On top of that, another way around this is under the confrontation clause. The accused has the right to question any witnesses against them. So I’d demand to cross examine the “tech” that ran the scan and make it apparent that no one knows how the box works (that’s the whole point; it’s proprietary). And then ask them simple questions like “cookies images have been placed on my clients device if no one knows how the box works?”
The real advantage of these celebrite boxes, for law enforcement, that they give them leads to otherwise admissible evidence. So that’s why I’m shocked to hear that they actually tried to use information from the phone.
Seriously, these things just use the built-in device backup and analyze it, you can even do it yourself for free using Autopsy which is a GUI for TSK.
I'm sure the answer to that would be delicious. ;)
Auto-correct was a mistake. Either that or a malicious undertaking cleverly disguised in the cloak of legitimate best intentions.
Could images have.
Unfortunately, I don't have faith in all defence lawyers to do this kind of thing - some "free because you're poor" lawyers might spend only 20 minutes per case...
Another possibility is that the investigators fail to share evidence as required.
Imagine a murder case where the accused claims he was at the cinema at the time. Often the police won't go to the cinema and get CCTV tapes to back up the claim - they'll just use blurry footage from the murder scene and claim "looks kinda like the same guy ish".
I suspect there are a lot of cases of innocent people in prison simply because evidence of them being innocent was deliberately overlooked or not collected.
A woman was found murdered in a cemetery. She was in town for a university-related festival/party, and was staying temporarily with some other students.
The police suspected the other students first, and went to their house, and found out:
1. One was an RPG player, had RPG books.
2. The other was a heavy metal fan and had heavy metal-related posters.
3. The other guy was into literature and had some 'dark' literature.
So conclusion of the officers: it was a satanic cult, and the woman was killed in a "RPG Satanic Ritual"
The prosecutor's office at first went with it too.
Later, already mid-trial, the prosecutor changed, the new prosecutor found a lot more formerly-useful now useless evidence that the police seemly deliberately ignored:
1. The police had in evidence storage some bloodied clothes that they never ran DNA tests on, the DNA was now useless (it has been years since the actual murder). Also the evidence was probably contaminated, the storage consisted of stuffing all the evidence in trash bags and leaving them in a random room in the police station.
2. People told the police multiple times, that the woman had drug debts, but they were ignored.
3. A known drug dealer was seen on the day past the murder, riding a bike around town, with his t-shirt having red stains on it, police even seen the guy themselves, and didn't bother stopping him and checking his t-shirt.
The new prosecutor despite seeing all this, had hands tied and just went along with what the police wanted, and tried to prove in court that they were "satanists".
The ruling was this (the judge was quite upset at it too):
1. The prosecution failed to prove they were satanists, evidence pointed out to the accused living there by coincidence, and their hobbies being "dark" or "fantasy" were coincidence too, only one of them was an RPG player, only one of them was a heavy metal fan, and so on, they didn't shared their hobbies with each other.
2. And even if they WERE satanists (they weren't), in Brazil being a satanist is not a crime.
3. For some reason the prosecution provided zero evidence that was actually related to the murder, they only tried to prove the accused were satanists and presumed this would be enough to know they were the murderers, but they never tried to link the accused with the crime scene, didn't even tried to explain when they would been at the cemetery.
I recently witnessed a case where a trooper charged the wrong statute. How can you make a thorough investigation if you don't even know the elements of the offense because you are looking at the wrong statute?
He made about 5 other mistakes too, even lying to the judge. The system doesn't care. The investigation into the lie was found to be a "just a misunderstanding" eventhough that same report also notes that the statement was false and that he made the correct version of that statement 10 minutes prior to that.
In my old agency, we were required to do that type of thing. For example, we had a rape case where the rape occurred in a short-stay house (kind of like a hotel, but for families that require room for multiple kids/pets, etc). The subject only rented the house for one night, and the rape occurred in one of the bedrooms. By the time we got to the house, there had already been another guest for the night between him checking out and us arriving. We went to housekeeping and interviewed the staff who cleaned the room, we dug through the trash to verify the drinks the victim claimed to have drank, we got camera footage from the gas station where he bought alcohol (she was also underage). There's a ton more that was done to verify key facts, most of which were essentially meaningless, but we did them because we are required to.
Now, imagine if a victim tells you a story that includes 10 things that could be independently verified (through searching a location for CCTV, pulling receipts, whatever) and you only look for 7 of those things. This opens up the defense to make an argument that you intentionally skipped looking for those other 3 things because they were exculpatory. It's impossible to think through all the different details that could be verified, along with their probative value to a case, and organizing them by how long you have until the evidence is no longer available (there's no standard timeframe for how long before a given store's CCTV recycles).
I'm not saying investigators shouldn't do this ground work, but I am saying that it's a shitload to ask of them and potentially opens up the prosecution to a very bad-faith defensive argument that certain seemingly-obvious factors weren't considered during evidence collection.
In your murder example, sure, they could say "looks kinda like the same guy ish" and hope that's good enough for a jury, but the defense can (and should) tear that to shreds. If a subject told us they were at the cinema at the time of a murder, my first thought would be to ask them to provide any evidence they themselves have (social media check-in, location data from their phone, receipts/credit card statement, etc), but I would also absolutely be checking the cinema for video evidence. If I can prove he lied, that's a huge win for the prosecution. Alternatively if he's telling the truth that he has a verifiable alibi, then the real killer is stacking up time while evidence entropies.
The reality is that cops are burdened enough that the only evidence that's persistently worth verifying are usually statements made by subjects. This is where case where it's worthwhile to talk to cops: if there is potentially verifiable evidence of innocence that stands a good chance of diminishing as time goes by. Giving specific details like the place and time that you saw a movie at a theater along with any receipts or ticket stubs, would be a huge factor in preventing future law enforcement / prosecutor interactions.
Might want to think twice about that, you might be replacing one allegedly innocent suspect with a suspect you know for a fact is innocent, yourself.
This is only true if the cops are actually looking for the Truth, not just a way to close the case as fast as possible.
You seem to have faith that the cops / prosecutors are attempting to find the truth, unfortunately I do not share your faith in the system. So the better plan, for your own personal safety, is to NEVER TALK TO THE POLICE [1]
They also don't maintain good Gugilo records. You can request that information, but they won't give it to you because they don't keep good records of the past issues, on purpose. I had a trooper contradict himself in court and official reports 3 or 4 times. The prosecution still found him to be a reliable witness. Anyone else would have their testimony thrown out.
Because they don't keep good records of these contradictions, I guarantee future cases requesting this information will not get it.
It's not like the default Android SMS app indicates that messages have been deleted. And there was no provenance information provided as to where or when they were collected.
I hate this, because screenshots come out looking like trash and it's very difficult with most messaging apps to show the timestamps for all messages. Eventually, this pendulum is going to swing (when cases start getting thrown out for this lack of timestamps/evidence of deleted messages, etc) and law enforcement (at least in the military environment) will have a bit more support in pulling relevant (and only relevant) data from victim devices for the purpose of evidence collection.
One additional thing about screenshots: They can be totally faked, and the "contact" can't be validated from conversation screenshots. For example, if you buy a burner phone, you can create a whole conversation as though the burner phone is the assailant, then change the contact's number to the real assailant. Some chat apps keep the whole conversation, despite the number change, in the same chat and make it impossible to tell which number sent the messages. Cellebrite indicates the number (assuming we're talking about SMS here) where the message came from, even if the contact changes.
My preference would be a process whereby cops run the Cellebrite extraction, then produce a report that's limited to the content the victim and her counsel agree to, like conversations between her and Bob, and conversations between her and Sally, but nothing more. This way, at least we have some data that is verifiable and detailed (would show the to/from numbers, contact info, times, etc).
These are consent-based searches, not warrantless.
The 3 points to Miranda rights are cops, custody, and questioning(provided the questions would reasonably illicit a criminal response).
For example, if I am a cop and I walk up to you on the street and ask you questions, your 5th amendment only applies if I'm not letting you go (custody). There's some ambiguity on the custody part, but it's usually revolving around the idea that you're under arrest. For the military, since you're always "Subject to the code(UCMJ)", the custody part of Miranda means that the only factors that matter for cops (and this is more broadly inclusive of authority figures or anyone who is a "mandatory reporter", meaning someone who must report criminal activity/statements to military law enforcement) and questioning (so, is the subject being asked questions that would elicit a criminal response). If I (a cop, commander, supervisor, whatever) I a subordinate a question that I know is likely to elicit a criminal response, that response (and the fruits of it) are inadmissible in court and cannot be used to further a criminal investigation. So, I can ask Private Dump "Hey Dump, what did you do this weekend?", and be fine, but if I ask "Hey Dump, how much Cocaine did you snort off that stripper's chest Saturday?", I would be eliciting a criminal response (assuming that I have reason to believe he was engaged in criminal drug activity on Saturday).
This tends to work in favor of the subject of an investigation, though, because they a) can't incriminate themselves without a rights advisement unless they willingly volunteer incriminating information in response to a question that wasn't likely/designed to elicit it and b) they have to waive their rights before asking these kinds of questions, so they know they are being investigated (and what for, since Article 32 advisements are WAY more thorough than Miranda).
As for your point about this and other amendments being mute for military, there are a couple ways to think about it. If a military superior or law enforcement conducts a search without search authorization or consent, the results cannot be used against you criminally, on administratively. Effectively, they could kick you out (but not with any of the negative flags, like a dishonorable), but they can't prosecute you. This applies to searches, asking questions without Art 32 advisements, etc. Effectively, your rights are still being respected and they're interacting with you like an employer, just with a bit more authority.