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Vista Makes Forensic PC Exam Easier for Lawyers

Posted by Zonk on from the can-i-introduce-you-to-some-nice-encryption dept.

Katharine writes "Jason Krause, a legal affairs writer for the American Bar Association's 'ABA Journal' reports in the July issue that Windows Vista will be a boon for those looking for forensic evidence of wrongdoing on defendants' PC's and a nightmare for defendants who hoped their past computer activities would not be revealed. Krause quotes attorney R. Lee Barrett, 'From a [legal] defense perspective, [Vista] scares me to death. One of the things I have a hard time educating my clients on is the volume of data that's now discoverable.' This is primarily attributable to Shadow Copy, TxF and Instant Search."

2 of 343 comments (clear)

  1. How secure.... by Mystery00 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    But from a litigator's perspective, the interesting point is that it keeps a lot more information--and more detailed information--about what a person does with a PC.

    Microsoft is reading this article and thinking "Heh, interesting side effect..." when later questioned their response will be "Yes, we meant that."

    Also one would think that one of the ways to make an OS, or anything for that matter, secure, is to not only plug possible breach points from the outside, but also not to keep detailed information on the computer in the first place. When you do it, you do it by choice, if keeping information about you is in-built into the OS, then where is the choice? Can this be turned off? (Other than hacks)

    Vista is proving time and time again that it's a ridiculously stupid OS choice for any user, it's as if Microsoft is trying their best to screw themselves. Is it stupidity or is there some kind of master plan at work here that isn't clearly visible....

    --
    "we've got trenchcoats and bad attitudes" - John Constantine, HellBlazer
  2. Re:Vista has good points? by sid0 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    > First of all, not all hardware from XP is supported (I suspect the new DRM requirements in the OS for my difficulties here)

    You can suspect anything you like. Doesn't make it true, however.

    > Then, there's the user interface. Not as ugly as XP's Fischer-Price interface, but nothing to write home about, either.

    I kind of like it. I hate all the themes that come with an Ubuntu default install. Pretty subjective.

    > I'd rather not waste the CPU and GPU cycles on it, thank you very much.

    Then turn it off. Go ahead.

    > The first example that comes to mind is mapping a network drive. Why the heck they moved it off the My Computer (what do they call it now, "Bill's Computer"?) window I'll never know.

    They haven't. Stop lying your ass off. And no, it's just "Computer".

    > Then, there's the fact that Vista is a big fat pig when it comes to resources.

    For several reasons. Tell me, did XP have full-fledged system-wide indexing of files? Did XP have a fully composited hardware-accelerated desktop.

    > I gave it the old college try, but Vista's just a piece of crap.

    "I gave it the old college try, but Ubuntu's just a piece of crap hurrrr."