Slashdot Mirror
Alternative Browsers Impede Investigations
rbochan writes "Allegations in an article over at CNET propose that alternate browsers such as Firefox and Opera impede law enforcement and investigation efforts because they "use different structures, files and naming conventions for the data that investigators are after", which can "cause trouble for examiners.""
Oh come on, it's nearly impossible to find the URL history! Ctrl-H is a very, very complex cracking method.
...the terrorists have already won.
In other news, bad guys hide in secret hideouts, which makes it hard for the Police to do their job.
And then I realized that they were serious.
Now I weep for them.
RTFA again for the best results.
So with a few low-res pictures of some metal objects in Iraq we can determine they have biological weapons... but the 'trained professionals' working for the police can't figure out how to find Firefox's internet logs?
...Firefox... on Linux! "Find what they've been browsing? Hell, we can't even find C: !"
Actually, FireFox Deer Park (pre-1.1) which I am using right now has a right-in-your-face menu item to remove this kind of data. Those bad evil criminals don't even have to dig through the options to purge the evidence for their wrongdoings. Clearly, this browser must be a work of the devil and should be banned.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Oh come on, it's nearly impossible to find the URL history! Ctrl-H is a very, very complex cracking method.
Good job. Now you've flagged yourself and the FBI is undoubtedly on its way. Giving away what is most likely a National Secrect! Please don't let them look here.
-Valiss
Police, baffled by the lack of a blue "e" can't figure out how they used the Internet.
"And there's no START button! How are we supposed to find anything?"
I like microcars
In related news, police are complaining that not all criminals conduct their affairs in American Standard English.
"It's an outrage! Why do people insist on impeding our efforts to be an all-seeing eye?"
Seriously, what do you propose? Educate them? This is national security that is potentially at stake here, people. We cannot simply turn to the logical solution. There's only one way to deal with this problem and that is to nip it in the bud. All non-IE browsers should be outlawed forthwith and anyone caught using them should be sent to Guantanamo for interrogation.
say mrgonzo, what are you doing in your labs???
Detroit, MI - The American Union of Automechanics is complaining loudly that different makes and models of cars use different parts. "It makes our job very difficult." said Winston Q. Crescenthead. "I mean, we have to work on a Vega, and then turn around and try to fix one of these new Toyota 4Runners. Some of these cars even use different kinds of wrenches. You should see the tools I have to use." Other mechanics have shared similar horror stories. "I got some little British roadster in the shop. It's taken six months of deep psychotherapy, and I think I might be up to the task of putting air in my kid's bicycle tire." The AUA is demanding that Congress pass law a forbidding the sale or use of any vehicle other than a 1972 Chevy Nova.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
... homicide investigators admitted they were stumped when a murderer used an aluminum bat to bludgeon his victim to death rather than the standard lead pipe.
... traces from a pipe ... lead is what makes it a crime scene."
Said an officer who wished to remain anonymous: "We're not even sure there was a murder without some trace of lead at the scene. A bullet
Yea and someone with the title "Computer Forensics Expert" shouldn't have to learn all these diffrent conventions.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Sgt.Smith: "Damnit Jones, firefox. Another criminal goes free."
Lt.Jones: "You you know Smith, I sometimes wonder if we just were competant with computers if we could well, you know, understand basic computer forensics instead of relying on software to do it for us?"
Sgt.Smith: "Shutup Jones, theres a way we do things here, it's the microsoft way, all other ways are abhorant and methods of the terrorists."
Lt.Jones: "Good call Smith!"
*sigh* It's only sad because it could be true. Police forces need to hire security professionals and train them to be computer forensics. Not hire police officers and rely on them to learn the ins and outs of computer security.
Shadus
However, I fail to see how this would create problems for law enforcement.
Maybe their forensic tools can extract the browser history from the file and the software isn't aware a bookmarks file doesn't have to be named "favorites".
At least I hope that's the issue.
Tip for Kiddie Porn addicts: Keep your vids in someplace besides the "My Videos" folder. The authorities will never be able to find them if they're "hidden" in some other folder.
It's DOCTOR gonzo, he didn't spend 6 years in gonzo medical school to be called MISTER, thank you very much!
I found this out really quick after the SO moved in. Right after she went to check the website of her university which starts with a 'C' and the first link that pops into the autocomplete bar is Cumfiesta.
I just bought her a computer of her own.
www.madeofwinandawesome.com
I love it. Think of the advertising potential.
Male voiceover
"Microsoft, used by 100% of all sex offenders. Its not only the law, it their punishment."
Oh! I just fell off my chair.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Now THIS is funny - from the File::Monk man page:
THE UGLY TRUTH LAID BARE ^
Extracted from mork.pl
In Netscape Navigator 1.0 through 4.0, the history.db file was just a Berkeley DBM file. You could trivially bind to it from Perl, and pull out the URLs and last-access time. In Mozilla, this has been replaced with a "Mork" database for which no tools exist.
Let me make it clear that McCusker is a complete barking lunatic. This is just about the stupidest file format I've ever seen.
http://www.mozilla.org/mailnews/arch/mork/primer.
http://jwz.livejournal.com/312657.html
http://www.jwz.org/doc/mailsum.html
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24143
In brief, let's count its sins:
* Two different numerical namespaces that overlap.
* It can't decide what kind of character-quoting syntax to use: Backslash? Hex encoding with dollar-sign?
* C++ line comments are allowed sometimes, but sometimes
* It goes to all this serious compression effort (two different string-interning hash tables) and then writes out Unicode strings without using UTF-8: writes out the unpacked wchar_t characters!
* Worse, it hex-encodes each wchar_t with a 3-byte encoding, meaning the file size will be 3x or 6x (depending on whether whchar_t is 2 bytes or 4 bytes.)
* It masquerades as a "textual" file format when in fact it's just another binary-blob file, except that it represents all its magic numbers in ASCII. It's not human-readable, it's not hand-editable, so the only benefit there is to the fact that it uses short lines and doesn't use binary characters is that it makes the file bigger. Oh wait, my mistake, that isn't actually a benefit at all.
Pure comedy.