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Merely Cloaking Data May Be Incriminating?
n0g writes "In a recent submission to Bugtraq, Larry Gill of Guidance Software refutes some bug reports for the forensic analysis product EnCase Forensic Edition. The refutation is interesting, but one comment raises an important privacy issue. When talking about users creating loops in NTFS directories to hide data, Gill says, 'The purposeful hiding of data by the subject of an investigation is in itself important evidence and there are many scenarios where intentional data cloaking provides incriminating evidence, even if the perpetrator is successful in cloaking the data itself.' That begs the question: if one cloaks data by encrypting it, exactly what incriminating evidence does that provide? And how important is that evidence compared to the absence of anything else found that was incriminating? Are we no longer allowed to have any secrets, even on our own systems?"
Look, if you're obeying the law, then you have nothing to hide, and shouldn't hide anything. It's that simple, and I don't understand why people have an issue with it.
That, at least, is the sentiment expressed to me from new immigrants to the US from other countries that are not so free. I'm not xenophobic, but sometimes I do fear for the fundamentals of the US when people who do not grow up here say "we have too much freedom" and "we should be required to carry identity cards (papers)."
Trust your govenment.
Oh, right, DRM isn't bad, because it has large, multi-national corporations giving large campaign contributions-- err, I mean, supporting it.
Once you understand the target audience, the meaning is entirely innocuous. He's talking to people who work for big dumb companies, the kind that use NTFS and commercial encryption that we know won't work:
But the real give away is "perpetrator". He's advising corporate people who know what they are doing is illegal. When someone blows the whistle or makes them a scapegoat, and the wrong doing is proved beyond a reasonable doubt, every step taken to cover ass is evidence of intent and knowledge. Without using as many words, the author is discouraging the use of his product for this purpose.
The morals of all of the above are a further condemnation of non free software, if not capitalism itself. A self interested capitalist will report and avoid immoral people. There's no honor among theives. The free software vendor, on the other hand, polite to paying customers and would never think of doing something like this.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.