[Wyoming23]

Doesn't the service provider (AT&T or whoever) have a copy of the messages they could subpoena?

It seems shocking to me that deleting the messages off the phones makes them inaccessible to prosecution, when presumably there are backups on multiple servers controlled by telecom companies and other government entities.

[WaitWaitWha]

All TelCos in all countries have backup of the SMS messages. The key part is for how long and what details.

In the US, for example AT&T is only a couple of days; Verizon, 3-10 days for SMS contents. Everything else like subscriber info, call history, tower location, tower dumps, range-to-tower can be years.

In EU similar patchwork.

(source: me half century in field)

[Rimintil]

It makes no sense that a telcom would be 'backing up' your SMS (or maybe not even SMS -- could all be iMessage which the telcom doesn't see) texts. What reason would they have to do so? Where's the business value of storing all of that data, supporting the infrastructure, supporting restore requests from customers?

[from]

Here is a graphic from a VICE article: https://video-images.vice.com/_uncategorized/1634930279896-r...

Actual message content is kept only for a short period of time.

[justinclift]

Some countries have legislation around this. eg telecoms providers must at all times keep the latest 2 days worth of SMS messages from all subscribers

[late2part]

Just long enough to be quickly copied off if appropriate filters exist.

[chaostheory]

The carriers themselves likely wouldn’t do it. The government just needs a data hose

https://www.dhs.gov/fusion-center-locations-and-contact-info...

[artificialLimbs]

Training data for machine learning. Targeted ads. Punishing your enemies.

[andylynch]

Call taping and message archiving via the network is a somewhat popular way of handling these requirements for regulated staff.

[Spooky23]

There’s a difference between police investigations and civil/normal entities.

The key thing is to have a policy or practice. If your policy is to purge texts after 7 days, that’s a defensible position. If your behavior is to throw your phone in the river around the time of your communicating about a matter of interest to a litigant, that reflects poorly.

[degrees57]

I don't think they keep them for very long. I know that my organization looked at purchasing Smarsh, which hooks in to the API that providers present so that Smarsh can do it's archiving. IIRC, there was a short time limit (not a whole lot of days) on being able to retrieve the messages from the providers.

Also, if I'm a provider, keeping all those text messages is going to be a more of a liability than a benefit. It's an expense for storage and retrieval. I'm not sure they would really make any money off of maintaining a long history; it would be super rare that this would pay off. Better to just state that "after n days, they are gone, we're done. Archiving is up to you, the customer."

[ceejayoz]

Do you want your cell phone provider keeping a history of everything you've ever texted?

[Manuel_D]

I might actually see the value in opting into this, especially if they provide a service where they can notarize SMS message logs. Someone says you texted them something inappropriate, or harassing, and you can grab the logs and expose them to be either mistaken or dishonest.

[rationalist]

No, but I would be surprised if they weren't.

[bombcar]

I could certainly see it being a regulated option for government officials.

I already operate on the assumption that all text messages (like all emails) are scanned and stored somewhere to my detriment.

[dubcanada]

You're implying they don't already, when that has been largely proved to be in fact true, they do keep history of every text message.

[shadowgovt]

Actually, this case is an excellent example of why that is probably a conspiracy theory that does not align with reality.

[orangepurple]

The term "conspiracy theory" is a psyop to auto-discredit anything labeled as one.

[ceejayoz]

Hilariously, this is a conspiracy theory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory#Origin_and_U...

> The earliest known usage was by the American author Charles Astor Bristed, in a letter to the editor published in The New York Times on January 11, 1863.

> The term "conspiracy theory" is itself the subject of a conspiracy theory, which posits that the term was popularized by the CIA in order to discredit conspiratorial believers, particularly critics of the Warren Commission, by making them a target of ridicule.

[testTED]

> the term was popularized by the CIA in order to discredit conspiratorial believers, particularly critics of the Warren Commission, by making them a target of ridicule.

Who popularized it is subjective.

What isn't subjective: the CIA indeed sent out a memo about this. It marked an increase in the use of the term in popular media publications. You can find it and read it.

[shadowgovt]

That notion is just a conspiracy theory by Big Conspiracy to push more conspiracy theories. ;)

[testTED]

Yes, all those drives in Utah are just for appearances.

[ceejayoz]

AT&T and the NSA are not the same thing.

AT&T is almost certainly not storing every text message long-term. The NSA likely is. It wouldn't be surprising if that's via a direct PRISM-style integration, but it still means subpoenaing AT&T for old texts is likely to not be productive. (As it was not productive in this particular case.)

Subpoena the NSA and they'll say "no, for national security reasons".

[shadowgovt]

I'm not even sure we can extrapolate that the NSA is storing anything like every text message long-term (as opposed to metadata, or samples, or the full transcripts of individuals targeted for investigation, or a machine learning trained weights set to flag messages that indicate someone should go on the targeted-for-investigation list).

6 billion text messages are sent per day in the US. That's about the volume of Google web searches, and I know from experience Google doesn't have the capacity to log every search or the logs of evaluation of every search. If Google lacks the capacity, I suspect the NSA lacks the capacity.

[the_doctah]

If I was murdered and it would help the investigation, absolutely.

[ceejayoz]

That is a big (and vanishingly rare) if, to be balanced against the much wider spread harm.

[chasil]

They are certainly able to do so.

The only tool that I know of that can encrypt SMS messages is Silence. The source code is quite stale.

The fifth amendment allows an individual to refuse to disclose a password in criminal trials (they can be compelled to open biometric locks, hwoever). I don't know if these protections would extend to civil proceedings such as occurred here; if not, the judge could hold such witnesses in contempt.

https://silence.im