City of McHenry, county prosecutor to open forensic computer lab

When McHenry Police Detective Sgt. Nick Clesen talks about using brute force to break open a case, he doesn’t mean using force against a suspect.

For Clesen and others who use technology to break into a suspect’s cell phone, that “brute force” is one of two pieces of software that will prevent a phone from locking and enter thousands, if not millions, of possible passwords into a cell phone – beating against its wall of protection until the phone is open.

The McHenry Police Department and the McHenry County State’s Attorney’s Office partnered to create new forensic tech lab, to be housed at the McHenry department, to do just that.

The need for the lab was spurred by the opioid epidemic and prosecuting drug-related deaths, McHenry County State’s Attorney Patrick Kenneally said.

“The defendant’s phone is a big part of closing those cases. … Can we get into the phone and is there evidence of a drug transaction there?” he said.

In certain types of cases, including drug arrests, “a lot of the transaction is set up over the phone and using messages such as WhatsApp, direct messages, simple texting,” Kenneally said. “That is critical evidence of the drug transactions.”

So far, at least in Illinois and on Fourth Amendment grounds, courts have not said a suspect must provide a password for a smart phone, Clesen said. That is why “brute force” is needed to get into the phone.

Once up and running, the lab will allow law enforcement, after obtaining a search warrant, to analyze locked phones and extract data.

It isn’t just in drug cases that a mobile phone can give investigators information, Kenneally added.

If someone is suspected of robbing a gas station and a cellphone was on the person at the time, its location services may tell investigators if the person was there.

Clesen told a story of a person suspected in one case who used a burner phone – a prepaid cell phone – for criminal activities. But his smart phone was in his pocket, too, and turned on, giving investigators location information.

“Accessing that information is critical to hold people accountable and close the case,” Kenneally said.

When the McHenry Police Department received an upgrade in 2019, a room was set aside for forensic computer work, Clesen said. It has radio frequency shielding and when phones come in for investigators, the phones are put in airplane mode, their Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are turned off, and they are placed in a Faraday bag to prevent signals from reaching them and potentially wiping data.

The $61,000 needed in hardware and software for the new lab will come from civil forfeiture funds, not taxpayers, Kenneally said.

Police departments throughout the county will also be able to use the lab if they cover the annual per-user subscription cost of $1,200 each a year, Kenneally said.

The new forensic computer lab will use two software suites to break into the phones, GrayKey and Cellebrite.

GrayKey, Clesen said, was developed after a December 2015 shooting in San Bernardino, California. The FBI wanted access to the shooter’s iPhones, and an Australian firm was able to use vulnerabilities in the phone software to access the device, according to media reports.

The McHenry police already had the Cellebrite software, Clesen said. For the GrayKey piece, phones needed to go to the Mid-States Organized Crime Information Center, a regional crime lab for the Midwest; the FBI; or the state’s attorney’s offices in Lake or Kane county where McHenry County devices would be lower on the priority list.

Getting the information stored in a smart phone quickly helps move a case along, Kenneally said.

“Speed, in any criminal prosecution, is the most important tool in closing cases. You don’t want it to go stale,” Kenneally said.

McHenry Detective Matt Voelker, who has also taken the Cellebrite training, said his department is “able to close a significant number of cases with digital evidence that would not have been available 10 years ago.”