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Comment by saagarjha | Hacker News Reader

The issue here is not "someone" breaking into your house and stealing it, it is the authorities doing it. Destruction/sabotage of the evidence collection process is very possibly going to be held against you.

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It seems like there's a bit of a logical leap in that argument. As the article notes, Cellebrite isn't exactly discerning when it comes to their customer base. It seems like they sell their tools to just about anyone willing to pay their steep fee, not just US law enforcement. I'd argue it's more akin to a specialized crowbar or blowtorch in the safe analogy. Sure, law enforcement might use it to try to crack your safe, but so could various other bad actors. There would be a legitimate non-spoilation purpose in protecting political dissidents who have their phones seized at a foreign border or stolen, for example.

But all Signal is (threatening to be) doing is blowing up devices that parse all files using insecure software.

Let's look at another case, I remember that some people had USB drivers that detected "wrigglers" and shut down the computer in response to such a wiggler. Would that also be illegal?

If I install anti scan files and anti mouse wrigglers when travelling to China do they become legal then?

The article quotes the part of the Signal blog that said “a real exploit payload would likely seek to undetectably alter previous reports, compromise the integrity of future reports (perhaps at random!), or exfiltrate data from the Cellebrite machine.” A complex exploit like that would say much more about the author’s intent than a driver that shuts down the computer when a “wiggler” is detected.

But what if Signal's (or anyone else's) exploitation simply locked the device when the file was read, preventing further data extraction?

Well if it's the authorities, they can present you with a warrant and request that you disable your defenses. You should not be required to roll over and present your defenseless underbelly to everyone that wants to break in, in case some of them are "the authorities".

You don’t have to help anyone collect evidence against you, you’re innocent until proven guilty, it’s up to others to prove their case- why would you help implicate yourself?

Presumption of innocence is the most fundamental cornerstone of common law.

Yeah, and the authorities have to do it the right way. There's a reason why this is such a big issue and not as straightforward as you make it to be. https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/2/24/21133600/police-fbi-pho...

I agree that the overall situation around evidence recovery from locked devices is not straightforward, but I don't think I referenced this in my comment–I merely provided insight into why the specific actions might be considered to be illegal (using the argument in the blog post, I might add).

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