May 172012
While the technology has been increasingly available, it has been one of the lesser-known tools in use by police and investigators. It is technology designed to rapidly dissect the information on a mobile phone, usually in just a few minutes. In the UK, police are now becoming more open about this, and training rank and file officers on the technology’s use, raising the specter of a digital ‘stop and frisk’ becoming as routine as is government snapshotting of one’s computers at international borders or internet profiling.