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 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.
The difficulty is that living in a nation with a crumbling rule of law, I have little idea of what the police might go after me for in the future. And I refuse to silence myself to the extent required to navigate around their hypothetical future repression.