Cell Phones Full of Clues

I’ve got a story in today’s New York Times. Here’s how it starts:
The case against Dan Kincaid was strong. A home­owner in north­ern Boise, Idaho, had iden­ti­fied Mr. Kincaid, 44, as the per­son who had bro­ken into his sub­ur­ban house. But eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mony isn’t always rock solid, and Mr. Kincaid was refus­ing to talk. The police wanted more. So they searched Mr. Kincaid’s BlackBerry e-​​mail-​​capable phone elec­tron­i­cally, and found all the evi­dence they needed.
“Just try­ing to find a way out of this neigh­bor­hood with­out get­ting caught,” Mr. Kincaid wrote to his girl­friend on Aug. 1, 2005, shortly after he had been spot­ted. “Dogs bark if I’m between or behind houses. … “
“Cops know I have a blue shirt on,” he con­tin­ued. “I need to get out of here before they find me.“
Faced with his e-​​mailed admis­sion, Mr. Kincaid agreed to a deal with pros­e­cu­tors over that crime and a string of oth­ers. In February, he pleaded guilty to five counts of grand theft, resist­ing arrest and bur­glary.
“We seized his phone,” said Detective Jeff Dustin of the Boise Police Department, “and instead of a jump shot, this case is a slam dunk.“
Cellphones are every­where: 825 mil­lion were sold last year, accord­ing to the mar­ket research firm IDC. And the phones do more than just dial num­bers. With expanded mem­o­ries, increas­ingly sophis­ti­cated orga­nizer tools and sharper cam­eras, they are play­ing ever larger roles in the lives of almost every­one includ­ing crim­i­nals. Drug deal­ers, rapists and mur­der­ers across the coun­try have been caught based, at least partly, on the elec­tronic gad­gets they carry around.
But extract­ing clues and leads from mobile elec­tron­ics is no cake­walk. Unlike per­sonal com­put­ers, 90 per­cent or more of which use the Windows oper­at­ing sys­tem, cell­phones rely on a con­fus­ing jum­ble of soft­ware that varies from man­u­fac­turer to man­u­fac­turer and even phone to phone. Data is often hid­den or encrypted. And as long as a phone is con­nected to its cel­lu­lar net­work, there is always a chance that its call his­to­ries and text mes­sages will be erased, delib­er­ately or oth­er­wise.
Read the rest here.

May 3rd, 2006 | Cops and Robbers | 31931 Comment »http://defensetech.org/2006/05/03/cell-phones-full-of-clues/Cell+Phones+Full+of+Clues2006-05-03+13%3A24%3A06david_axe You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.