Justice Motlhabani, left, and Letsogile Barupi, followed by Oratile Dikologang, leave the magistrate’s court in Gaborone, Botswana, on April 14, 2020. (Mmegi/Thalefang Charles via Committee to Protect Journalists, New York)
NEW YORK, May 11 2021 (IPS) - Oratile Dikologang was naked when police officers pulled black plastic over his head during his detention in April 2020. It was difficult to breathe, but the interrogation continued, he told CPJ in a recent phone interview.
“What are your sources, where do you get information,” he recalled them asking repeatedly. “It was the most painful experience,” he said.
Dikologang, the digital editor and co-founder of the
New Report Shows Phone Cracking Tech is Being Used to Target Journalists in Botswana
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Photo: David Ramos, Getty Images
The willingness of digital forensics firms to sell to pretty much any paying law enforcement agency, regardless of the country’s human rights record, has stirred up no minor amount of controversy. These tools, critics say, allow bad governments expansive, invasive powers, and may be used in the course of investigations that illegitimately target activists or journalists.
In what seems like a key example of this problem, a new report published this week by the Committee to Protect Journalists shows how U.S. and Israeli digital forensics firms were recently used by the government of Botswana to investigate several journalists for… well, that part isn’t exactly clear.
Can courts trust evidence collected by Cellebrite s mobile device forensic tools?
The question was posed late last month by Signal, the messaging app that is a recent new target for Cellebrite s data-collecting tools for law enforcement. Signal s founder, Moxie Marlinspike, contended that software vulnerabilities found in Cellebrite s tools could be used to tamper with evidence. As a result, one lawyer has already filed a motion for a new trial. (see
But Marlinspike isn t the only person who has taken a close look at Cellebrite s devices. On Friday, Matt Bergin of KoreLogic will present his latest findings at the Black Hat Asia conference, which relate to Cellebrite s Universal Forensic Extraction Device (UFED).
New Cellebrite Research Questions Its Trustworthiness bankinfosecurity.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from bankinfosecurity.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.