Crims' texts wiped

Police seek law change to ensure phone messages are archived

The Government will consider a law change forcing phone companies to archive cellphone text messages, amid police fears that they are being stripped of a vital crime-fighting tool.

New Zealanders send 640million texts a month, and police say seized cellphone communications are now crucial in nearly every major crime investigation.

Text messages, which can be accessed only with a search warrant, can reveal who offenders meet, their movements, motives and even confessions.

But Vodafone has stopped archiving texts and now Telecom has confirmed it will follow suit.

In the United States and Europe the information is deemed so important for law enforcement and anti-terrorism measures that governments have passed laws compelling companies to keep records.

The Police Association says the companies have a social responsibility to store cellphone records. "It's something that's an essential crime-fighting tool," president Greg O'Connor said. "It's a very rare major inquiry that doesn't have some sort of texting contained as evidence.

"Juries now want so much evidence to convict and so often the real or concrete evidence is provided by text."

The conviction this month of Daniel Moore for the murder of Tony Stanlake, whose handless body was found on Wellington's south coast, was bolstered by an extensive text trail documenting Moore's movements.

He used texts to lure Mr Stanlake to his death and later received a message from a friend that read: "Bro, did you just do what I think you did?"

The text messages were included among 32,000 phone log entries submitted as part of the prosecution case.

Mr O'Connor said the association had appealed to Police Minister Annette King to intervene. "We're getting real concerns coming to us from detectives around the country, extremely concerned that this is going to hamstring them. Criminals will be rubbing their hands with glee knowing that they can text with impunity."

A spokesman for Ms King said she recognised the importance of text messages to investigations and was encouraging police to seek a solution with the phone companies. "If one can't be found voluntarily, the Government will look at other measures, including legislation."

Vodafone spokesman Paul Brislen said the firm gave police a year's warning before it stopped storing text content in March 2007. It now used technology that sent the messages without decoding or recording them.

Telecom spokesman Phil Love said it was required to ensure the privacy of customers and kept information for as long as required for necessary business functions.

Police national crime manager Win van der Velde said that, though phone companies were private businesses, they also had a role as good corporate citizens.

 

Condemned by their own words

* "Bro, did you do what I think you did?"

Peter Leach to Daniel Moore on finding Tony Stanlake's blood smeared through his flat. Moore was convicted of Stanlake's murder.

* "Starting to sort out problem. Just making it go away."

Text from Kylie Dianne Southon's phone just before the 2005 killing of former Timaru Road Knights boss Ricky "Boof" Burnard.

Soon after his death, other texts stated: "Problem solved" and "All good. We got our life back."

Southon and Anthony Kevin Peters were jailed for manslaughter.

* "Hey mate, Toni has just told the pigs we burned down the house at Thackeray St. We need to get our story straight."

Nicholas Andrew Edgarton to Richard Steven Pearce, who carried out a Molotov cocktail attack that killed an Upper Hutt woman. Carol May Clayton was convicted of murder, Edgarton and Pearce convicted of manslaughter.

* "The most monumental f . . . up ever. No excuse . . . head in wrong place."

Text sent by a 32-year-old Dunedin man to the sister of a young Otago girl he was accused of raping. He was found guilty on two counts of rape.

- © Fairfax NZ News