Should Police Wipe a Criminal's Cellphone Before Returning It?–U.S. vs. Stathas

000000000001

My reaction from the title: "That's destruction of property, plain and simple." After Reading the Article: "Well, given the circumstances, deserved." Maybe don't engage/consume/manufacture CSAM and it won't be a problem.

compiler-guy

The right answer here is something like: Usually not, but sometimes under circumstances enumerated by law. Like this case.

Zak

It seems to me that the correct remedy in this case would be to have a representative of the court preserve specific data requested by the offender, as long as it isn't criminal or harmful, at the offender's expense. I don't think wiping an offender's phone is justified in most cases even if it might hinder them in potential subsequent crimes, but it does seem justified in this case where the phone contains significant material harmful to the victim of a serious crime.

lazyasciiart

hmm, what did they wipe? > [information] relevant to a possible civil lawsuit against the West Bend Police Department.” No, the cops should not get to wipe data that could be used in court against them. Is this.... not obvious?

ktm5j

As someone who's been a victim in a situation like this, I'm totally on the side of the cops. We need to draw lines somewhere. There's no good argument for protecting ownership of the kind of subject matter that was deleted here. Edit: I would encourage anyone who's downvoting me to worry less about their own digital rights and spend some time thinking about what it would be like to have explicit pictures of yourself in the hands of someone who hurt you.

ImJamal

Seems like the better solution is don't give a pedophila such a low sentence. Throw them in jail for decades. If you are going to release them, which I would not be in favor of, you ban them from all electronic devices. Any device that had "numerous sexually explicit messages and images" of children should be destroyed. Problem solved.

meindnoch

I mean, when police is destroying cocaine bricks, they don't give the empty packaging back to the criminals, even though the packaging wouldn't be illegal by itself. So if you mix CSAM in your data, expect the whole device to be destroyed.

jrm4

It's interesting how I can be of two minds here, nearly simultaneously. Absent the horrific circumstances, my nerd brain says -- well, this is why phones should perhaps just be dumb devices that completely sync elsewhere such that physical possession is mostly meaningless. This also solves, e.g., border phone searches. And also, yikes, don't actually want these type of horrific people doing this? It's difficult all around.

sneurlax

They are contractually forbidden from letting you get their NSO spyware

unbalancedevh

I don't think it said in the article, but I'd think that all of the data/evidence might be good to retain until all of the offender's appeals and related legal proceedings are finished. After that, I think there's some reasonable level of effort that we should expect the government to have to make to only destroy what's illegal, but practically that might mean that other data gets destroyed as well. Maybe the owner can request specific things be saved or something like that; but it's likely to be something that needs to be considered on a case-by-case basis.

xg15

Is there meaningful difference between handing back a wiped phone and handing back a new phone of the same model? So in that case, why not keep the un-wiped phone in possession of the court and allow attorneys access to it (with proper documentation) - and give the convict a new phone instead?

axus

That raises a question I'd never thought to ask: who owns a murder weapon, after it's been confiscated and the sentence fulfilled? Or make it simpler, is an unlicensed firearm returned after the legal process? If not, who owns it?