The dispute flared up after the mass shootings in San Bernardino, Calif., in 2015 and in Pensacola, Fla., last year. Apple and Google have refused to create a way in for law enforcement, arguing that criminals and authoritarian governments would exploit such a “back door.” But all iPhones and many newer Android phones now come encrypted - a layer of security that generally requires a customer’s passcode to defeat. The companies frequently turn over data to the police that customers store on the companies’ servers. Google, which also offers encryption on its Android smartphone software, did not respond to a request for comment. “That is not what we’ve been told.”Īn Apple spokesman said in an email that the company was constantly strengthening iPhone security “to help customers defend against criminals, hackers and identity thieves.” But, he added, no device can be truly impenetrable. “Law enforcement at all levels has access to technology that it can use to unlock phones,” said Jennifer Granick, a cybersecurity lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union. While many in law enforcement have argued that smartphones are often a roadblock to investigations, the findings indicate that they are instead one of the most important tools for prosecutions. While the existence of such tools has been known for some time, the records show that the authorities break into phones far more than previously understood - and that smartphones, with their vast troves of personal data, are not as impenetrable as Apple and Google have advertised.
authorities had searched hundreds of thousands of phones over the past five years. Upturn researchers said the records suggested that U.S. With more tools in their arsenal, the authorities have used them in an increasing range of cases, from homicides and rapes to drugs and shoplifting, according to the records, which were reviewed by The New York Times. And local law enforcement agencies that don’t have such tools can often send a locked phone to a state or federal crime lab that does. Shaker Heights, Ohio and Walla Walla, Wash. police departments have the tools, according to the records, as do the police and sheriffs in small towns and counties across the country, including Buckeye, Ariz. That is because at least 2,000 law enforcement agencies in all 50 states now have tools to get into locked, encrypted phones and extract their data, according to years of public records collected in a report by Upturn, a Washington nonprofit that investigates how the police use technology.Īt least 49 of the 50 largest U.S.
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