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Smartphones before the Court: Searchable Wallets or Pocket PCs?

Smartphones contain a wealth of information that can translate into evidence in civil and criminal court cases, and law enforcement agencies increasingly are mining this data in their investigations.

“If law enforcement or the government want to see your data, they can see it,” said Joe Trickey, federal marketing manager for Dell, which has developed its own solution for helping investigators get access digital data, the Mobile Digital Forensics platform. “Nothing is invulnerable at this point, given enough time.”

Which raises the question, how much access should police have to the personal data contained on smartphones? That data is far different from what people traditionally have carried on their persons, said John Carney, chief technology officer of Carney Forensics. Not only is the volume of data orders of magnitude greater than what would fit in a wallet or billfold, much of it is of a different nature.

GCN