111 points

Without knowing how they got into his phone, this is a non-story that is just a retelling of older stories. For all we know they just took his dead finger and put it on the reader. Or maybe he used the same 4-digit PIN for his debit card or lock box or something else that they were able to recover. Maybe some detective just just randomly entered the shooter’s birthday, only to say “Hey sarge, you’re never gonna believe this… first try!”

There’s nothing useful that can be taken away from this story yet, until more details come out.

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23 points

they just took his dead finger and put it on the reader.

My bet’s on this.

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18 points

Or unknown NGO software was used. But you’re right. A nothing burger for now.

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2 points
*

Exactly. The article doesn’t shy away from a bit of free publicity for Cellerite. Which is nowhere near as much of a magic bullet as the “tech media” makes it out to be.

How do I know it? By doing the most basic of research by heading to their website and looking at their manuals and documentation.

And Cellerite won’t tell you this publicly because their bottom line depends on their ability to massively overprice their services which they sell to technically illiterate people.

Any article that mentions Cellerite without a caveat about the dubiousness of their publicity can be disregarded and shouldn’t be taken seriously.

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-5 points

I’m super curious how they got into his phone

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14 points

I think you’ll get to hold on to that feeling.

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2 points

“We tried 0000. Tony, write up a press release about how incredible we are at our job and how we spent 400% of our usual overtime on it and send it to the tech press. Make sure they mention we need to triple next year’s budget for security and shit.”

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-13 points

Using a dead persons finger is not possible though

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20 points

I don’t see why it wouldn’t be. It just checks that the shape of the fingerprint is there, it doesn’t check for a pulse or any sign of life. If you have a high-enough resolution image and printer, it’s actually rther trivial to bypass most optical fingerprint readers.

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106 points
*

Our local sheriff is using some spy level shit in our county that he refuses to explain.

He keeps “happening” upon crimes just “on accident.” yesterday it was “stopped to take a pee in public park and caught a baddie” and two days before that it was “just happen to follow and pull over a guy with lots of pounds of pot hidden in the car.”

The US police are spying on Americans phones, internet, GPS, and everything with no judicial recourse because it is corporations spying and then “giving the info” to the police for money.

The US law enforcement has gone full STAZI but using capitalism as additional cover.

The US is dead.

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40 points

Let’s all apologize to Stallman.

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14 points

the man has rarely been proven wrong in anything tech related he has said

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15 points

Good thing you put the “tech related” qualifier on there. He probably should have stayed in that lane.

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-2 points

Let’s all apologize to Stallman.

For the twice a day that broken toe-jam-eating watch is right?

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22 points

They’re probably just capturing SMS messages or regular calls. Which is still illegal without a warrant, but who watches the watchers? Use encrypted chats and encrypted calls if you’re worried.

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18 points

“on accident“ 🤮

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6 points

“on accident“ 🤮

I know. Who SAYS that? It’s by accident. One doesn’t plan these things.

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1 point

'Round here we say “with accident” or “of accident”, thank you

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2 points
*

As the old and venerable neuromonkey once said:

Welp. Just let the nukes fly, then. First it’s “on accident,” and before long you’ve got meth addicted baby prostitute warlords running the local Walmart.

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11 points

That’s also a red flag for a dirty cop getting information from criminal group A to go after competition.

You should probably move.

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4 points

Mind telling us which sherrif this is?

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3 points

I think it’s the one in New York named Spyder Mann

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3 points

Do you have an article on this?

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It’s always a contest between security tools and penetration tools. The problem comes when law enforcement can do this without fair protections of privacy, say if they can easily establish probable cause ( My detection dog is signalling you have illegal data on your phone ) or they are allowed to get a warrant post-hoc for an otherwise illegal search.

…Or they do the illegal search and then engage in parallel reconstruction e.g. make a fake story about following up on an informant.

Once the police just seize and crack your phone on a whim, then the state no longer respects your privacy and autonomy, which means you can no longer consent to be governed, rather are controlled by gunpoint (surveillance and use of force). This is one of the critical ingredients to autocratic rule, since it does a lot to neuter the capacity of discontent turning into revolt.

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28 points

I’m pretty sure it used to be easier with phones that didn’t have full disk encryption.

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27 points

Good chance it was just putting the dead dudes finger on the scanner lmao

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-3 points

Not how that works

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16 points
*

Unless disabled by timeout, restart, or otherwise manually I’m curious to know why that would be?

Of course the dude had to know this was a one way trip, I’d have wiped everything but then again maybe they didn’t care at that point.

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2 points

Wiping isn’t a 100% thing with either Hard disks or Flash. He should have thrown everything into a wood chipper. And yes, this absolutely has to be a one way trip. Either they get you, or you turn the gun on yourself. Nothing good will come of you surviving.

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-14 points

It is hit or miss. The fingerprint button is also looking for the electrical signals of a living person. Apparently, that doesn’t end immediately upon death.

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