what always concerns me about lost phones at raves and other night time events is if either someone actually is honest and does hand it in to the cops, or even if they are not and are subsequently arrested and the stolen phone seized from them and kept in the Police property stores.
just 10km up the road from me various boffins have developed (with the agreement of all the mobile networks and manufactures) equipment which grabs every bit of data off a mobile phone within minutes. this equipment has now been refined to the point it does not require taking the phone apart and a normal bobby can operate it as easily as they can charge up their own personal mobile or their airwave radio set (and cops today are more computer literate than before as many ex-IT workers crossed the blue line in the last economic recession). Although there are “remote wipe and lock” facilities I would expect they do not properly wipe the data or nastier violent criminals would use them to conceal evidence, and no mobile phone company wants their devices to be associated with scum (hence why blackberry’s flirtation with the urban music scene hasn’t exactly paid off).
OK I would hope that most folk do not blatantly store their dealers name and number along with the drugs they sell, but people do do that with partylines and once you have the CDR (call detail record) of a mobile its easy enough to work out the numbers of someones friends and relatives.
I do also remember a while back someone said their dealer was busted and they got a text from the feds warning them about the dangers of drugs and it contained a link back to the Police website with details of the case, the penalty handed down to the dealer and links to drug advice centres…
