Apple Health app data used in German rape/murder trial of Iranian refugee

66 Comments

“Health data has provided crucial evidence at a trial in Germany, in which a refugee is accused of rape and murder,” BBC News reports. “Apple’s Health App accurately records steps and has been pre-installed on the iPhone 6S and newer models. Data suggesting the suspect was climbing stairs could correlate to him dragging his victim down a riverbank and climbing back up, police said.”

“The accused – Hussein K – has admitted his guilt but disputed some details,” The Beeb reports. “The 19-year-old medical student Maria Ladenburger was murdered in October 2016 and the trial – at the district court in Freiburg – started in September. Ms Ladenburger was raped and drowned in the River Dresiam.”

“The suspect – identified by a hair found at the scene of the crime – refused to provide police with the PIN code to his phone so investigating officers turned to an unnamed cyber-forensics firm in Munich, which broke into the device,” The Beeb reports. “As well as locating Hussein’s movements, the phone also suggested periods of more strenuous activity, including two peaks, which the app put down to him ‘climbing stairs.'”

“Complicating the trial are attempts to pin down Hussein’s real age,” The Beeb reports. “He initially claimed that he was 17 but his father, tracked down to Iran, has disputed this.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: This is one of the first uses of biometric data from a smartphone / wearable. It certainly won’t be the last. Also, it looks like German investigators, at least, can figure out how to get data from an iPhone when they need it. However that hole was exploited, hopefully, Apple’s already closed it.

Note: Today is Martin Luther King Day in the U.S. and the markets are closed. As such, we will have limited posting today.

66 Comments

        1. I don’t deny religious freedom. Botty does.

          Theocracy, establishing religious law in public life, however, is incompatible with democracy and that’s why I single them out. Atheists and agnostics are not a threat to democracy, just their own souls. This is why they are left out of my comment.

          Human imposed theocracy is also inconsistent with the three major religions, as God gave humanity free will, while theocracies take it away.

        6. I have no more time for you. You are not defending rights, you are defending evil that abuses and manipulates personal liberties of the Constitution.

        8. My last suggestion to you is to take any females in your life, a daughter, a sister, a wife and visit with her in a “No Go Zone” in Paris and report back your “liberalism.”

          Your PC horseshít is not going to destroy our country as Europe has been, you will lose and lose badly.

          That’s a fúcking promise.

        2. I was using it in the negative, I disapprove of theocracies period. Including my own Christian one’s from history.

          “Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and give unto God that which is God’s”

          Separation of Church and State benefits both.

        6. “Islam in a man is more dangerous than rabies in a man.”
          – Winston Churchill

          I prefer the advice of the above defender of civilization than a bleeding heart, mindless twat, such as yourself.

    2. Fundamentalist Christianity: where every day is 200 AD (per canon).

      See how stupid you sound? If you conflate age with obsolescence, then the christian offshoots of judaism are even more irrelevant by your pathetic logic.

      Reply

      1. Actually, if you want to go old testament, it is actually 600BC. Evidently Botty is OK with the Lords Resistance Army killing thousands of Africans in the name of Christ, not to mention the kidnapping of child soldiers, rape, and forced child marriages, all in the name of Christ.

        Reply

        6. Not really. Someone calling himself a genius, really smart, believe me, that’s just ridiculous, especially given the context. But I have no problem if you can’t see it.

  4. I had a contract worker who had something of a track record for being late and offering fanciful excuses for turning up late.

    One day he arrived for work three hours late and insisted that his car had broken down and it took ages for the breakdown service to arrive.

    I asked him if he’d mind unlocking his iPhone and letting me have a quick look at it. He immediately pointed out that he had deleted his call to the breakdown people as he didn’t anticipate needing them again but was happy to let me take a look anyway.

    I never wanted to look at his call records. Instead, by looking at the detailed breakdown of the number of steps he took that morning it revealed that he didn’t move at all until almost two hours after he should have been at work. I’ve never booked him since then.

    Reply

        2. No issues with your manners, but you do need to brush up your reading comprehension skills.

          The way that the iPhone was unlocked was explained in my post and pointed out by KenC, but you missed it twice.

        3. I know what you did…

          My sarcasm is directed at the whole Apple/FBI theater.
          Apple capitulates to Chinese censorship, but “stands up to the FBI”. Yeah… right!

          Perhaps I get too subtle and cryptic, I need to work on my communication skills. My contempt (not at you, at BS) is quite healthy.

          BTW… where did KenC point it out? I only got my manners pointed out.

  5. What a great story. I bet there are those just drooling at the prospects of having a back door into this rich field of biometrics. I mean monitoring cameras are one thing, basically bringing what George Orwell predicted, a population under constant surveillance.

    Still cameras are only skin deep, just imagine how it would be to be able to get under the skin and view the physiology of a person or better yet a group of people if you had a backdoor. Then you could say arrest or better yet, beat up, over even shoot a person cause they are showing high biological activity at say some sort of presentation. Of course that someone might be getting excited cause they are checking out someone in the row in front of them, but those are trivial details that should not get in the way of those who just love to shoot others.

    That’s just the start, I can imagine some star and skidmark hole government wanting Apple to put an explosive or a poison device in Apple watches that are sold outside their country. It takes war to a whole new level that war addicts won’t be able to resist.

    You can almost hear the whines now chanting for Apple to do this so that they can stop criminals and terrorist though the reality is that the whiners are the criminals and terrorists.

    Reply

  6. If Germany had a sane immigration policy, 19-year-old medical student Maria Ladenburger would still be alive today.

    But, of course, the “contributions” and “diversity” offered by the likes of Iranian “Hussein K” are so important to Germany that they sacrifice their young to get it.

    Those who willingly pollute their culture deserve to wallow in it.

    Fools.

    Reply

      1. Heyyyyy, watchyerself – I got a friend named Trumpy. Lives down the block. Smart as a whip. Ran for Dog Council and blew away the Shitzu running against him.

        Helped turn the whole neighborhood economy around … got more dogs back to work … trillions of kibble bits coming back to the area … kicked out the riff-raff … Made Akitas Great Again.

        Reply

    2. I have nothing against immigration and those that want to come to the USA and better themselves. This country was built on this concept. What I do take exception to are those that want to come to the USA and make it an extension of their home country; the one they wanted to leave. Either come here and accept our way of life and join it or stay in your home country if you just want to make the USA another Iran, or India, or whatever. You left your country for a reason; don’t try to make the USA what you left. If it was so good, why did you come to the USA?

      Reply

      1. Yet, within the confines of the Constitution, they are absolutely free to live as they want within the law. They can also be judged by it, what they cannot be is forbidden.

        What exactly “is” our “way of life” if not our Constitution anyway? This country doesn’t even have a formal language.

        Reply

        1. You and your ilk love wasting other people’s money so that you “feel” better.

          You, like most Dem/Lib/Progs, think not requiring citizenship and assimilation equals “compassion,” when, in fact, you are hurting the country and the immigrants. You think handouts are more “compassionate” than requiring the able-bodied to work, versus staying in a perpetual state of welfare reliance when, in fact, you are hurting the country and the poor. The solutions to problems, in your feeble mind, are always “more government” and “more spending.” And you Dem/Lib/Progs fail routinely.

          The solution to the immigration policy doesn’t sound “compassionate,” but it is. Secure borders, citizens to know a common language and legal immigrants to assimilate into the culture. If you do not want to be American, either get out or do not come here in the first place.

          Making English the official language would encourage new migrants to learn the language of the country they have adopted as theirs. The end goal is to unite the American people, while improving the lives of immigrants and native-born inhabitants.

          There would be savings; official English would save billions in federal spending. The direct cost of translators and bilingual education alone are billions, and many of these costs are born by local governments. In Los Angeles in 2002, $15 million, or 15 percent of the election budget, was devoted to printing ballots in seven languages and hiring bilingual poll workers. Los Angeles county hires over 400 full-time court interpreters at a cost of $265 per day. In 2000, President Bill Clinton signed into law Executive Order 13166, which forces health care providers who accept Medicare and Medicaid payments to hire interpreters for any patient who requires one, at the providers’ own expense.

          The indirect costs of accidents and lost productivity caused by the millions of people who don’t speak English are billions more. These have included fatal traffic accidents, workplace accidents, and accidents caused when medical professionals could not understand patients or patients’ families.

          Many second generation immigrants who don’t speak English find themselves negatively affected by limited employment opportunities. Learning English has always opened doors for immigrants and their families, allowing them to enter the American mainstream and move up the socioeconomic ladder. Over the last two generations, though, that ideal has been distorted. Requiring immigrants to learn English, and the English language itself has been called a “tool of oppression,” attempts to encourage English acquisition denounced as racist. Maurice Ferre, former mayor of Miami has declared that there is no need for Spanish speakers to learn English. “We’re talking about Spanish as a main form of communication, as an official language, not on the way to English.”

          As the government provides immigrants with bilingual education; government-funded interpreters in schools, police departments and hospitals; with dual-language driver’s license exams, tax forms, voting ballots, and services, it has made it easy for them not to learn English. In Hartford, Connecticut, far from the border states where we usually think this concentrated, over 40 percent of the residents are Hispanic, and half the Spanish-speaking residents do not speak English. City services are all provided in Spanish, employees at most businesses speak Spanish, and there’s no real need for Spanish speakers to learn English. Hartford is becoming a Latin American city.

          Across the country, 21.3 million people were classified as “limited English proficient” by the 2000 census — 8 percent of the population. Almost a quarter of them, 5 million, were born in the United States.

          In some Florida high schools, the failure rates on the states Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT), which is required for graduation, exceed 20 percent. Because many of those who fail don’t speak fluent English, there have been demands to either abolish the exam, or to provide it in Spanish. We are creating classes of people who will never need to speak English and who will never learn it.

          The percentages of foreign-language speakers are of course larger in states like California, New Mexico and Texas, but the increasing reluctance to learn English isn’t just among Spanish speakers. The United States is home to native speakers of more than 350 languages, and it finds itself catering to people who speak Arabic, French and Chinese, as well as Spanish.

          English is not our official language now, and that means government has to provide services in dozens of languages to accommodate a non-English-speaking population. By catering to non-English speakers, we are creating linguistic ghettos. These are also employment ghettos.

          Once upon a time, immigrants were eager to learn English. English fluency with the goal of assimilating into the mainstream was once an explicit goal of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC). Now the executive director of LULAC can declare, “We cannot assimilate and we won’t!” Still, people around the world believe that it’s important to learn English, and most immigrants, if confronted with the need, would probably try to learn it.

          But it is not necessary. Our failure to push English as our official language has eliminated the need to learn English. If we keep up this course, we could become like Canada and fracture along ethnic/racial lines. And even with a population a tenth of ours, the Canadian government’s attempts to cater to two language groups cost over $2.4 billion per year.

          If we are going to be a united people, people who understand each other and can work together with people from anywhere in the country, we will have to have an official national language. Let that language be the language of our fundamental law – the Constitution – and our declaration of independence. The solution to our linguistic fracturing is quite simple: English. — Brandon Brice, December 31, 2014

        2. I don’t oppose a sensible immigration policy and enforcing it.

          And I submit to you that our ONLY culture is our Constitution because all other’s internally were eith American Indian or came from somewhere else. Which one do you enforce?

          ” Our failure to push English as our official language has eliminated the need to learn English.”

          That is a fact, I agree.

          If you believe the land should have a formal language, then pass a Constitutional Amendment, because there is no legally binding singular language. Be careful what you ask for though, it might not be English. It’s not a “liberal’s” fault the US doesn’t have a formal language.

          A liberal would simply defend the right to use any language in private conversation.

        3. BTW…
          “You and your ilk love wasting other people’s money so that you “feel” better.”

          Not only that, that’s secondary. It’s really to prevent being from forced to be like you. To each their own…

        4. English was never as dominant in the US as the “English as the National Language” advocates would suggest.

          Louisiana joined the US in 1803, and there are living citizens who speak French as their first language. The original official version of the Louisiana Civil Code, still in effect, was in French.

          The state song of Hawai’i is the former national anthem, sung in Hawaiian.

          There is still a Czech-language newspaper in Granger, Texas, although immigration from Bohemia ended in 1914.

          As of the 1910 census, German was more commonly spoken in Texas than Spanish. At least until recently, you could hear German spoken on the street in Fredericksburg, Texas. It was settled by Germans in 1840. The primary grades at Zion Lutheran School in Walburg, Texas, were taught in German until sometime in the 1960s.

          The members of Palm Valley Lutheran Church in Round Rock and St. John’s Methodist Church in Georgetown were still singing Swedish carols at their Christmas services into the 1980s, a century after their ancestors arrived in America.

          First Lutheran Church, Austin—called that because it was the first in Central Texas to hold Sunday services in English, rather than German or Swedish—was founded in 1939, almost a century after the Germans arrived in the region.

          I’m sure that people from elsewhere in the country can tell similar stories. All those folks, regardless of their language, are loyal American citizens. There is no reason to believe that people who speak Spanish, Arabic, or Somali in their households cannot be equally faithful Americans.

    3. If the US had a sane policy ALL the hundreds of black lives taken would still be alive today.

      If the US were a sane culture, I might still be able to see a few native Indians every day downtown.
      If the US were a sane culture, the buffalo would roam the plains as the wilderdeest roams the serengeti.
      Is the US were a sane culture, millions of people would still be alive in Vietnam and Iraq. Both wars were illegally started on false pretences.
      If the US were a sane culture, they would not have bombed their own ship (killing their own men) just to start a war.

      This just the tip of an iceberg. A hundred other examples still.

      Just a few days ago a video of a woman being dumped on the street by hospital workers…..somewhere in the east, maybe New York. She was wearing only socks and a hospital operating theatre gown that was coming undone. It was 30 degrees outside, night. She was moaning because she had just had an operation of some sort. Fine culture you got there!

      Reply

      3. Waah-waah-waahaaahhh … “I point out a few things that specific administrations in America have done, in a completely out-of-contact manner, half of them ridiculous, and I’m just ‘certain’ that I’ve made a powerful point.”

        Yeh-heh-hehehhhesssss … let me call the WHAM-bulance for you: Buffalo still exist, there’s no such thing as a “native Indian” (whatever the hell that is), and most black people in America are killed by other black people.

        Far be it that we place a microscope overtop the history of the many other cultures that have been around a lot longer in order to examine their “pristine” pasts. I’m sure they’d stand up to deeply intense scrutiny. (That was sarcasm, for all the SJW’s reading this and crying right now.)

        After all, I don’t see anyone risking actual death to get INTO China, Vietnam, Uzbekistan, Somalia, Georgia, the Maldives, or even [Gasp!] … MEH-he-co. You know, that supremely racist nation on our southern border that also actually makes it difficult to move there. And KICKS YOU OUT if you try and stay.

        I weep for the leftist college-educated among us.

        I’d keed them too … but I don’t think they’d get the joke.

        Reply

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