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

Tue, Jul 8th 2014 11:03am — Tim Cushing

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.

Thoreau received 22 weeks of training in how to detect devices in exchange for food at the Connecticut State Police Training Academy.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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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Michael, 8 Jul 2014 @ 11:12am

Thank goodness. I was going to leave my toddler with a stable, mature, educated, employed man with no criminal history.

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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kenichi tanaka (profile), 8 Jul 2014 @ 11:15am

Let me see if I got this right, the only way the dog gets to eat is by performing tricks? Where's the ASPCA when they are really needed? For that matter, where's SHARK? Additionally, last I checked, you can't hide a kidnapped woman on a hard drive, thumb drive or any type of memory device.
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art guerrilla (profile), 8 Jul 2014 @ 11:21am

and the 'right'...
...to confront and cross-examine your 'accusers' doesn't mean anything when the 'accuser' is a dog, does it ? ? ?
(not that it means a whole hell of a lot, now, period...)
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ChurchHatesTucker (profile), 8 Jul 2014 @ 11:22am

Electronics?
The dog located a hard drive inside a Ziploc bag in the upper shelf of a desk.

I'm convinced that these dogs alight on the smell of Ziplock bags.
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kenichi tanaka (profile), 8 Jul 2014 @ 11:23am

I'd like to know how one cross examines a dog. Serious sixth amendment rights issues there.
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Michael, 8 Jul 2014 @ 11:23am

Re:
I used to work for a company that used a giant cabinet with a robot arm to automatically change out tapes for their backup system. You could put two or three people in it.

Of course, you probably don't need a dog to find it.
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Dave Xanatos, 8 Jul 2014 @ 11:24am

"Most child pornography offenders are white men with an average age of 41... The majority graduated from high school and hold jobs."

'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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Michael, 8 Jul 2014 @ 11:27am

Re:

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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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jul 2014 @ 11:27am

A lot of fuss
> But like drug dogs, the urge to generate positives is indulged.

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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Michael, 8 Jul 2014 @ 11:28am

Re:
Just submit a FOIA request for some CIA documents and they will send the FBI for you.
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Michael, 8 Jul 2014 @ 11:33am

Re: A lot of fuss
umm...that's why he said "the plus side is" - the police actually need probably cause before using "electronics sniffing" dogs. The point being - that's not how it is with drug sniffing dogs which are currently often deployed during traffic stops without a warrant.

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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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jul 2014 @ 11:36am

Re: A lot of fuss
The word "hysteria" was NOT used in this article UNTIL the phrase:

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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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jul 2014 @ 11:36am

Is the dog available for hire? I woule like to place a standing order, the first of every month for 1/2 hour. We are always losing USB drives, he could be useful around here.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jul 2014 @ 11:39am

Assuming the dogs actually can find electronic devices, that does't mean they're finding illegal content like child pornography. The scary part to me is that this gives law enforcement a way to find any electronic device that may contain information and search it.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jul 2014 @ 11:39am

What does a hard drive smell like and how is it different from, say, a smart tv, a cell phone, a game console, or even the microwave? Doesn't most tech now have a storage device in them anyway? I feel like this had got to be a mere spook story to keep citizens and pedos themselves on their toes from the magic crime dog.
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Michael, 8 Jul 2014 @ 11:41am

Re:
In what kind of office? Some place, with say, hundreds of pieces of electronic equipment?

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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Michael, 8 Jul 2014 @ 11:43am

Re:
Good point, but I suppose a hard drive full of child porn owned by a pedophile probably has a pretty distinctive smell to it.

It's probably sticky too.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jul 2014 @ 11:48am

To me this sounds like bunk.

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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John Fenderson (profile), 8 Jul 2014 @ 11:50am

Re:
It's not so scary, actually, given that this use of the dogs are to help execute a search warrant that's already been obtained. Presumably, that warrant permits searching electronic devices, and the dogs are being used to find those devices so they may be searched.
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mcinsand, 8 Jul 2014 @ 11:51am

an acceptably-trained dog
The training seems to be only half-complete, to me. As with any test, a control is necessary, and, in this case, that would be a room with no electronics. The dog should then be rewarded for correct responses including a control, rather than only when detecting a positive.

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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John Fenderson (profile), 8 Jul 2014 @ 11:51am

Re:
Nobody is saying that they do smell different. The dogs are being used to find the all such devices, not just ones that have something incriminating on them.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jul 2014 @ 11:54am

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.

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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kenichi tanaka (profile), 8 Jul 2014 @ 11:55am

These days, cops don't even get search warrants. They confiscate the evidence and then claim is was issued under a FISA warrant or they get the Justice Department to seize the evidence.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jul 2014 @ 11:57am

Re: an acceptably-trained dog
The training seems to be only half-complete, to me. As with any test, a control is necessary, and, in this case, that would be a room with no electronics. The dog should then be rewarded for correct responses including a control, rather than only when detecting a positive.

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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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jul 2014 @ 12:01pm

Because the 4th never mattered!
So tell me how a dog sniffing even a fucking BOMB was ever considered a legal method for seizing and searching a person without a warrant?

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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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jul 2014 @ 12:06pm

Re: an acceptably-trained dog
Does not matter, every Dog will naturally follow ques from their pack leader before anything else. Training is nice but no matter what if an Officer wants that Dog to say you are rolling with drugs they will get that dog to bark regardless of if that dog actually smelled drugs!

There is ONLY 1 REASON that dog is present. To allow an honest Officer to detect drugs more efficiently!
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jul 2014 @ 12:06pm

Re: Re:
Same reason a retriever doesn't have a stroke when you walk him past the tennis courts on a Saturday morning. Working dogs have an on/off switch.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jul 2014 @ 12:11pm

This quite literally is making me want to throw up, please tell me this is from the onion, my stomach hurts..
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tuna, 8 Jul 2014 @ 12:14pm

BS
This has my BS meter on 11. I'd check to see if the person who supposedly trained and then sold this dog to the police department was related to the Chief of Police.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jul 2014 @ 12:24pm

Re:
I just changed out a whole CASE of hard drives, when I upgraded one of our arrays. Maybe I'll throw the box into the trunk of my car, and drive past a school. Screw "chemtrails"... think of the hard drive vaportrail!
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John85851 (profile), 8 Jul 2014 @ 12:28pm

I read this story over at Ars and their headline was "Dogs train to sniff out child porn hidden on thumb drives", as if dogs could actually smell the images encoded into 1's and 0's on a drive.

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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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jul 2014 @ 12:29pm

I see a problem
I normally keep my flash drives up in my dogs' butt. Wouldn't this cause a false positive?
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Connor Clawson, 8 Jul 2014 @ 12:46pm

Benefit of the doubt for just one second.

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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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jul 2014 @ 12:47pm

I can understand trying to use dogs to find something that is always illegal (drugs). However, how is having a hard drive illegal? What would be illegal is for the police to search that drive for no reason other than a dog said so. How many taxpayer dollars went to this? Let alone the research to determine if this was possible?

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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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jul 2014 @ 12:52pm

Remember kids, store spare storage devices...
Spare storage devices should be stored in antifreeze, especially if you live somewhere cold. The antifreeze might mask the smell from the dog, and if not, the dog gets a tasty treat when it finds the storage device.
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DannyB (profile), 8 Jul 2014 @ 1:13pm

Re:
The purpose of using the dogs to find electronic devices is to provide probable cause. Once they find an electronic device, they have probable cause. Chances of finding an electronic device is extremely close to 100%. Therefore chance of having probable cause is now close to 100%.

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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DannyB (profile), 8 Jul 2014 @ 1:16pm

Re: Re:
Once all electronic devices are found, they can then be searched*.

(* note NSA's definition of 'search' means to 'store forever in case NSA wants to search it')
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DannyB (profile), 8 Jul 2014 @ 1:23pm

Re: A lot of fuss
> If the police have to get a warrant first, then they are already
> 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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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jul 2014 @ 1:38pm

Torpedo!
"... into one of two things: a terrorist or a child molester."

- 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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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jul 2014 @ 1:39pm

Re: Re: A lot of fuss
> Or even as an extra-judicial punishment. Your house was turned upside down.

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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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jul 2014 @ 1:44pm

Re: Re: Re: A lot of fuss
No one would even notice, unless you got a very good security system at home.
You mean like a guard dog?

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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Joanna, 8 Jul 2014 @ 1:47pm

Dogs -- you're using 'em wrong
Why couldn't they just train the dogs to sniff out child molesters, who probably have a more distinctive odor anyhow?
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mcinsand, 8 Jul 2014 @ 2:09pm

Re: Re: an acceptably-trained dog
>Obviously you have never owned a dog, much less a working
>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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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jul 2014 @ 2:18pm

So all the public has to do is start hiding dog treats where there are no electronics to undo the dog's training.
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Vic, 8 Jul 2014 @ 2:44pm

Re: Re:
And that is very different from a hard drive filled with regular porn, exactly how?
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Vic, 8 Jul 2014 @ 2:48pm

Re:
You mean to feed the poor dogs?!
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jul 2014 @ 4:48pm

Re: Re: an acceptably-trained dog
Or a dishonest cop to get his desired response...
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BeeAitch (profile), 8 Jul 2014 @ 5:41pm

Re:
On the other hand, if you didn't graduate high school and don't have a job, you're probably safe.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jul 2014 @ 5:50pm

Two can play the generalization game.

Most crooked cops fall under the category of police uniform wearing human.
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Anonymous Coward, 8 Jul 2014 @ 6:52pm

Re: Re: Re: an acceptably-trained dog
Actually I have owned many dogs. My current dogs compete in hunt tests. This means they respond to voice commands, whistles and arm gestures. If you were anything more than a run-of-the-mill pet owner who has managed to teach Fido to "Sit"; then you know the following statement was bullshit:

The dog should then be rewarded for correct responses including a control, rather than only when detecting a positive.
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Bergman (profile), 8 Jul 2014 @ 10:38pm

Re: Re: Re: A lot of fuss
Or if the dog poops somewhere and you don't have a dog.
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Padpaw (profile), 8 Jul 2014 @ 11:25pm

It is a bad idea when the criminals become the ones behind the badge with zero accountability for whatever crimes they commit because of the mentality of "their police Officers, and cops never do anything wrong".

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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TestPilotDummy, 8 Jul 2014 @ 11:41pm

Besides This Outrageous Mission Creep..
Besides the fact this is more asinine outrageous unconstitutional oath breaking 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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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jul 2014 @ 12:35am

To me, this is just inadmissible evidence.

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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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jul 2014 @ 12:41am

Re:
s/have/haven't/
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jul 2014 @ 5:00am

Re: Re: A lot of fuss
I imagine the average automobile has a few electronics in it, most was installed at the factory.
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Anonymous Coward, 9 Jul 2014 @ 6:40am

Wow not just storage devices but storage with child pornography.
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Josh in CharlotteNC (profile), 9 Jul 2014 @ 10:49am

Re: Electronics?
"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.""

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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Anonymous Coward, 10 Jul 2014 @ 1:12am

Re: Re: Re:
> And that is very different from a hard drive filled with regular porn, exactly how?

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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Rick Heretikos, 11 Jul 2014 @ 7:46am

Re: Re: A lot of fuss
I'm not saying this is good or right... But you're not understanding the context of how it is to be legally used. You need a warrant which should state exactly what they're looking for. Dogs aren't to be just randomly searching for SD Cards and HDD's. I think this whole thing is mostly BS and not effective and if it is, it will most likely be abused anyways. I have TB's of government documents and information (not really obscure or illegal, it's just in case the internet does get censored, I will flood it back with info) and I'll shoot if anyone even tries to come take them.
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