Great point! Egotism makes people do very unwise things, not just crooks. How many technology giants have very poor practices that allow crooks and scammers to take advantage of their customers event though these companies obviously have the expertise to prevent the compromise? I feel that we need to integrate mandatory cybersecurity and forensics education into law enforcement and law school curricula, Nation-wide, so that our law enforcement personnel and prosecutors are educated in a manner that allows them to leverage all the tools at their disposal so that they don't need to rely on slip ups from the crooks.
Law enforcement has a powerful tool in their right under US Law to obtain information they need from Internet Service Providers so even if the crook did not hand law enforcement what they needed, law enforcement should be able to compel service providers, even as powerful as Google to hand over data on individuals with a court order even if it is in another country.
Refer to https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/blog/important-court-opinion-holds-lawful-warrants-can-be-used-...
You probably know this already but law enforcement can make a formal request to the service provider requesting they preserve the data in question while a subpoena, warrant, or court order is made requiring the records. Under the Stored Communications Act (SCA), enacted as part of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act in 1986, service providers must preserve stored data for up to 180 days on government request. Refer to https://www.eff.org/issues/mandatory-data-retention/us
I may be wrong but I am willing to bet that many law enforcement personnel would not know all the legal rights they have to get the forensic data they need from service providers that the crooks can't impact and that most crooks don't even know exists about them. Even if GPS is disabled the cell phone can still prove where crooks were and what they were doing and once quantum computing becomes mainstream technology, encryption will be able to be overcome in nearly all cases.
Respectfully,
Francis (Frank) Mayer, CISSP EMERITUS
