Cellebrite

Long Read

This article presents some of the tools and techniques deployed as part surveillance practices and data-driven immigration policies routinely leading to discriminatory treatment of peoplee and undermining peoples’ dignity, with a particular focus on the UK.

Long Read

As migration continues to be high on the social and political agenda, Western countries are increasingly adopting an approach that criminalises people at the border. Asylum seekers are often targeted with intrusive surveillance technologies and afforded only limited rights (including in relation to data protection), often having the effect of being treated as “guilty until proven innocent”.

A recent report explains how the central German migration authority uses mobile phone extraction technology in the asylum application procedure, and why it is highly problematic.

Video

With huge numbers of people out on the streets standing up for their rights in the US and Hong Kong, and around the world - we take a look at the surveillance tools police and security forces round the world have been using to monitor people as they exercise their civil rights.

28 Apr 2020
The Israeli company Cellebrite, best known for providing hacking software to help law enforcement agencies get inside suspects' iPhones, is now pitching its technology to help authorities pull the location data and contacts off the phones of newly-diagnosed COVID-19 patients in order to "quarantine
Report

Which police forces in the UK are using cloud extraction and how and why this is lawful, remains opaque

Video

You’re a witness or a victim or a suspect of a crime; or even just travelling going on holiday. Officials demand your phone, then disappear with it. What happened to your phone? What happened to your data? What will happen to you?

Call to Action

Ask your local UK police force about cloud extraction

Take action and send a FOIA to your local UK police force asking them if they use cloud extraction technology.

UPDATE: PLEASE NOTE THAT ALL FOIA HAVE NOW BEEN SUBMITTED AND YOU CAN FOLLOW THE PROGRESS ON THE LINKS BELOW.

News & Analysis

Which police forces in the UK are using cloud extraction and how and why this is lawful, remains opaque

News & Analysis

Cloud extraction allows law enforcement agencies to take huge amounts of your data from the Cloud via a legal back door.

Long Read

When government searches shift from the phone to the cloud: cloud extraction technology and ‘the future of mobile forensics’

Press release

Law enforcement agencies can access vast troves of data from devices and from popular apps with the push of a button using cloud extraction technology. 

News & Analysis

Cloud extraction technology is being used in secret whilst the public are often unaware that large volumes of data that they generate are stored in the cloud and thus accessible using these technologies. 

Press release

Victims and witnesses are being offered to “consent” to have their phones collected and searched, but they will have no right to retract that consent for retaining and examining the data on the device.

News & Analysis

It is imperative that there is honesty as to the capabilities of extraction devices and clarity on what is taking place at a technical level.

Long Read
Police officers who operate mobile phone extraction technologies often have little or no forensic training and are increasingly reliant on devices whose capabilities they do not understand, particularly as budgets are cut and the volume of data they have to cope with increases.
News & Analysis
We look at the recently published report on forensic science in the UK , highlight concerns about police not understanding new tech used to extract data from mobile phones; the risk of making incorrect inferences and the general lack of understanding about the capabilities of these tools. The