Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers were convicted of causing more than £620,000 worth of damage to the tree and more than £1,000 worth of damage to Hadrian’s Wall in Northumberland.
On 27 September 2023, the pair drove 30 miles through a storm to Northumberlandfrom Cumbria, where they both lived, before felling the tree overnight in a matter of minutes.
The article is suspiciously avoiding the question how they were caught or how police got access to the phone of one of them.
Interesting question. I remember they were caught fairly quickly after it happened. I don’t know much about UK surveillance or device searching laws.
Edit: some other suspects were arrested before these two, then released. I wonder if they testified?
Another article mentions this:
Police analyst Amy Sutherland told the court the video was in the download section of Graham’s phone, which was taken from his jacket pocket.
If it was unlocked perhaps the police were just able to open it and view the file. Here in the US the main obstacle is the lock on the phone which usually police can’t get past, though maybe there’s a secret way for high profile cases, I couldn’t say.
Here in the US the main obstacle is the lock on the phone which usually police can’t get past,
In recent years police were able to get into phones quite easily. See this nytimes article: https://archive.is/fOTDz Not sure what the current state of the art is.
Oh interesting I wasn’t aware of this.
It was likely a phone sold by a local carrier with a carrier distributed image on it with a backdoor. That’s how it usually is done by nanny states.
So there is a back way. Is this generally the case in most countries?
The most likely explanation is just that the phone’s storage wasn’t encrypted. Most Android phones come with unencrypted filesystems by default - iPhones do encrypt by default although there have been recent legislative changes in the UK which weaken Apple’s default security.
If the phone’s storage is unencrypted, police don’t need to get into the phone - they just open it up, take out the storage medium, and read it using a different device.
Not a lawyer, but it’s also possible that once they were arrested and charged, the perpetrators could be compelled legally to unlock even an encrypted phone.
tldr here is that if you’re concerned about the authorities being able to see something, simply do not put it on your phone. End of.
This is stupidly sad. And they took a trophy.
Why?
They’ve refused to say. Maybe after sentencing they will comment since it might be bad for their case to do so.
