Charles Rabin reports:
Criminals, like the rest of us, conduct a lot of business on cellphones — personal hand-held devices that have fast become primary targets for law enforcement. But accessing the information in them isn’t as easy as a detective asking Siri to spill what’s inside.
There are technical barriers as well as complicated and unresolved legal questions and civil rights concerns before police can begin digging through a suspect’s cellphone data.
In the face of those challenges, police departments around the country have increasingly turned to what some critics have dubbed cellphone spyware. It’s a device with software that when attached to a cellphone can extract and store contacts, pictures, GPS locations and frequented social media sites — information that can potentially help make criminal cases.
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