PA Seizes Newspaper's Computers

twitter writes "Computer equipment from the Lancaster Intelligencer Journal was seized for alleged improper data access and disclosure. From the article: 'If the reporters used the Web site without authorization, officials say, they may have committed a crime.' Journalist are understandably upset that confidential information, that has nothing to do with the investigation, will be found and used for retribution."

Comments

/. headline is wrong

[MaggieL]

Contrary to the /. headline, Philadelphia did not sieze the four hard drives.

Philadelphia is a city.

Pennsylvania is a commonwealth.

Surprisingly enough, the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office works for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, not the City of Philadelphia. I know it's confusing; after all: they both start with the same letter.

Re:Proof that there's no proof

[funkman]

The website had disclaimers on it (either during the login process or once you are signed in) that states unauthorized access is prohibited and that the web site is for official use only.

So a journalist (or anyone) using the site with someone's else's login credentials violates the terms of service of the site.

There is no way to plead ignorance for those who improperly accessed the site.

The lesson Learned here kids?

[Lumpy]

I think the biggest lesson here is that ALL your files that are important or private MUST be encrypted on your computer. Because the federalies will come looking through them sooner or later. Using a encryption system that gives you plausable deniability like True Crypt is a better choice as you can lead them astray. you can give them a fake password that lets them into the encrypted file but only gives up worthless information keeping the secure documents hidden.

Finally, with today's fervor over terrorism it's best for you to not write anything down, record nothing and deny, deny, deny.

Re:Logs?

[Technician]

Certanly. Read the Tomsnetworking review. It's in about the 4th page of the review.

http://www.tomsnetworking.com/2005/04/15/review_st inas250/page4.html

Snip Digging deeper into the menus revealed some advanced functionality that didn't appear to be advertised anywhere on SimpleTech's web site or product brochures. I found menus for creating encrypted, mirrored and striped shares, which are RAID capabilities that I have not seen in other boxes of the same class. Selecting the Help button on this screen brought up a full help listing for all features of the box, including these advanced ones. Reading through the help menus indicated that the mirror and striping capabilities are designed to be used on external drives plugged into the box.

end snip

It's one of the main reasons I bought it. Raid, Encryption and easly hidden someplace to be left behind in a raid or burglary. What more could a geek want?

Re:Can remote 3rd party storage be siezed?

[Red Flayer]

Warrants are not that specific. Warrants can be issued for entire computer systems looking for one tidbit. Law enforcement is only allowed to use the information that is covered by the warrant, but the only way they can verify that you've provided the keys to all the relevant files is to have a blanket warrant for all keys, and then check each file to see if it is relevant.

Same as standard home search warrants -- they don't issue a warrant to just search your sock drawer, because you told them that's the only place you'd keep the contraband they're looking for.

Re:More info.

[Technician]

The encryption is invisable to the users. When the box is rebooted, the encrypted shares simply vanish and are not seen on the network until the password is input from the web interface. Another snip from Toms site;

I was initially a little confused about how an encrypted share would work. Would the client have to enter the encryption password, as well as the user password, when mounting the network share? I saw no provision for this, but what I had to do became clear the next time I rebooted the box. When the SimpleShare rebooted, I received an e-mail from it telling me that I had to go into the administration screen and enter the encryption password. Once I did this, the share was available for clients. So this feature is meant to protect your data if someone walks off with your drive - without the password, they won't be able to access it.

end snip

That's the way to survive a raid. Packing it up breaks it if they find it.
I know from experiance (i made a configuration error) that using the reset to reset it to factory defaults does not open the encrypted share. It stays encrypted and can only be opened and mounted by entering the encryption key.