Smartphones can reveal a lot about their owners to law enforcement

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Many people still feel that what they do with their Smartphones is private.  They would be surprised to learn what law enforcement agencies can find about them on their phone.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) published a report based on a drug investigation by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). Forbes magazine reports that the report offered a detailed account of a  seizure of a suspect’s smartphone . The seizure in this case did require a warrant, but this is not the case in every situation. The u.s department of homeland security (DHS) has created its own policy stating that border searches, which sometimes result in the seizure of laptops, cell phones, or other electronic devices, do not violate civil liberties.

The document shows a detailed list of personal information including call logs, photos, videos, text messages, Web history, and passwords for eight different Web services. The most important information discovered was the 659 previous locations where the person was, which was invisibly gathered from Wi-Fi networks and cell towers.

Experts say that people who want to keep law enforcement away from their data should use long, complex passwords and encrypt their phone’s storage disk.

“While the law does not sufficiently protect the private data on martphones, technology can at least provide some protection,”