Ruling limits border agents’ ability to search cellphones

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By Maura Dolan, Staff Writer,  AUG. 16, 2019

SAN FRANCISCO —  Border officials may examine a person’s cellphone for contraband, such as pornography, but may not search it to determine whether someone has committed a crime, a federal appeals court decided Friday.

The unanimous ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals is expected to limit the ability of border agents in California and Arizona to search cellphones in the future. The decision affects the nine Western states in the 9th Circuit.

The decision also overturned the conviction of Miguel Angel Cano for cocaine importation because border agents searched his cellphone extensively in 2016 for evidence of drug crimes.

“Cellphone searches at the border, whether manual or forensic, must be limited in scope to a search for digital contraband,” 9th Circuit Judge Jay S. Bybee, an appointee of President George W. Bush, wrote for the court.

The court cited past rulings that said border searches must be conducted to “enforce importation laws,” not for “general law enforcement purposes.”

Cano was arrested on suspicion of carrying cocaine as he attempted to cross into the United States from Mexico at the San Ysidro Port of Entry. A narcotic-detecting dog alerted officials to Cano’s spare tire, which contained 14 vacuum-sealed packages of cocaine.

After Cano’s arrest, an official from U.S. Customs and Border Protection seized his phone, and agents searched it manually and then with software that accessed all text messages, contacts, call logs, media and application data.

Cano’s lawyer sought at trial to suppress the information obtained from the extensive examination, but a district judge ruled the search was permissible under a border exception to the 4th Amendment’s requirement of warrants.

In overturning Cano’s conviction, the 9th Circuit said agents from the Department of Homeland Security who searched the phone had reason to suspect that it might contain evidence of drug crimes, but there was no evidence that “the digital data in the phone contained contraband.”

“No one contests that a border official could, consistent with the 4th Amendment, examine the physical body of a cellphone to see if the phone itself is contraband — because, for example, it is a pirated copy of a patented U.S. phone — or if the phone itself presents a physical threat to officers,” Bybee wrote.

But “border officials have no general authority to search for crime,” he added.

In Cano’s case, the court added, officials could have obtained a warrant before doing a forensic search because they already had Cano in custody.

Read original article HERE.

T-Mobile-Sprint deal wins Justice Department approval

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By Tali Arbel and Marcy Gordon, Associated Press, July 26, 2019

U.S. regulators have approved T-Mobile US Inc.’s $26.5-billion takeover of rival Sprint Corp., despite fears of higher prices and job cuts, in a deal that would leave just three major cellphone companies in the country.

Friday’s approval from the Justice Department and five state attorneys general comes after Sprint and T-Mobile agreed to conditions that would set up satellite TV provider Dish Network Corp. as a smaller rival to Verizon Communications Inc., AT&T Inc. and the combined T-Mobile-Sprint company. The Justice Department’s antitrust chief, Makan Delrahim, said the conditions set up Dish “as a disruptive force in wireless.”

But attorneys general from other states — including California — and public-interest advocates say that Dish is hardly a replacement for a stand-alone Sprint and that the conditions fail to address the competitive harm the deal would cause: higher prices, job losses and fewer choices for consumers.

“By signing off on this merger, the Justice Department has done nothing to remedy the short- and long-term harms the loss of an independent Sprint will create for U.S. wireless users,” said S. Derek Turner, research director for the advocacy group Free Press.

The approval still needs a federal judge to sign off, as Sprint and T-Mobile’s settlement with the Justice Department includes conditions. The Federal Communications Commission is expected to give the takeover its blessing.

Dish is paying $5 billion for Sprint’s prepaid cellphone brands including Boost and Virgin Mobile — with about 9 million customers — and some spectrum, or airwaves for wireless service, from T-Mobile and Sprint. Dish will also be able to rent T-Mobile’s network for seven years while it builds its own…

Continue reading at the Los Angeles Times HERE.

iPhone 5G release date rumours

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With Samsung confirming that certain models of the Galaxy S10 will offer 5G, you may be wondering when a 5G iPhone will launch. Some sceptics believe you’re in for a long wait – but there are reasons to be cheerful, too, from sources such as respected analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who confidently expects all three late-2020 iPhones to support 5G, and from the news that Apple has acquired Intel’s smartphone modems business.

In this article we round up the leaks, rumours and patent activity that point to an imminent 5G iPhone launch, predicting the device’s release date and features. We also offer information about the progress of 5G adoption in the market at large, and the benefits that 5G will offer to iPhone userswhen Apple gets on board.

For more smartphone speculation, you can read about folding iPhone rumours and our thoughts on the 2019 iPhone update. If you’re more interested in the devices you can buy right now, have a look at our roundup of the best iPhone deals.

iPhone 5G release date

We expect three 5G-ready iPhones to be released in the second half of 2020.

The Galaxy S10 5G is on sale and the OnePlus 7 Pro 5G has been announced. But while other smartphone manufacturers continue to make 5G plans for 2019, it sounds like Apple won’t be ready to follow suit until 2020.

In 2018 it was reported that Apple was working on a 5G modem with Intel, but apparently insoluble connectivity problems cropped up in testing. Neither Intel (which has since quit the 5G arena, and sold the majority of its smartphone modem business to Apple) or later supplier candidate MediaTek would be able to supply 5G components for an autumn 2019 launch.

This may be disappointing, given the progress made by Apple’s competition, but a 2020 launch is a lot better than had been feared. Until Apple reached an agreement with Qualcomm, in fact, it was thought that Apple’s iPhone 5G might not arrive until 2021. UBS analyst Timothy Arcuri had told 9to5Mac at the beginning of April 2019 that Apple was targeting 2021 for the 5G iPhone release, and described even that as a “technical hurdle”.

There were a few reasons for the delay, but these have since been rectified. As a result, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo believes Apple’s 5G iPhone will arrive in the second half of 2020.

In an April 2019 research note, reported by MacRumors, Kuo wrote: “Apple and Qualcomm’s end of patent dispute and entrance into a six-year licensing deal implies new 2H20 iPhone models will support 5G.” He reiterated this prediction in June 2019, writing: “The [new 2H20] 6.7in and 5.4in OLED iPhone models will likely support 5G.”

And on 28 July 2019 Kuo responded to the Intel modems acquisitions with a further research note in which he predicted that all three late-2020 iPhone models would support 5G.

“We now believe that all three new 2H20 iPhone models will support 5G for the following reasons. (1) Apple has more resource for developing the 5G iPhone after the acquisition of Intel baseband business. (2) We expect that the prices of 5G Android smartphones will decline to $249-349 in 2H20… iPhone models which will be sold at higher prices have to support 5G for winning more subsidies from mobile operators and consumers’ purchase intention. (3) Boosting 5G developments could benefit Apple’s AR ecosystem.”

Why is the 5G iPhone delayed?

There are a few reasons why Apple’s 5G iPhone has been delayed…

Continue reading at macworld.co.uk HERE

T-Mobile quietly reported a sharp rise in police demands for cell tower data

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T-Mobile has reported a small decline in the number of government data requests it receives, according to its latest transparency report, quietly published this week.

The third-largest cell giant in the U.S. reported 459,989 requests during 2018, down by a little over 1% on the year earlier. That includes an overall drop in subpoenas, court orders and pen registers and trap and trace devices used to record the incoming and outgoing callers; however, the number of search warrants issued went up by 27% and wiretaps increased by almost 3%.

The company rejected 85,201 requests, an increase of 7% on the year prior.

But the number of requests for historical call detail records and cell site information, which can be used to infer a subscriber’s location, has risen significantly.

For 2018, the company received 70,224 demands for historical call data, up by more than 9% on the year earlier.

Historical cell site location data allows law enforcement to understand which cell towers carried a call, text message or data, and therefore a subscriber’s historical real-time location at any given particular time. Last year the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that this data was protected and required a warrant before a company is forced to turn it over. The so-called “Carpenter” decision was expected to result in a fall in the number of requests made because the bar to obtaining the records is far higher.

T-Mobile did not immediately respond to a request asking what caused the increase.

Continue reading at techcrunch.com HERE.

Appeals Court Ruling in Ukwuachu case has implications for everyone

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By: Dennis Turner. Posted: Jul 11, 2019.

WACO,TX — In a courthouse shocker, a Texas appeals court overturns the sexual assault conviction of former Baylor Athlete Sam Ukwuachu. It is the same conviction another appeals court reinstated about a year ago, after an original appeal’s court ordered a new trial.

At issue in this ruling is cell phone tracking data, and how and whether prosecutors can use it, something that affects all of us.

“It’s interesting how quickly they keep track of all the things we’re doing now,” said Andrei Perdon, a concerned citizen. “But like I said, it’s a necessary evil,” said Perdon.

His phone company tracks his every move to make sure he gets data and calls.

So it’s no wonder prosecutors love to get warrants for cell phone data that tracks defendants and even witnesses.

McLennan County prosecutors used that very data to convict Baylor Football Player Sam Ukwuachu in a 2015 rape trial.

Now, the 10th Texas Court of Appeals has called out prosecutors for referring to cell tower location information, during trial, without actually entering the paperwork into evidence…. all to suggest a witness lied about where he was the night of the crime.

Legal scholars call that troubling.

“Think about it from the jury’s perspective. If you’re sitting there listening to the prosecutors,and the they’re referring to these call logs, and they’re making it seem like these call logs are very important…but you can’t actually see those call logs… It’s natural that might influence your thinking and you might come to the wrong conclusion,” explained Joshua Weaver, an associate with the Williams & Brown law firm.

Continue reading at kxxv.com HERE.