Probes into Toronto's shooter-for-hire network thwarted by impenetrable phone

Probes into Toronto's shooter-for-hire network thwarted by impenetrable phone theglobeandmail.com

Key cellphone seized in connection with the case runs on privacy-focused operating system, investigators so far unable to unlock it

22 points•throw0101a•10 days ago•7 comments•

#phone #network #shooter #probes #torontos #impenetrable #thwarted #hire

7 comments

ratelimitsteve10 days ago

>[The GrapheneOS project] also said it has not received any kind of request for assistance from a Canadian police force in recent months.

We saw this in the US with apple (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93FBI_encryption_d...). They want the big win of forcing all encryption to have a law enforcement backdoor built in, so any time they run into encryption that hampers a legitimate investigation their first response is to throw up their hands and go "The only way we can keep you safe is if you give up this bit of your freedom." Then that effort either succeeds or fails, and then an earnest effort to decrypt this particular phone begins.

throw0101a10 days ago

https://archive.today/https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada...

https://archive.is/jcqar

cucumber37328429 days ago

"Hey guy's I've got a great idea, let's reframe our inability/unwillingness to do real police work as a technology problem in order to get the stupid peasants to not be too pissed off when we push a bill to snoop on them even more than we already do"

It's not like Toronto isn't already carpet bombed with surveillance. It's not like they don't have everyone's metadata. They could figure this out of they wanted.

Damn near every paragraph in this article is filled with unverified speculation "might be connected", "could be related". It's like text based equivalent of the scene in Anchor Man "the driver is on drugs", "we think he has a hostage or two". I bet there will be a dozen articles just like this from other cities over the next couple months.

ls6129 days ago

Your daily dose of authoritarian propaganda about how any measure of privacy or technical freedom is an affront to society in their eyes.

throw0101a9 days ago

> The tradeoff to using this kind of high-security operating system is that it’s less convenient, so few people do it, said David Lie, a professor of computer and electrical engineering at the University of Toronto. But Prof. Lie said there’s no legal prohibition against using a privacy-focused operating system, and in some cases, it may be essential for political dissidents, activists and journalists.

[…]

> Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto called the bill’s data-retention requirements, which would mandate electronic service providers keep detailed data of nearly every Canadian for a year, revealing their movements and who they contacted, “almost certainly unconstitutional.”

> Major tech companies such as Signal, which provides secure messaging, and DuckDuckGo, a privacy-focused search engine, have said they would withdraw from Canada if they were forced to reveal or retain user data that compromises users’ privacy.

kspacewalk29 days ago

The article quotes extensively from the GrapheneOS lawyer, privacy advocates and security researchers. It doesn't owe you an unquestioning hagiography of GrapheneOS.

microtonal9 days ago

I was surprised how well-written it was for a newspaper article on something technical. They really took the effort to talk to both sides. I strongly disagree with the anti-privacy side, but getting both takes is what a good journalist should do. (Taking a stance belongs should be in an editorial or opinion piece.)

Read the full thread on Hacker News →

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