Civil liberties advocates leery of cellphone extraction devices

SALT LAKE CITY — Michigan state police are under fire for using a device that collects information from the cellphones of people they investigating. The American Civil Liberties Union says law enforcement could be violating people's Fourth Amendment rights by using these devices.

It's the same technology investigators here in Utah used to pull video and other data implicating Nathan and Stephanie Sloop in the Ethan Tracy murder case.

The Cellebrite device is a small-sized box that barely fits inside the palm of an adult male. Digital forensic investigators at H-11 Digital Forensic Solutions said the gadget can pull text messages, video, passwords, and other data from cellphones.

"We can do a physical dump of a particular device,'" said John Zeke Thackray, the Salt Lake company's director of forensic services. "That gets me truly deleted data, which has been long gone off this phone. Unless it's been overwritten, we can get truly deleted data back."

Thackray travels the world training law enforcement how to use cellphone extraction devices like Cellebrite.

"These tools are a great asset to law enforcement around the world, and they allow us to do our job efficiently, swiftly, and keep the public safe," he said.

But considering what's happening in Michigan, civil rights attorneys are leery of these cellphone extraction devices.

"For law enforcement to say to a person, 'Let me have your cellphone,' and not explain to the person, 'I'm going to access or download personal information from your cellphone,' is frightening," said civil rights attorney Brian Barnard.

He said it's frightening because the device can be easily abused.

"Law enforcement needs tools," Barnard said. "But by the same token, private citizens need protection against government overreaching."

Barnard explained when police use the device without a person's consent, it's unconstitutional.

In a three-page letter sent last week to the Michigan State Police, the ACLU said it's concerned that Fourth Amendment protections could be undermined if people give state police permission to hook the data extraction devices to their cellphones without realizing the devices can retrieve even hidden or deleted data such as contact lists, text messages and photos.