Conference:  Defcon 31

Authors: Allison Young Digital Forensics Analyst at The Legal Aid Society, Diane Akerman Digital Forensics Attorney at The Legal Aid Society

2023-08-01

Dobbs has significantly heightened the fear that everyday private data can be leveraged by law enforcement to prosecute pregnancy outcomes. However, this data is already being used in investigating other criminalized activities. In this talk, we will show you examples of information that can easily be extracted from many phones to surveil personal reproductive decisions. We will also show you how the government obtains your not-so-private thoughts from cell phone data using forensic extraction and reporting tools, with a focus on health and lifestyle apps. This will include a live demonstration of investigation using common forensic tools to show both the practical ease of reviewing sensitive data and the technical limitations of interpreting their meaning. Warning: you may find this peek into digital investigations disturbing. We will discuss the different laws that do, or do not, protect your private health data, including health privacy laws and other consumer protections, but will focus primarily on the limitations of the 4th Amendment in the digital world. The talk will provide a brief but comprehensive overview of the legal landscape and how "reasonable expectation of privacy" has been applied to digital data. But because the law has no bearing on reality, we'll walk through a search warrant for cloud data in detail with the audience to illustrate the flawed nature of warrant practice in general, and the ease with which the government can obtain your data, without any real oversight.