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  lhgg, 1 Nov 2005 @ 4:34am

  
  

  No Subject Given

  of course the are justifed fools

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  Jesse McNelis, 1 Nov 2005 @ 5:45am

  
  

  so...what if they just printed everything out.

  A stack of papers is just as difficult to search, probably more, than a harddrive. If someone has a 100GB of word documents, then if it were not for the harddrive I'm sure they would have the same amount of data in printed paper form.
  

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  ted, 1 Nov 2005 @ 5:53am

  
  

  fools...

  Someone should show them Google Desk top. it takes all of .5 seconds to search my hard drives all three of them.

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    Eric B, 1 Nov 2005 @ 6:06am

    
    

    Re: fools...

    Umm, right. IT can take a bit more than google desktop. Formating, different OSes, etc.

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  giafly, 1 Nov 2005 @ 7:04am

  
  

  Other news today

  "Low entrance requirements mean police are ill-equipped to combat crime, a think-tank report has concluded. Politeia warned bright officers leave and those who seem incompetent and unable to inspire confidence stay on" - BBC.
  
  Perhaps there are too few computer-literate officers to search drives promptly.

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  • 

    B. Nicholson (profile), 1 Nov 2005 @ 10:17am

    
    

    Re: Other news today

    Better yet, there is a cure for criminal, delinquent, and ungovernable behavior in children: human paternal pheromone. And get this, it doesn't need refrigeration!

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  giafly, 1 Nov 2005 @ 7:13am

  
  

  Background Notes

  "Prime Minister Tony Blair has firmly backed controversial police demands to be able to detain terrorist suspects without charge for up to 90 days." - Yahoo! News
  90 days detention - Google Search

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  John, 1 Nov 2005 @ 7:48am

  
  

  That's retarded

  Police have tools built for searching drives. They don't take that long to run at all. Check out Encase which is able to find specific kinds of files. The point is, whatever they are looking for could be found via automated tools. Thats what computers are good for. So I say this is BS. I gotta fight this anyways... I have about 3 terrabytes of total storage at my house.

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    Panaqqa, 1 Nov 2005 @ 8:12am

    
    

    Re: That's retarded

    I guess that people under suspicion will just have to start using PGP to strong encrypt directories. After all, the 90 days could never be justified if the police didn't stand a chance in hell of cracking the code, could it?

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  Panaqqa, 1 Nov 2005 @ 8:17am

  
  

  90 days while the police search a computer?

  Hmmm. Could they still justify the 90 days if the suspect had encrypted directories with PGP or some other strong method? After all, apply 1024-bit strong encryption and ten trillion years wouldn't be enough, would it? Would they then ask for life in jail without charges while they tried the first 10^35 possible private keys?

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    Andrew Fernie, 1 Nov 2005 @ 11:14am

    
    

    Re: 90 days while the police search a computer?

    Sounds like a simple solution doesn't it? The only problem is that under the provisions of the Regulatory of Investigatory Powers Bill passed a few years back you are required by law to provide the Police with your PGP key if they obtain a warrant demanding it. Refuse, and they don't need to worry about keeping you in for 90 days as you've just handed yourself a jail sentence of up to 2 years.
    
    In case you were wondering... no, losing your key isn't a defence. Welcome to totalitarian Britain.

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  Chris, 1 Nov 2005 @ 10:13am

  
  

  Automated tools

  There is alot more to Computer forensics than simply running google desktop.
  
  You do of course realize they can see the files you have deleted or at least portions of them and even if you take a hammer to your hard drive there is a good chance they will get back a good chunk of it...
  
  When you set up a trial and want to convict someone of a crime you don't look at thier desktop for a file that says "kiddie porn" there is a good chance the criminal has researched 6-12 ways to hide this from most people... The police need to determine what system the user used to keep the files hidden.. and then to crack it or restore the data... THEN search it.. THEN catalog it.
  
  Sometimes it's as simple as dropping to dos in a directory where the files are all named like CK1678.jpg which is the initials of a girl or photographer and then doing ren *.jpg to *.txt suddenly it drops out from "radar" because neither the name nore the suffix is suspect... now delete all those files and hit the HD with a hammer.... that's really going to make some computer forensics guy pissed off.. he will find it... but it will take a while.

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    mojo, 1 Nov 2005 @ 10:36am

    
    

    Re: Automated tools

    what are you, retarded? If you "smash a HDD with a hammer" you will NOT get the data back. the platters in the drive will be warped, so you will neither be able to spin them OR read them since the magnetic field would be skewed out of shape. i THINK dammit why do you think drives fail when they get a single tiny scratch from the read/write heads on a platter? why do you think disk scanning and repair utility's have a surface scan option? Not to mention there are plenty of ways to destroy data while preserving a HDD I.E. rewriting multiple hex codes 14-15 times so that the original data has no binary significance to what it once was.

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      Rob, 1 Nov 2005 @ 11:13am

      
      

      Re: Automated tools

      >>Not to mention there are plenty of ways to destroy data while preserving a HDD I.E. rewriting multiple hex codes 14-15 times so that the original data has no binary significance to what it once was.
      Now do this on the above mentioned 3 terabytes of storage mentioned above, while the police are kicking your door in. It can be done, but it takes time that people generally don't have.

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      cycle003, 1 Nov 2005 @ 12:01pm

      
      

      Re: Automated tools (mojo's ignorant comment)

      Apparently you are either not very bright or just ignorant about computers and/or data storage. you are correct that methods exist for eliminating data from a hard drive, the most common of which is by repeated, thorough overwrites, and many utilities can be found for doing so. However, do you actually think that the data ‘magically disappears’ just because the platter is warped, can’t spin or is even broken into tiny pieces. Smashing a disk with a hammer will not destroy all of the magnetically stored data, which is written at the micron (and sub-micron) scale. Scanning and tunneling microscopy techniques have been employed to recover data from damaged or ‘erased’ hard drives. Below, I have provided a link to a paper to get you started on remedying your ignorance about this topic. Before you start calling people retarded, you should make sure you are not the one who sounds ignorant. http://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery/learn-more-about-microscopy.htm

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        Shades, 1 Nov 2005 @ 12:19pm

        
        

        Re: Automated tools (mojo's ignorant comment)

        well said my friend, well said.

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  Jeff Hansen, 1 Nov 2005 @ 10:54am

  
  

  search engine

  Hi,
  I guess the key stone cops don't have google's desktop search engine. That would explain why they think it takes longer to search thru a computer drive than a large stack of paper. (wouldn't they index that stack of paper in a computer database?)
  
  

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