room at the wrong(?) moment - the bare ass is enough to arrest and investigate.
https://blogs.findlaw.com/blotter/2009/09/bath-photos-wal-mart-what-is-child-pornography.html [findlaw.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 02 2018, @02:09AM
The counterargument is that most of the CP is freely available, so you could just ban paying for it (through any means) and producing it.
Another counterargument is that it's still the fault of the producers, and that they don't have to produce CP to meet the demand. It's still entirely on them.
What's funny is that many organizations like the FBI argue that CP harms victims each time it is looked at, so it's harmful even if it was not paid for at all. Then, the FBI hosts CP itself on honeypot websites. The hypocrisy is both hilarious and sad.
(Score: 2) by splodus on Wednesday October 03 2018, @11:35AM
I skim-read the Search Warrant (can't be arsed to read it properly)
Seems they already had pictures of him having sexual relations (to be polite) with his 12yo daughter, and his daughter engaging sexually with their dog!
They'd got this from Google, and got conversations of him and an undercover discussing it before getting the warrant.
I really, really struggle with the privacy / surveillance / incrimination issue.
But then something like this comes along - and I have to give myself a reality-check...