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Re:I have a lot to say about Signal’s Cellebrite hack by salawat on Sunday May 16, 2021 @11:57AM (#27174526)
There is still legitimate utility to this behavior defending against non-United States Law Enforcement actors.

People are looking at Cellebrite wrong due to law enforcement using it. Cellebrite is a set of specialized thieving tools. Those tools can be wielded by anyone. The fact law enforcement has unwisely and blindly integrated it into their toolchain does not mean the device should be given special protection over anything else. All this does is further cement "law enforcememt" as a special privileged class in the United States, to whom Constitutional boundaries (5th Amendment, which at this point, I hold that testimony by electronic device metadata disclosure/compromise should realistically cover when breaking through encryption is involved, and 4th Amendment when Third Party Doctrine is taken into account).

Re:I have a lot to say about Signal’s Cellebrite hack by acdha on Sunday May 16, 2021 @02:05PM (#27175674)
> The fact law enforcement has unwisely and blindly integrated it into their toolchain does not mean the device should be given special protection over anything else.

I'm not arguing that it should have whatever “special protection” you have in mind. This is why I mentioned the concept of intent: just as having lock picks or a gun isn't automatically a crime, I think having an exploit for Cellebrite would depend on why you were developing and installing it.

If you were, say, helping dissidents in another country I would expect a judge to be far more supportive of that than if it came up in the context of a criminal investigation with a lawful search warrant. In the latter case, you are aware of but refusing to comply with the legal system and, irregardless of how any of us personally feel about it, that's just not going to end well in most cases.

Re:I have a lot to say about Signal’s Cellebrite hack by feanaro on Sunday May 16, 2021 @04:59PM (#27176970)
> I'm not arguing that it should have whatever “special protection” you have in mind. This is why I mentioned the concept of intent: just as having lock picks or a gun isn't automatically a crime, I think having an exploit for Cellebrite would depend on why you were developing and installing it.

In that case, as long as one is not intending to interfere with a search warrant or other legal process, it should be fine for them to deliberately install a Cellebrite hack.

Re:I have a lot to say about Signal’s Cellebrite hack by PeterisP on Sunday May 16, 2021 @12:46PM (#27174912)
Constitutional boundaries and the 4th amendment applies. They do need a warrant, but with a warrant they are allowed to go through all your electronic records on your devices just as they are allowed to go through all your written records in your drawers and safes and envelopes.

Encryption has no special treatment that would cause 5th amendment to apply. 5th amendment may apply if they ask you to tell something (e.g. a password), but if they can break your encryption without your assistance, then there's no difference if they're decrypting a physical letter or an electronic file, if the evidence (that letter or that file) was lawfully obtained, they can do that.