Word: celling
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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From crucial tracking evidence in the Scott Peterson murder trial to exculpatory call records in the Duke alleged rape case, cell phones have emerged as an important resource for both criminal investigators and defense lawyers. Now a small group of international forensic code breakers is working to go beyond the obvious and familiar - the call logs and address books - and tap deeper into our phones, into a hidden gold mine of personal information. Their work is prompting kudos from crime busters while raising concern among civil libertarians...
...Cell phones are ubiquitous in today's world and nearly all crimes have a digital component to them," says Rick Mislan, an assistant professor of computer and information technology at Purdue University. Mislan, a former U.S. Army electronic warfare officer, is one of a handful of experts working on forensic methods to access the inner secrets in cell phones. Twenty years ago it would have taken a police agency months of shoe leather and paper hunting to assemble the kind of information that is available on a cell phone's internal memory and which can be extracted by a deep...
...Most cell phone owners think simply removing a phone's SIM card removes personal information, but the phone's internal memory, even communication exchanged between the phone and its server, remain. Phone manuals detail how to perform multiple reset commands to erase personal information and some online recycling phone services offer command sets for specific phones, but most people never bother to go through the tedious process, Mislan says. For example, child predators who stalk "moblogs" - the cell phone equivalent of web blogs that are popular with young phone users - may believe they have deleted text messages and postings...
...with simple if crude methods. Drug dealers, Mislan says, will buy throwaway phones, assign distinctive rings to customers or suppliers, and then destroy the screen, leading an arresting officer to believe the phone is broken or the phone's information is inaccessible. (Old-style forensics often means laboriously photographing cell phone screen after cell phone screen to record evidence...
...that end, the audience comes to know the villain Hussein Al Mansour, a middle manager at the terror cell who is determined to become terrorist kingpin; Bilal, a flamboyant jihadi who declares his homosexuality in his martyr video; Liberty and Justice, airport security guards who conduct random security checks on passengers named Ali, Rashid and Abdullah; and Foxy Redstate, an ambitious broadcast journalist who uncovers the bomb plot, but keeps it quiet with the hope of landing an exclusive that will launch her to media stardom...