An anonymous reader shares an excerpt from a report via Motherboard: Mobile phone forensic extraction devices have been a law enforcement tool for years now, and the number of agencies using them is only rising. As part of an ongoing investigation, we have finally been able to turn up some usage logs of this equipment, from Tulsa Police Department, and Tucson Police Department. While the logs do not list the cause of the crime or any other notes about why the phone was being searched, it does list the make of the phone, the date, and the type of extraction. First, let’s go over what extraction devices are being used here. Tucson PD opted for the brand that is arguably the worldwide leader in mobile device forensics, the Israeli company Cellebrite. Tulsa Police Department however opted for a few different models — they purchased two different password breakers from Teel Technologies in 2015, and in March 2016 gave about $1, 500 to Susteen for their SecureView extraction device (SecureView was the product Susteen created when the FBI requested they create a more advanced extraction device for them). It does its work instantly, and has an incredible reach into a phone’s data. They renewed this contract in 2017. In August 2016 they also purchased the Detective extraction device from Oxygen Forensics. Oxygen is much less common than Cellebrite, from what we have found. The kicker really is how often these are being used — it is simply really hard to believe that out of the 783 times Tulsa Police used their extraction devices, all were for crimes in which it was necessary to look at all of the phone’s data. Even for the 316 times Tucson PD used theirs in the last year, it is still a real stretch to think that some low-level non-violent offenders weren’t on the receiving end. There are some days where the devices were used multiple times — Tulsa used theirs eight times on February 28th of this year, eight again on April 3rd, and a whopping 14 times on May 10th 2016. That is a whole lot of data that Tulsa was able to tap into, and we aren’t even able to understand the why. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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Police In Oklahoma Have Cracked Hundreds of People’s Cell Phones
HughPickens.com writes: Brian Booker writes at Digital Journal that carbon dating suggests that the Koran, or at least portions of it, may actually be older than the prophet Muhammad himself, a finding that if confirmed could rewrite early Islamic history and shed doubt on the “heavenly” origins of the holy text. Scholars believe that a copy Koran held by the Birmingham Library was actually written sometime between 545 AD and 568, while the Prophet Mohammad was believed to have been born in 570 AD and to have died in 632 AD. It should be noted, however, that the dating was only conducted on the parchment, rather than the ink, so it is possible that the quran was simply written on old paper. Some scholars believe, however, that Muhammad did not receive the Quran from heaven, as he claimed during his lifetime, but instead collected texts and scripts that fit his political agenda. “This gives more ground to what have been peripheral views of the Koran’s genesis, like that Muhammad and his early followers used a text that was already in existence and shaped it to fit their own political and theological agenda, rather than Muhammad receiving a revelation from heaven, ” says Keith Small, from the University of Oxford’s Bodleian Library. “‘It destabilises, to put it mildly, the idea that we can know anything with certainty about how the Koran emerged, ” says Historian Tom Holland. “and that in turn has implications for the history of Muhammad and the Companions.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
Reuters and other news outlets carry the news that the Minnesota’s gigantic Mall of America is under heightened security after a video threat posted online by terrorist group Al-Shabaab. Also at CNN and CBS News. According to Reuters’ version of the story: The U.S. homeland security chief said on Sunday he takes seriously a threat made by Somali-based Islamist militants against shopping malls, including the Mall of America in Minnesota, and urged people going there to be careful. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson was reacting to a video released by al Shabaab appearing to call for attacks on Western shopping areas, specifically mentioning Mall of America, the West Edmonton Mall in Canada and London’s Oxford Street. … Mall officials issued a statement about the threat made by the group, saying they are monitoring events with the help of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies. “Mall of America has implemented extra security precautions, some may be noticeable to guests, and others won’t be, ” the officials said. Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
bill_mcgonigle writes with this news from from CNET: “Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D NY) disclosed that NSA analysts eavesdrop on Americans’ domestic telephone calls without court orders during a House Judiciary hearing. After clearing with FBI director Robert Mueller that the information was not classified, Nadler revealed that during a closed-door briefing to Congress, the Legislature was informed that the spying organization had implemented and uses this capability. This appears to confirm Edward Snowden’s claim that he could, in his position at the NSA, ‘wiretap anyone from you or your accountant to a federal judge to even the president.’ Declan McCullagh writes, ‘Because the same legal standards that apply to phone calls also apply to e-mail messages, text messages, and instant messages, Nadler’s disclosure indicates the NSA analysts could also access the contents of Internet communications without going before a court and seeking approval.’ The executive branch has defended its general warrants, claiming that ‘the president had the constitutional authority, no matter what the law actually says, to order domestic spying without [constitutional] warrants,’ while Kurt Opsahl, senior staff attorney at EFF claims such government activity ‘epitomizes the problem of secret laws.'” Note that “listening in” versus “collecting metadata” is a distinction that defenders of government phone spying have been emphasizing. Tracking whom you called and when, goes the story, doesn’t impinge on expectations of privacy. Speaking of the metadata collection, though, reader Bruce66423 writes “According to the Washington Post, the Bush administration took ‘bulk metadata’ from the phone companies under voluntary agreements for more than four years after 9/11 until a court agreed they could have it compulsorily.” Related: First time accepted submitter fsagx writes that Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive has calculated the cost to store every phone call made in the U.S. over the course of a year: “It’s surprisingly inexpensive. It puts the recent NSA stories (and reports from the Boston bombings about the FBI’s ability to listen to past phone conversions) into perspective.” Read more of this story at Slashdot. 
redletterdave writes “Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin and Yuri Milner have teamed up to create The Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences Foundation, which now offers the most lucrative annual prize in the history of science: A $33 million pot to be split among 11 people, with individual rewards worth $3 million apiece. Comparatively, the monetary value of the Nobel prize is just $1.1 million. ‘Our society needs more heroes who are scientists, researchers and engineers,’ Zuckerberg said. ‘We need to celebrate and reward the people who cure diseases, expand our understanding of humanity and work to improve people’s lives.'” Read more of this story at Slashdot.