Oz sports’ pee-samplers outed buying Cellebrite phone-crack kit Australia is ramping up its use of phone-cracking technology to crack serious criminals: its peak sports anti-doping body has taken a Cellbrite licence. ASADA, the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority, announced the near-AU$13,000 licence at the government's tender site in April. The announcement says ASADA is using the …
"I can imagine athletes telling them to push off when asked to hand over their phone though."
It may be that providing access to communications if required is part of the anti-doping code that the athletes have to sign up to - I'm sure they'd prefer to tell the officials to "push off" when having to detail a one hour window and location on every day when they can be tested but hey don't get an option on that.
I thought anti-doping agencies grabbed athletes for mandatory urine samples after competition and maybe also periodically (presumably to make sure someone who uses forbidden performance-enhancing substances gets a place on the national team and hurts the country's reputation if caught). I also thought athletes could not refuse those tests if they wanted to compete. I also thought this was not law enforcement, and that performance-enhancing substances in general are not illegal unless one competes in official events.
Where does hacking phones fit in? And how can it possibly be justified? Even Down Under...
Well... yes and no (but you are of course mostly right - and very definitely right about the hacking-phones-stuff)
If you actually look at the list, there are a few things that are illegal anyway (e.g. some hard drugs), no matter if you are an athlete or not. Yes, many are substances that would be illegal for athletes to use, either at all or inside a competition, that are otherwise legal medical drugs. Stuff like Salbuthamol comes to my mind. My kid had a series of nasty respiratory infections this winter and he got a prescription for this stuff. For me as a registered athlete (very few races per year, but getting an annual license is cheaper than getting one per race) it would have been a problem (though for Salbuthamol there is a rather generous limit in place below which you are allowed to use it, and as far as I recall it is _in competition_ not outside, and the prescription stuff was not inhaled, which is treated differently) - but there are some cold medications that are actually forbidden in and out of competition.
The other important example "drug" is alcohol. It is only forbidden in FAI and FIA competitions (flight and motorsports). And of course there is caffeine, which is currently "under observation" in use, i.e. they track usage and might impose limits in the future. There was a limit in place several years ago (but only inside competition, I think, and one you couldn't reach by drinking coffee unless you are a sysadmin).
(to all actually competing in a sport: check the list, check with your GP and your pharmacist, it is your own responsibility to stay clean, please do so - not that most of us would be actually tested, either inside or outside of a race)
"Where does hacking phones fit in? And how can it possibly be justified? Even Down Under..."
Just read an article on Telegraph online about Pakistani cricketers in test match being reprimanded by ICC officials for wearing smartwatches during the game - to quote the artcle
"Should they choose to do so, the ICC is entitled to download all the material from the smart watches to monitor activity. Last year, the ICC’s anti-corruption unit gained the power to force players to hand over their mobile phones - including all activity on instant messaging services such as WhatsApp - as part of attempts to curb the risk of corruption."
Any adult borrowing the children's books "Five on Brexit Island" or "The Ladybird Book of the People Next Door".
"Bloke: But! I was only having a game of darts and a pint of throat charmer."
Depends who is organising the darts match .... my son does fencing and needed to join the British Fencing Assocation when he waa ~12 to get their insurance cover for fencing at the local club - but as part of joining he had to explicitly agree that he would submit to any doping tests that he was asked to perform. In reality he has never been tested.
I'm sure there's no truth to the shaggy dog story about the athlete and his odd location. The story I heard was that the doping authorities arrived where he was supposed to be. He wasn't there and when they did catch up with him he a perfectly good explanation. He was having had an affair and explained he didn't want his wife to find out hence the duff info on his whereabouts.
As an interesting sideline on data protection on GDPR day, one of the leading UK athletes (forget which one now) described in an interview a couple of years ago that he'd had a "missed test" because he'd given the hotel he was staying in as his location early in the morning, a doping control official arrived at hotel and asked front desk for the room number, they refused as they considered that to be confidential. Ofiicial told them they could not phone athlete to say he was there as that would be considered a breach of the the "no notice test" so he sat in lobby for the hour that the athlete had specified and when they didn't appear recorded it as a missed test. Meanwhile athlete was in his room a few yards away and would not have had a problem with a knock on hte door from a tester as that is what athletes have to expect.
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