[ExI] local high tech cops save woman with ipad

[Mike Dougherty]

On Wed, Oct 15, 2014 at 10:56 AM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:
> Cool!  This is a local story, but cool anyway.  Local woman ran off the road
> back of Mount Hamilton, roll-over accident not visible from the road, woman
> injured bigtime.  Cops unlock ipad by guessing password and figure out where
> she is, find her, happy ending.
> http://patch.com/california/campbell/officer-unlocks-ipad-find-injured-campbell-woman-missing-19-hours-0#.VD6J4_ldXpc

> Campbell police Lt. Gary Berg said that around 2 p.m. Monday, the OnStar
> security system in the woman’s car notified the Police Department that it
> had been in a rollover accident, but reported the location as at Camden
> Avenue and state Highway 17 in San Jose, Berg said.
>
> Campbell police searched streets in the area, the CHP looked on nearby
> highways for two hours and the woman’s car horn was activated through OnStar
> but they could not find it, according to Berg.
>
> At about 4 p.m. Monday, the system reported that the car was in downtown San
> Jose possibly near Fourth Street and San Jose police were notified but the
> car could not be found, Berg said.

So Onstar mislead the police about the location - twice.  Somehow
their system doesn't flag "rollover accident" plus "2 hours later at
another location" as being any kind of suspicious?

> At about 3 a.m. today, the woman’s family called Campbell police to report
> her missing, saying that it was out of character for her not to be home,
> police said.

The family is unaware of the rollover notification and 2 hours' worth
of police search?  Seems like that'd be noteworthy to inform them
about.
Did the police really just shrug, give up, and wait for a missing person report?

> A Campbell police officer responded to the family’s residence, asked them
> about her cellphone, which was an iPhone, then took the woman’s iPad tablet
> and began trying a number of potential passwords, such as her birthday and
> address, Berg said.

Because the police are white hat hackers who know "a number of
potential passwords"?  Yeah, in the end the woman was rescued - but it
should have been the woman's family attempting to hack her iPad - not
the police.  If the police used a magical Apple-supported
law-enforcement shim to open the iPad, then huzzah for police - but
don't report it as lucky guessing to unlock an iPad.  (of course, such
a hole is no-doubt exploitable by the bad guys too)

> The officer finally succeeded in choosing her password, accessed the iPad
> and went to the “Find my iPhone” application for tracking iPhones and
> pinpointed the location of her phone and car, Berg said.
>
> Santa Clara County sheriff’s deputies were then sent to the car’s location
> and worked on getting the woman out of her overturned car and the CHP took
> over the investigation into the crash, Berg said.

Did they then notify Onstar of the car's real location and that it was
still flipped over?  (While standing in front of the flipped vehicle,
I'd want to know where they thought it was located)

> “We feel pretty fortunate our officer was able to get into that iPad,” Berg
> said.
>
> After the woman’s car left the road and went down the steep hill, it turned
> over and came to rest on its roof, Lee said.
>
> The CHP has not yet determined the cause of the crash, he said.

No doubt the woman was distracted by actually using the iPhone at the
time of the oopsy.

So is the takeaway from this story that if you're going to
accidentally drive off the road and disappear, be sure you've
disregarded every bit of digital safety advice and left behind a trail
of gadgets with easily-guessable passwords so you can be found?  :)