this post was submitted on 09 May 2025
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The article is suspiciously avoiding the question how they were caught or how police got access to the phone of one of them.
Interesting question. I remember they were caught fairly quickly after it happened. I don’t know much about UK surveillance or device searching laws.
Edit: some other suspects were arrested before these two, then released. I wonder if they testified?
Another article mentions this:
If it was unlocked perhaps the police were just able to open it and view the file. Here in the US the main obstacle is the lock on the phone which usually police can’t get past, though maybe there’s a secret way for high profile cases, I couldn’t say.
In recent years police were able to get into phones quite easily. See this nytimes article: https://archive.is/fOTDz Not sure what the current state of the art is.
Oh interesting I wasn’t aware of this.
It was likely a phone sold by a local carrier with a carrier distributed image on it with a backdoor. That's how it usually is done by nanny states.
So there is a back way. Is this generally the case in most countries?
The most likely explanation is just that the phone's storage wasn't encrypted. Most Android phones come with unencrypted filesystems by default - iPhones do encrypt by default although there have been recent legislative changes in the UK which weaken Apple's default security.
If the phone's storage is unencrypted, police don't need to get into the phone - they just open it up, take out the storage medium, and read it using a different device.
Not a lawyer, but it's also possible that once they were arrested and charged, the perpetrators could be compelled legally to unlock even an encrypted phone.
tldr here is that if you're concerned about the authorities being able to see something, simply do not put it on your phone. End of.
The difficulty is that living in a nation with a crumbling rule of law, I have little idea of what the police might go after me for in the future. And I refuse to silence myself to the extent required to navigate around their hypothetical future repression.