US police are selling seized phones with personal data still on them:
US police auction seized cell phones without wiping data stored in them, found researchers at the University of Maryland. Police in the US have been auctioning off mobile phones seized during arrests, with all their data intact.
This is a common practice of selling off items in the custody of the police that remained unclaimed over a period of time, found University of Maryland researchers Dave Levin (Assistant Professor), Raley Roberts (Ph.D. student), Julio Poveda (Ph.D. student), and Richard Roberts (Ph.D. student)
Sellers of seized and used phones from police auctions on various avenues, including PropertyRoom, eBay, and others, took no responsibility for the storage status of the devices they sold.
US police selling phones on online markets is a common practice. The members of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and their lawyers discussed the rightful owner of the used phones from police auctions and made the following statements:
- After a specific time, the ownership of seized, stolen, or lost and found items is passed on to the state or local government.
- Items sold during police auctions leave the ownership of the items to the purchaser despite the item being stolen. However, the research read, "..Normally, purchasing stolen property does not transfer ownership rights-even if the buyer did not know it was stolen." This technically nullifies the credibility of the trade and puts the buyer at risk of knowingly or unknowingly misusing the found data on the used phones from police auctions.
- Moreover, "(The) ownership of the data ends within the confines of the phone. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) still prohibits the new purchaser from accessing a remote service that they are not authorized to — and merely possessing cookies or passwords does not confer authorization," the study read.
- Finally, the law says that material pertaining to Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) must be immediately reported to law enforcement.
This puts a question mark on why the police would not make sure to wipe the phones off of such material in the first place before putting them up for auction.
Added to that, individuals in possession of used phones from police auctions are expected to log out of bank apps if they find themselves accessing it on the found or bought device.
In order to reduce the workload on the legal authorities or the police, staff can be hired to look after seized phones in order to curtail threat to data and the buyers.
[...] The law is clear about maintaining the privacy of data found on any device regardless of who owns the device failing which, they bring legal implications onto them.
[...] Further, the researchers found the credit files of eight people on a device, putting the financial details of individuals who previously accessed the phones at risk. Another phone had screenshots of 11 stolen credit cards. Yet another device had a Telegram group chat history with tutorials on how to run identity theft scams.
The global market for refurbished and used mobile phones is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 11.45% from 2022 to 2030. This means it can move from $52.34 billion in 2021 to $64.10 billion in 2022. Several estimates list the US as the fastest growing market for refurbished and used mobile phones. A refurbished phone goes through a process of quality check however, used phones can be dead at the time of selling.
Some of the key players who champion the market of refurbished and used phones are Apple Inc., Amazon, Samsung, Version Communications, and Cashify. Besides these, Walmart, eBay, Paytm, Huawei, Yaantra, and AT&T Inc. are close contenders. Seeing the brands of phones while making a purchase is not enough to escape falling into legal complications.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday May 29 2023, @11:42PM (2 children)
Do the police know how to wipe a phone clean? Or do they just know how to extract data from it?
(Score: 3, Funny) by DECbot on Tuesday May 30 2023, @04:12AM (1 child)
They can just request the latest BleachBit procedure from their favorite politician du jour.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday May 30 2023, @03:17PM
Bleachbit [bleachbit.org] seems to be for Linux and Windows, and seems to clean up systems that are organised according to the conventions of the userspace software on these systems (such as the cache and history of firefox and chrome).
It's not at all clear that this will work on a phone, except perhaps on the almost vanishingly small number of pure Linux phones that are on the market.
So... getting the Bleachbit procedure from a favorite politician would nearly guarantee that the wipe isn't done properly.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday May 30 2023, @03:19AM
Does the phone also still contain any surveillance software the police might have put on it in order to capture the arrested person they took the phone from?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Tuesday May 30 2023, @06:38AM (2 children)
If the fuzz sell a seized phone full of kiddie porn, does this constitute entrapment? Planting evidence?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 30 2023, @07:23AM
It constitutes whatever a few levels of judges say it does.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Tuesday May 30 2023, @02:33PM
It should, however we have a judiciary that stocked with fascist sympathizers, so it's a massive risk. This is one reason why possession laws need to be ruled as unconstitutional without the requirement to at least prove that the person knew that they were in possession of the item.
(Score: 2) by cykros on Tuesday May 30 2023, @10:11AM
They could probably be getting a lot more for selling some of these phones if they were marketing them appropriately. I'm sure in some cases the data is worth a lot more than the phone.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday May 30 2023, @05:21PM
The US has no national police force. The FBI is the closest to that, and states all have state police, but most American police forces are operated by cities, towns, and villages. If the FBI or Illinois State Police or Springfield police department are doing it... well, I have no worries because I've been a law abiding citizen since they legalized weed and am not likely to have my phone confiscated.
Secondly, I'm not going to keep personal information on a stealable and losable device in my pocket. My phone is for phone calls, Google News, a light meter, a sound meter, calculator, and a few other things, but doing commerce on your phone (Besides over voice like it's 1955) is brain dead stupid. I have tablets and computers that never leave the house for that. Use my phone? Sure!
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by SomeRandomGeek on Tuesday May 30 2023, @08:32PM
The police can't/won't be sued for the harms that they do. So, they are far more reckless about causing harm in the course of doing their jobs than just about anyone else. Except they are careful about protecting prisoners from bumping their heads on car doors, of course. That's just common courtesy.