Rhode Island Cops Now Using Dogs To Detect Hard Drives, Memory Cards And Other Electronics
from the all-in-the-name-of-the-'worst-of-the-worst' dept
There's good intentions behind it, but the implications are worrying. For years now, dogs have been trained to sniff out drugs by law enforcement agencies. (Well, in most cases, trained by third-party specialists before being turned over to law enforcement agencies.) The problem is that these dogs now ride around in cruisers and give the police "probable cause" to perform vehicle searches and, believe it or not, hours of rectal/vaginal searches, simply by "alerting" to an odor.
Dogs aren't infallible, but law enforcement would prefer us to believe they are. They are animals which are rewarded for performing certain actions. Drug-sniffing dogs have been known to react more to handler cues than actual odors. When this happens, police officers are in essence generating their own justification for a full-blown search. As Jacob Sullum at Reason memorably put it: "Drug Warriors Kidnap and Sexually Assault a Woman After Getting Permission From a Dog."
So, if the targeted criminals are indisputably awful people, why does this news seem like another bad idea? (via slashdot)
The recent arrival of golden Labrador Thoreau makes Rhode Island the second state in the nation to have a police dog trained to sniff out hard drives, thumb drives and other technological gadgets that could contain child pornography.The plus side is that, at least to this point, the dogs are only being used to assist with search warrants, rather than riding along with patrolmen and nosing around vehicles of drivers deemed too nervous to be guilty of nothing more than a traffic infraction.
Thoreau received 22 weeks of training in how to detect devices in exchange for food at the Connecticut State Police Training Academy.
But like drug dogs, the urge to generate positives is indulged.
Houston demonstrated the dog's skills last month. Houston walked the dog through a room in which he had hidden devices. A second pass went more slowly, with Houston coaxing the dog. "Show me. Show me."The stakes get higher when the dogs are deployed in the hunt for child pornography/pornographers. Training a dog to alert on devices makes any device it detects instantly suspect. And when it fails to find anything, the presumption will be adjusted to fit the lack of evidence. Rather than this being a sign of innocence, it will be an excuse to tear everything apart or collect additional warrants to search other locations. Because if the police have decided you're a suspect -- especially a possible child molester -- the searching won't stop until something is uncovered. Starting this chain of events by asking an animal inclined to please its handlers just makes the chain of unfortunate events unfold faster.
Thoreau furiously sniffed shelves, desks, cabinets. The dog located a hard drive inside a Ziploc bag in the upper shelf of a desk. A flash drive and thumb drive were also found, with the dog zeroing in on their location down to the exact drawer. In exchange, Thoreau got food.
"This is how he eats every day," says Houston, who cares for the dog around the clock.
Beyond the question of whether police dogs should expand their range from drugs to electronics, there's the hysteria being irresponsibly delivered by law enforcement officials (and reprinted willingly and credulously by the local press -- because who would question someone who's arresting child molesters?) I sincerely hope the Rhode Island police are working with a more specific dataset than this:
Most child pornography offenders are white men with an average age of 41, U.S. Sentencing Commission statistics show. The majority graduated from high school and hold jobs.No shit. Most men have graduated high school and are now employed. Quite frequently they reach the age of 41, often exceeding it by 30+ years before dying. Dumping an assertion like this into the public domain will only increase the number of people who view any man a certain distance away from children as suspicious. This doesn't help the public better discern who might be a concern while simultaneously expanding the pool of possible suspects to include all white males.
"These folks are out there trolling the Internet, trolling the streets, taking photos at the beach," [former DHS agent Eric] Caron says.Now, the suspect pool expands to include males who go anywhere near the internet, beach or public streets. Anyone with a camera spotted in these areas is doubly suspect. The DHS has always been suspicious of photographers, and this statement turns any male with a camera (or cell phone) into one of two things: a terrorist or a child molester.
Spreading hysteria isn't going to make the job any easier. It's just going to increase the number of dead end "leads" police officers will be forced to run down. Adding dogs to the mix may make search warrants more productive, but it does carry with it the added baggage of pretending animals are impartial witnesses, rather than entities whose motivations roughly align with law enforcement's.
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Filed Under: blank media, child porn, dogs, rhode island, sniffing
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After reading this, I have managed to find a 24 year old high-school drop out that didn't have a job and smelled like whisky, urine, and body odor.
For the children!
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Of course, you probably don't need a dog to find it.
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and the 'right'...
(not that it means a whole hell of a lot, now, period...)
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Electronics?
I'm convinced that these dogs alight on the smell of Ziplock bags.
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Re: Electronics?
I'm convinced that Houston cued the dog to the locations. It may not have been intentional, but if he was leading the dog, and he's the one that hid the devices, that test is complete bunk.
There's a reason that medical trials are double-blind. The patients don't know whether they're getting the medication or a placebo. The doctors treating the patients don't know either and are well insulated from the researchers who do know. If the doctors knew, they could influence the patients just by their manner.
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Q: This hard drive was found near sandpaper. How did the sandpaper feel?
A: Ruff
Q: You found this in a room under what?
A: Roof
What's your problem?
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'white men' ... 'age of 41' That describes ME! Also, I have hard drives, thumb drives, and even memory cards. THEY EVEN HAVE PHOTOS ON THEM! I am a danger to society. Where do I turn myself in?
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A lot of fuss
This is how you train dogs.
> The plus side is that, at least to this point, the dogs are only being used to assist with search warrants
If the police have to get a warrant first, then they are already suspecting the person of being involved with child pornography.
Stop spreading hysteria, Tim.
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Re: A lot of fuss
Now, I can understand the idea of drug sniffing dogs. They are trained (supposedly well, but who really knows) to detect something illegal. "Electronic sniffing" dogs are being trained to seek out totally legal devices - what, just in case we need to go find thumb drives at some point? Couldn't people have hard copies of child porn? Are they training "paper sniffing" dogs as well?
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Re: A lot of fuss
Most child pornography offenders are white men with an average age of 41, U.S. Sentencing Commission statistics show. The majority graduated from high school and hold jobs.
The phrases you note were long before the sentence I noted.
Stop detracting from the point, and furthering the hysteria the department is spreading - if that's the BEST description they can come up with to describe a suspect, then they really are pretty sucky at their jobs.
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Re: A lot of fuss
> suspecting the person of being involved with child pornography.
Or merely using that as a convenient excuse to look for whatever they are actually looking for.
Or even as an extra-judicial punishment. Your house was turned upside down. We didn't find anything. Ooops, sorry. Oh, and all your neighbors know what we were searching for. Have a nice day.
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Re: Re: A lot of fuss
No need for that anymore.
With a trained dog they can sneak in, find the storage devices and copy the data. No one would even notice, unless you got a very good security system at home.
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Re: Re: Re: A lot of fuss
The post you were responding to was speaking in the sense of penalizing an innocent person who has no incriminating evidence on them, by trashing the place and then hiding behind official immunity to avoid making even token restitution for the mess. Sneaking in to make copies makes no sense if there is nothing incriminating to illegally find.
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If that dog came into my office, he would probably have a heart attack.
How do you even walk a dog these days that is trained to only get food when it finds electronics? Doesn't this dog attack every jogger with an iPod? I would think this training to be a total nightmare for any handler.
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Once they have probable cause, then they search the electronic devices for whatever they can find.
The silly exercise of getting the warrant for electronic devices is to make everything look proper. The warrant would be to find electronic devices to use as evidence of illegal activities including but not limited to: _________.
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It's probably sticky too.
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The dog can smell if the ones and zeros have gone through puberty.
So thats why dogs are shot when the police comes around. To level the playing field. It would be unfair to enter another dogs territory. No dog = no territory.
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Please explain how the digits, the ones and zeros, on a hard drive that contain child pornography smell any different from the digits on a hard drive that does not contain child pornography.
In fact I will go even further. Please how a hard drive that contain child pornography smell any different from any analog device.
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(* note NSA's definition of 'search' means to 'store forever in case NSA wants to search it')
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an acceptably-trained dog
HOWEVER... given how much of our lives goes onto these devices, I don't think such training should be acceptable as probable cause unless the dogs have been trained to identify which hard drives have the offending files out of a selection of physically-identical hard drives.
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Re: an acceptably-trained dog
Obviously you have never owned a dog, much less a working dog. Otherwise you'd realize how full of shit you are.
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Re: Re: an acceptably-trained dog
>dog.
This begs a response, although it'll be tough. Based on your message, I take it that I need to avoid any large words.
I've owned dogs all my life, and I know how hard they work to please us. That is the problem with a dog trained only to sniff out certain materials rather than give a correct response. We are talking about a dog's response being used as probable cause, which is why this matters even more.
If you ever did own dogs (which I doubt), you might have seen how they pick up on cues that we don't even realize that we give off. My current dog is a great example. If I walk down the hall to go to another room, he continues with whatever he is doing. If I walk to go to the door, he follows and then goes to the leash. There is no training involved. I didn't even realize that I walked differently, but he pays attention. I didn't realize that I handled the egg carton differently, but he responds when I am removing it to put an egg into his food as a treat.
Again, if you knew the first thing about dogs, you would know that they pick up far more than just their training. This is the problem with police dogs particularly in light of how our fourth amendment is so watered down. If a dog's response can get us searched, and if the dog is in tune with his handler, and if the handler really, really wants to look into that bureau, then thorough training matters. That training needs to focus on giving the correct response, rather than just giving a positive in one direction.
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The dog should then be rewarded for correct responses including a control, rather than only when detecting a positive.
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Re: an acceptably-trained dog
There is ONLY 1 REASON that dog is present. To allow an honest Officer to detect drugs more efficiently!
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Seriously? There's no such thing as a "golden Labrador". How about a Golden Retriever or a Yellow Labrador. Fucking cat people.....
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Because the 4th never mattered!
Anyone notice how people just keep up their freedom under the guise of terrorism and reasonable suspicion? When did reasonable suspicion move from justification to get a Judge to issue a warrant to straight up your rights are now GONE!?
EVERYONE is suspicious under today's rules, to the point that your rights are meaningless unless you enforce them using the 2nd. Just as witnessed during the Bundy Ranch bullshit! The Feds ONLY backed down because the Citizenry were armed!
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BS
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However, I saw a way to beat this in the Sandra Bullock movie "The Heat": simply stock your house with dog treats. That way, the dog's nose will be filled with food and he won't find anything else.
Hey, it worked in a movie, right?
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I see a problem
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I for one have never taken a whiff of my gaming rig. though while upgrading it I can say that older hardware (metal encased disc drives) DEFINITELY have a pungent smell to them. Whether or not newer hardware has any latent odors from the manufacture process I cannot say.
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WHY?! It cant possibly help find child pornographers. This has to be some excuse that the police is using to try to get to the point where they can simply bypass warrants.
I mean I understand technology is out there and kudos for embracing it, but get something that is useful. Don't waste time and money on something like this!!!! C'mon Man!
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Remember kids, store spare storage devices...
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Torpedo!
- XKEYSCORE code - all tor users are terrorists
- MPAA trying to sneak pirate sites into NZ's DCEFS child abuse filtering system
comments from torrentfreak:
Feniks • 13 hours ago
So in addition to being a terrorist (TOR) I am also a potential pedo. Great.
Hagar The Horrible • 12 hours ago
Torpedo!
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Dogs -- you're using 'em wrong
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Most crooked cops fall under the category of police uniform wearing human.
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I should not have to list examples for this, but here is 1 anyway the officer who threated to "fuck Thomas Kelly up" then actually beat him to death with a few other cops. Got rehired to the police force he was fired from and has served no jail time. because him threatening to kill someone then actually beating him to death was a justified action according to the police.
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Besides This Outrageous Mission Creep..
The problem here can be tracked back to when
COPS started calling DOGS officers. They ain't officers, they don't take oaths, they take treats and TOYS and do what they are trained, and even then there are mistakes.
It's like calling CORPORATIONS, People. It's Horseshit, if DOGS are god damned officers, then lets get rid of ARMED HUMAN cops and have all dogs.
You call me to a Jury duty and some dog got drugs in your car, I am probably going to nullify your case
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People can train dogs to sit, roll over, beg.
Who's to say they have trained a dog to bark at a spot, then plant a micro SD card (which, let's face it, is no bigger than a thumb) containing child pornography? (Especially if one of the officers has it in for somebody.)
Think the jury'll believe the guy when he says it was planted?
No.
They'll just shut their brains off to logic and reason the moment they hear "child porn."
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