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Data Recovered From DVD Leads To Conviction, 24-Year Sentence

Posted by Soulskill on from the put-that-in-a-safe-place dept.

Lucas123 writes "The Santa Cruz, Calif. DA's office had been counting on a DVD with the recorded testimony of a victim in case against a serial rapist, but when they popped the video into the player, nothing came up — the disc was blank. To make matters worse, the cop who performed the original interview with the victim told the DA she never said she was 'forced,' so the judge wasn't going to allow the witness to testify in a case where her original statement to police was in conflict with her current testimony. After two local data recovery firms said there was no way to restore the data, a third was able to recover the police interview from two years earlier, which led the defendant to plead guilty earlier this month. Close call."

32 of 231 comments (clear)

  1. eep by dissy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Hardware: Recovered Data From a Corrupt DVD Leads To Conviction, 24-Year Sentence

    Why did my mind instantly jump to the conclusion that some data recovery tech worker did someone a favor, got sued by the MPAA, and got a 24-year sentence...

    1. Re:eep by lysergic.acid · · Score: 4, Interesting

      i was thinking in the same direction too. but when i read this part of the summary:

      but when they popped the video into the player, nothing came up -- the disc was blank.

      my immediate question was, "did they try a PAL player?"

      what's interesting to me is that two "data recovery firms" told them that the data was unrecoverable, but Seagate Recovery Service was able to recover the data without a problem. that makes me wonder if the earlier data recovery firms even tried to diagnose the problem or if they even knew anything about digital media & data storage. perhaps they thought that just by buying some digital forensics or data recovery software that automatically qualifies them to run a data recovery service. though i'm guessing that's what most police departments do as well.

      i guess that's the problem with buying off the shelf software to do your job rather than learning how things work for yourself.

    2. Re:eep by gregbot9000 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Or they could stick to the analog media that is near failure proof. They probably knew how it worked, it just probably didn't. Write error that wasn't detected, minor corruption in the disk, things that can't be planned for. After having lost 2 years worth of photos to two minor technical issues I'm starting to doubt this whole digital thing. A box of analog photos, while harder to share, is a lot less likely to fail then a hard drive.

    3. Re:eep by theaveng · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Cops and other institutions are not going to copy their stored DVDs every year. They want something that they can "record once, throw in a box, and forget it". The analog tape fits that role perfectly because even though it might have some magnetic loss, it will still be watchable when Cold Case digs it out of the box in year 2030. ;-)

      --
      FOX NEWS.com should be BANNED from television and internet. Have the Congress take it over and give us Truespeak.
    4. Re:eep by lysergic.acid · · Score: 3, Interesting

      it's interesting that you brought that up. from my personal experience, most brand name NTSC players sold in the U.S. don't support PAL, but most PAL players sold in, say Taiwan, do support NTSC.

      also, cheapo $20 DVD players are more likely to support both NTSC and PAL, as well as DivX/MPEG-4 video, etc. than the expensive $100~200 players. they're usually off-brand players, but you can also find these cheap players by major companies like Panasonic or Sony, though you'll have to enter a code to unlock the player.

  2. Only Meta-Data was damaged by imaginaryelf · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "Our analysis showed there to be damage to the lead-in section of the data," Keith Gnagey, vice president of professional services for i365, said in an e-mail statement about the recovery effort. That meant any attempt "with normal playing software would not be able to get past the beginning of the data."

    That's like the directory tree being messed up but the data being intact.

    I can't believe the other "two local data recovery firms" got stumped by this simple problem.

    1. Re:Only Meta-Data was damaged by RiffRafff · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I can't believe the other "two local data recovery firms" got stumped by this simple problem.

      Really. I wonder what the names of those two firms are, so we'll know who NOT to go to.

      --
      "I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
    2. Re:Only Meta-Data was damaged by sith · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Almost sounds like a DVD that wasn't finalized in a direct-to-dvd camcorder.

    3. Re:Only Meta-Data was damaged by Compholio · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Almost sounds like a DVD that wasn't finalized in a direct-to-dvd camcorder.

      I don't know about that, but I've run into this problem when there's dust on the disk when it's recorded. The laser etches the dust rather than the media, resulting in a disk that's got a small blank section.

    4. Re:Only Meta-Data was damaged by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      I bet they still got paid for their efforts, which is probably enough for them.

      I doubt it. The two times my company needed to use a data service to recover data from dead hard disks, it was pay for play. If they didn't get any data back, they didn't get paid.

      It cost about $1000 each time.

    5. Re:Only Meta-Data was damaged by Belial6 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      When my father owned a computer shop, he would regularly get people trying to sell him software that would let him do "data recovery". There was no way my father was qualified to do data recovery. He eventually focused only on printer repair because he found he wasn't really qualified to even do most PC work. That didn't stop the sales guys from trying to convince him that if he bought their software, he would do fine in the "data recovery" field.

      So, it doesn't surprise me that two local data recovery firms got stumped. They probably ran the software they bought against the DVD and when nothing came up, they said it was unrecoverable.

    6. Re:Only Meta-Data was damaged by bigjarom · · Score: 5, Funny

      I'm interested to know how you came to this conclusion. Did you find the laser-etched dust particle on the finished disk?

      Maybe you could send the dust to Seagate Recovery Service to get that blank section back.

    7. Re:Only Meta-Data was damaged by Compholio · · Score: 4, Informative

      I noticed after burning the disk that there was dust on the bottom (a lot of it concentrated in one spot). So, I blew it off and the part where the dust used to be was distinctly the "not burned" color. For shits and giggles I tried the disk anyway and there were a bunch of inaccessible files. Since I noticed it right away I just chucked the disk and made a new one (I was working with data on a PC). This happened quite a while ago, but if you're curious I could attempt to intentionally reproduce it.

    8. Re:Only Meta-Data was damaged by noidentity · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I've run into this problem when there's dust on the disk when it's recorded. The laser etches the dust rather than the media, resulting in a disk that's got a small blank section.

      You may have had that problem with dusty media, but the explanation sounds suspect. The laser beam is focused to a point inside the disc, not at the surface; at the surface, it's wide and dust simply reduces its intensity at the focused point (diagram). Looks like BD discs have much less tolerance of dust, due to the data layer being so close to the surface.

    9. Re:Only Meta-Data was damaged by the_womble · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Maybe the headline should read "incompetent data recovery nearly lets rapist get away"

    10. Re:Only Meta-Data was damaged by Hal_Porter · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually that makes me think of a hair brained scheme. The finger print is essentially a mask applied to the data. Your eyes can see it but the DVD drive error corrects it away because there are enough gaps in the mask where the original data 'shows through' for the error correction to correct away the errors.

      Now it seems like if you could record raw data you could make a DVD with a pattern visible to the naked eye but invisible to the DVD reader. So rather than waiting ages and buying expensive media for things like Lightscribe or Labelflash you could burn both the data and the label at the same time and on any media. Unlike DiscT@2 which burned logos on the data side of the disk, the space can be used for both logo and data at the same time.

      You could do it with arbitrary bitmaps too - take the bitmap and make holes in it through which enough data shows through to make the disk readable. The burning software could do this with a mask cunningly constructed to make enough holes even in a solid bitmap to make the disk readable. Hell you could let the user select the tradeoff between image quality and error margin.

      There's a a downside of course, the more solid the image the more the error correction will be stressed even for a disc which can be read perfectly. It seems like a disc burned with this technology would be less resistant to scratches and fingerprints.

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    11. Re:Only Meta-Data was damaged by mcrbids · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Way back when, I bought several such softwares. Most was overblown - lets you "undelete", etc. But then I found some software that perhaps wasn't technically "data recovery" software, but might as well have been...

      SPINRITE II. That software was AWESOME!

      Back when MFM/RLL was still a consideration, media failures were all too common. Drive sectors would go bad, your FAT table would be corrupted, and your system was horked, often so badly that you couldn't even boot.

      But with a copy of SpinRite II and a DOS boot floppy, and a *LOT* of time (often 2-3 days!) and in nearly every case, the computer would be brought back to full operation. I had one system where, whenever the owner had problems with bad sectors, he would rename the file and re-copy from backups. This would cause the area with the bad blocks to become unused, sort of a "manual re-mapping".

      Well, his backups got horked right about the same time that the FAT itself corrupted. The system was gone, the data was gone, and he was in a severe panic. But Spinrite II took over a week to recover everything. But it did. Everything. Even the renamed files read/wrote flawlessly.

      Could I have recovered this DVD? Probably not - I never claimed to be a "data recovery expert". I was honest with my clients about what I was qualified to do (diagnose/reformat/reload) and what I wasn't. But I recovered LOTS of data anyway.

      Now for the funny part:

      I owned a small computer sales/service shop for several years. You know, the friendly neighborhood type. We did *alot* of computer repairs. We gave out free diagnostics, which was an excellent way to get more repairs - the diagnosis was free, the repair was reasonable, customers almost always bought.

      Frequently, we'd be asked to fix software woes, etc. We'd warn about the risks of software problems, possible loss of data, offer to backup their data first, and we'd even make them sign release forms that they did NOT want us to back up the data.

      And then we'd back up the data anyway, routinely. We used a backpack drive that was big enough to keep a dozen or so drive images on it. (parallel port drive with a driver loaded by floppy or CD - this is before USB was common)

      Granted, most of the time, the backup wasn't needed. But when it was, (and it was, maybe 1/4 of the time) we would then charge $150 "data recovery". (to reload the data from our backup) Since our charge for backups was $50, our customers made out slightly in the odds, but we were still the heroes and those who actually needed the data were not too hesitant to pay, especially since, with this method, our success rate was 100%!

      --
      I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
    12. Re:Only Meta-Data was damaged by digitalchinky · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Your comment is not insightful at all, you are just looking for someone else to drag along for the blame, for any stupid reason other than the right one. The individuals doing the investigation would have been the ones who let the rapist get away with the crime. End of story. "Here at the California DA office we routinely put all our eggs in one basket". What kind of shop are they running there anyway? - a single video recording device, one disc, a large number of months between the interview recording and the need to use that disc in court. Nobody bothers to see if the disc actually works until it's needed.

      Now that is incompetence at its finest.

  3. Re:That third house wasn't ILM was it? (not a joke by ColdWetDog · · Score: 5, Funny

    in a day where a few people in their basement can render decent cgi, I'm wondering if this "third firm" was not hired to do a little "extraordinary rendering"

    For best results, one should loosen their tin-foil hat occasionally.

    Just sayin'.

    --
    Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
  4. Tinfoil hat eh? by plasmacutter · · Score: 3, Interesting

    in a day where a few people in their basement can render decent cgi, I'm wondering if this "third firm" was not hired to do a little "extraordinary rendering"

    For best results, one should loosen their tin-foil hat occasionally.

    Just sayin'.

    Funny how everyone here is fully aware of the capabilities of our current state of technology in the hands of people with enough resources, yet when someone suggests an actual, real-world possibility for misuse, or the possibility of despotism it's "tinfoil hat" time.

    I'm not saying they're doing it to me, or that they're in the walls, but seriously, have those lessons of the mccarthy and now bush eras gone straight out the other ear? I suppose GITMO doesn't exist? I suppose every single protestor is an "anarchist" just like the news says?

    --
    VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
    1. Re:Tinfoil hat eh? by fishbowl · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I think you overestimate the resources of the Santa Cruz police.
      McCarthy? Bush? GITMO?? Seriously, Santa Cruz isn't exactly playing in that world.

      --
      -fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
    2. Re:Tinfoil hat eh? by jackbird · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think the GP overestimates the state of the art in 3D rendering and animation. I don't think any team anywhere could fake a video like that to the satisfaction of the people who were actually there. Much less do it in secret on a DA's budget.

  5. hmmm by thatskinnyguy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Couldn't they just have their local forensics lab run FTK on it? I mean, it has saved me and those I work for tons of frustration thanks to stuff like this.

    --
    The game.
  6. Re:protecting your data by fishbowl · · Score: 3, Informative

    We shred DVDs. It's a consumer-level shredder. It cuts the disc all to hell and is even pretty thorough at removing the medium from the substrate, or whatever the nomenclature is.
    There are consumer shredders that will do discs, but ours was definitely not cheap. A GBC Shredmaster "DOD" model. (We're not a defense shop, we're a research hospital/medical college, among other things.)

    --
    -fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
  7. Re:So it's not only the the 3rd world after all! by bogaboga · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And you think DVDs are a big deal? Think again. On healthcare for example, we are beaten by Cuba!

    I guess you are among those who do not believe that some of these so called 3rd world countries are *slightly* ahead of us especially in what a cellphone can be used for. Now, that's a fact.

  8. Disc wasn't finalized by CyberZCat · · Score: 5, Informative

    This is a very common problem that happens when a disc isn't finalized on both audio CDs and video DVDs that are recorded on direct to disc consumer recording systems. After a the actual data is written what is a essentially a "table of contents" has to be written at the beginning of the disc, otherwise you get the "blank disc" effect as describe here. That two separate data specialists couldn't figure this out is rather concerning...

  9. Re:So it's not only the the 3rd world after all! by gnick · · Score: 4, Funny

    While I am shocked, I am not that surprised at all.

    ...and I am puzzled as to how that works out!

    It's easy:
    1) Turn on a lamp.
    2) Remove the light bulb.
    3) With your left-hand forefinger, touch the silver-colored outer shielding where the light bulb screws in.
    4) With your right-hand forefinger, touch the contact at the bottom of the receptacle.

    Sorry, no "???" nor "profit", but you'll be shocked without being surprised. Hope that helps.

    =)

    --
    He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
  10. Re:Dust on media by Chris+Tucker · · Score: 5, Funny

    Usually it's physical contact first, THEN the tissue.

    --
    Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
  11. Re:HOW was Only Meta-Data was damaged? by dgatwood · · Score: 4, Informative

    Probably, yeah. In the worst case, though, the disc might have gotten finalized incorrectly (e.g. using a bad optical drive), in which case even the original DVD burner might not play it....

    The lead-in area (at least for the first session) is the innermost recordable portion of the media. If something went wrong in media fabrication, I'd expect that to be the second-most likely part to have problems, second only to the outer edge (which fails verification frequently in cheap media). So this could have been a media defect as well.

    I'm not surprised the Seagate folks were able to recover the data. This pales compared with what the Seagate recovery folks deal with every day--head crashes, surface mount desoldering and replacing defective head preamps, maybe even electron microscope recovery of shattered platters.... Compared with that, a few bad blocks in the lead-in of a DVD is downright trivial and might even be recoverable without hacking the drive firmware....

    That said, I sure would like to know who the two companies are that couldn't figure this out so I can never send anything to them.... :-)

    --

    Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

  12. NOT an anti-MS bash! by rts008 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "Probably, yeah. In the worst case, though, the disc might have gotten finalized incorrectly (e.g. using a bad optical drive), in which case even the original DVD burner might not play it....

    The lead-in area (at least for the first session) is the innermost recordable portion of the media. If something went wrong in media fabrication, I'd expect that to be the second-most likely part to have problems, second only to the outer edge (which fails verification frequently in cheap media). So this could have been a media defect as well."

    *disclaimer*
    This is only my limited experience, so take with a grain of salt....

    I have had this very problem in the past, and can currently reproduce it at will today.

    Facts:
    1. 100 disc stack of blank CD-R | 1x-52x, 700MB, 80 minute Imation (tm) discs.
    2. at the time troubles started:
        a. One PC (500MHz P3 slot A, 768MB PC 100 RAM, CyberDrv CW058D CD-R/Rw @ 32x/12x/48x cd drive, Win XP Pro SP2, Nero 7
        b. Dell desktop: 1.8 GHz AMD Athlon, 1GB PC 2700 RAM, Sony DRUxxx? DVD-+r/rw 4x burner, Win XP SP2, MyDVD-came with drive
        c. P4 Prescott socket 478 3.0 GHz, 1 GB PC 2700 RAM, Lite-on DVD-ROM/CD-+r/rw, Kubuntu 6.10 Dapper Drake, K3b.

    Results:
    2.a,b. would not even recognize the discs, c. would use and burn with no problem.

    The perplexing thing is after I burnt a disc in Kubuntu, it would then 'work' in the other two Win XP machines, but the two XP machines refused to use the Imation blanks.

    Since then, b.(above) has been dual boot with XP SP2, and Kubuntu 8.04, and XP refuses to recognize the blanks, while Kubuntu/K3b on the same hardware uses them with no problem.

    The MEDIA used CAN make a big difference here, as I have found out the hard way.

    If I had mod points, I would have given you some '+1 Insightful' love, but alas, this lame reply is the best I can currently do for now.

    --
    Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
  13. Re:Help! by eh2o · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Quite simple. *Never* talk to the police. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik

  14. Re:Help! by denzacar · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Your first sentence answered the question you made in your second sentence. Watch the above linked video for clarification.
    Based on the fact that a cop DOES NOT LIE, when the rape victim steps into that box, swears and then says that the cop (who does not lie - EVER) said something wrong - rape victim can end up in jail for purgery.
    Or at best, just make a fool of themselves and made to appear like someone who goes around accusing innocent people for no reason.

    Correct way is to talk to a lawyer hired by you or appointed to you and have him/her talk to the police.
    Naturally, a lawyer that has two things. YOUR best interest in mind and a BRAIN.

    --
    Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens