Oct 13, 2026 · 28 min · 10 segments
Your phone knows where you go, who you speak to, and what you search at 2am. In this Expert Q&A, cybersecurity specialist Ahmed Khanji explains who wants that data, how they get it, and what you can…
Ahmed KhanjiGuestKamal SalehHostAnd in Australia at the moment, there's been a lot of news about police being able to get access into the phone.
a recent bill had just passed this month that basically expands the New South Wales police ability to extract a mobile phone if there's a suspicion of a crime or if there's a suspicion that it's linked to organised crime.
What it basically does is it just provides stronger ability for police and law enforcement to extract data from your phone so they can look at it at another time, take it back to the lab, look at it at another time to kind of determine whether a crime has actually occurred.
And I mean, I know you're not a legal expert, but do they require a warrant? What kind of information can they pull off the phone? So before, police would need a warrant, they
would need a judge, they would need a court order to actually undertake an extraction of your phone.
Now, really, police just need things like a suspicion, an association, maybe even a link to something that they're looking into.
And they've basically expanded those powers to just give them more ability to potentially even take an image of your phone at a roadside stop.
Okay, what kind of information can they pull out from the phone? My messages, my photos? Pretty much everything that you do on your phone is available to be extracted with very, very little exceptions.
So just think about your messages, your photos, your calendar, even things like emails and even things like secure messaging apps can all have their data extracted and reviewed by the law enforcement.
So just like you can try data recovery tools at home to recover images from a USB stick, the same technology can be used to recover things like deleted photos and even deleted or disappearing messages from a mobile phone.
So nation state spyware is basically spyware that is either developed by governments, intelligence, or groups that are associated with intelligence or governments all around the world.
Every government is doing it, whether it's China or Russia or the United States or even Australia.
And they're using this spyware basically to target opposition, to target politically exposed individuals, to extract intelligence from their phone for the use of that intelligence.
And does that mean they can access everything on the phone in real time? In fact, it's actually worse.
And in Australia at the moment, there's been a lot of news about police being able to get access into the phone.
a recent bill had just passed this month that basically expands the New South Wales police ability to extract a mobile phone if there's a suspicion of a crime or if there's a suspicion that it's linked to organised crime.
What it basically does is it just provides stronger ability for police and law enforcement to extract data from your phone so they can look at it at another time, take it back to the lab, look at it at another time to kind of determine whether a crime has actually occurred.
And I mean, I know you're not a legal expert, but do they require a warrant? What kind of information can they pull off the phone? So before, police would need a warrant, they
would need a judge, they would need a court order to actually undertake an extraction of your phone.
Now, really, police just need things like a suspicion, an association, maybe even a link to something that they're looking into.
And they've basically expanded those powers to just give them more ability to potentially even take an image of your phone at a roadside stop.
Okay, what kind of information can they pull out from the phone? My messages, my photos? Pretty much everything that you do on your phone is available to be extracted with very, very little exceptions.
So just think about your messages, your photos, your calendar, even things like emails and even things like secure messaging apps can all have their data extracted and reviewed by the law enforcement.
So just like you can try data recovery tools at home to recover images from a USB stick, the same technology can be used to recover things like deleted photos and even deleted or disappearing messages from a mobile phone.
So nation state spyware is basically spyware that is either developed by governments, intelligence, or groups that are associated with intelligence or governments all around the world.
Every government is doing it, whether it's China or Russia or the United States or even Australia.
And they're using this spyware basically to target opposition, to target politically exposed individuals, to extract intelligence from their phone for the use of that intelligence.
And does that mean they can access everything on the phone in real time? In fact, it's actually worse.
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