However, once we explained that data transmissions occur all the time, whether the phone is being used by the person or not, and that it is impossible to determine what kind of data is being transferred, the opposing party dropped the case.
Our firm worked a trucking accident case where the opposing expert was a 20-year veteran homicide detective who advised counsel that data transmissions indicated the truck driver was using his phone at the time of the accident.
The biggest mistake we see in the interpretation of this activity is that data transmissions are the result of user activity. The call detail records can contain multiple types of records, including voice, text messaging and data transmission activity. Billable activity does not include outgoing calls that did not connect to another phone, and may not include outgoing calls that connect to another phone’s voicemail. Also, a phone bill is only going to give you evidence of billable activity. A call that lasts one minute and one second will show as two minutes on a phone bill. This means that a phone call that lasts 15 seconds would show 1 minute on a phone bill.
These records are known as call detail records and they are different from phone bills.Ī phone bill is only accurate to the minute since the majority of wireless phone companies bill to the next full minute. In the many investigations we perform, the cell phone device is missing for myriad reasons, leaving any evidence of phone usage to be gleaned from the wireless phone company records. That is why Apple doesn’t/can’t comply in federal and local government subpoenas. Only the recipient’s phone/device can decrypt it (end-to-end encryption). They have an encrypted version without the ability to decrypt it.
So, does Apple have access to the contents of the messages? Not really. At the end of the day, it is incoming and outgoing data (like loading a webpage or YouTube video) and not actually a text message. Because of these alternative systems, cell phone companies don’t actually have information on these messages.
It is what Apple to Apple devices use and it falls back to SMS if iMessage isn’t available. iMessage, for example, uses end-to-end encryption and a data/WiFi connection to send and receive instead of SMS. However, not all messages are what cell phone companies consider text messages. To get the contents, a request must be made to the cell phone company within days of the incident. Text messaging is also shown in the call detail records, however, the content of the messages are not.