Daily Gazette:
A cellphone seized by police as part of an investigation into a drive-by shooting last month was remotely wiped by its owner, authorities said this week.
Police believe Juelle L. Grant, 24, of Willow Avenue, may have been the driver of a vehicle involved in an Oct. 23 drive-by shooting on Van Vranken Avenue, near Lang Street, so they obtained her phone, according to police allegations filed in court. No one was injured in the shooting.
After police took her iPhone X, telling her it was considered evidence, “she did remotely wipe” the device, according to police.
What’s the law here? It’s her phone. Does she have the right to wipe it after it is taken from her? Do the police have the legal right to prevent this?
Fascinating story.
why they don’t power down and put cell phone evidence into a faraday bag is the real question.
The cops were incompetent for sure by not turning off the phone or putting it in a faraday bag, but doing something like wiping a phone that’s already in evidence probably constitutes obstruction of justice or a similar crime even if it’s your phone.
This is actually be pretty easy: people have been destroying evidence for hundreds of years, so there’s a lot of law around it. I don’t see that it makes a difference if you do it before or after it’s in the hands of the police. You could imagine there’s some pretty direct precedence for this kind of thing, e.g., someone breaking into a police evidence locker to destroy evidence against them. In a civil case, you just assume that the destroyed evidence says the worst possible thing it could say; in a criminal case, it’s more difficult because the burden of proof is higher. But as a general matter, destroying evidence looks really, really bad, assuming there’s other evidence pointing to guilt.
Seems like it would be hard to prove that she wiped it.
Would that prevent it from happening? As soon as it’s turned back on it would wipe, wouldn’t it?
What’s her defense? Some random stranger hacked my AppleID at just the right time to benefit me?
It’s “reasonable” doubt, not “proven to the satisfaction of every Joe Schmoe.”
“Erase all data on this iPhone after 10 failed passcode attempts.”
I’m pretty sure Apple could confirm to police that she did it. They protect people’s privacy. So they won’t tell them what was on her phone. But that’s different than confirming the wipe order came from her.
Hell, Apple can’t tell them what was on her phone, I think – because Apple literally doesn’t know.
(IIRC iCloud backups are encrypted, and in a way that Apple can’t read.)
Remember that episode of Breaking Bad when WW wiped the computer in the evidence room with the giant magnet…
Destroying evidence for sure, she’s hosed. Time to find a small cabin in remote New Hampshire.
Law’s the same as if she shredded paperwork evidence before it was seized.
Or “whoops, I didn’t mean to click the button, it erased it?”
Not if it is kept in a location with no connection.
Or it doesn’t. They would probably have to charge her with obstruction and see if it sticks when it gets to court.
Actually Apple would probably try to refuse to even look at the iCloud activity on her account which is where they would see that she did log in and send the wipe. So then the police would have to try the whole San Bernardino style thing to get Apple to have to tell. And if they have to go that far then they will also demand access to any iCloud backups etc