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Man Swallows USB Flash Drive Evidence
SlideRuleGuy writes "In a bold and bizarre attempt to destroy evidence seized during a federal raid, a New York City man grabbed a flash drive and swallowed the data storage device while in the custody of Secret Service agents. Records show Florin Necula ingested the Kingston flash drive shortly after his January 21 arrest outside a bank in Queens. A Kingston executive said it was unclear if stomach acid could damage one of their drives. 'As you might imagine, we have no actual experience with someone swallowing a USB.' I imagine that would be rather painful. But did he follow his mother's advice and chew thoroughly, first? Apparently not, as the drive was surgically recovered."
Next time, dude should use a microSD card.
And maybe some mayo. Blegh.
Couldn't they just wait for it to move through?
Best Slashdot Co
I am never, ever getting into the data recovery business.
Couldn't they have just, you know, waited?
data dump?
The story said he was skimming, not counterfeiting.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
I always check before I swallow electronic evidence. I may be stupid but in my body I don't want more than the acceptable levels of lead, cadmium, mercury, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated biphenyl (PBB) and polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE) flame retardants.
I skimmed thorough the summary - I had no idea this is illegal somewhere.
Better get ready to swallow all the evidence of your misdeeds that you amassed on your USB stick!!! Hurry hurry nownownow!!!
Never have such charges been more appropriate.
After surgery, the suspect was quoted as saying, "And I thought I was regular before."
He could have just encrypted it! Wait... if he was thinking he could get away with that, he must have been too dumb to encrypt it.
Do Not Eat (if containing evidence in a federal investigation)
The enemies of Democracy are
He could have just been hungry..
http://www.dynamism.com/accessories/usb_sushi.shtml
... since, obviously, if they hadn't operated, the evidence would have to have been, by its nature, eliminated.
I'm just glad we never got raided when I was storing data on the Vax 6000 tape drives.
Quite frankly. While stomach acid might work to some degree, it's absolutely unreliable and we're not even getting to where it gets stuck inside of you and you're going to be unconscious when they retrieve it.
USB sticks are fragile and tiny. Even during a raid there is plenty of time to get rid of them or destroy them physically. Even if you're arrested on the street, your chances are higher to destroy what you have on you by throwing it on the street. Chances are, before they can retrieve it a few trucks passed over it, or it shattered from the impact altogether.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Favored USB Drives, will destroy all data with contact to stomach acid. Available now in FBI Mint, Police Cherry, and CIA Arsenic.
Get yours now!!! *WARNING NOT FOR CONSUMPTION*
Don't forget to use bio-compatible storage devices next time you commit a computer crime, and make sure they dissolve quickly in stomach acid.
--
Seriously, anyone who records criminal information on a computer without using "unbreakable" encryption* should understand the risks.
*Unbreakable would include a one-time pad where the pad is for practical purposes not available to the police. Absent quantum computing or something similar, it also includes strong encryption where the key cannot be recovered with less than brute-force methods and with a key strength sufficient to make a brute-force attack impractical. Of course, with quantum computing "right around the corner" and most serious-crime statutes of limitations being on the order of 5-7 years, don't be surprised if your "unbreakable" encryption gets broken before the statute of limitations expires.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
USB sticks are fragile and tiny. Even during a raid there is plenty of time to get rid of them or destroy them physically. Even if you're arrested on the street, your chances are higher to destroy what you have on you by throwing it on the street. Chances are, before they can retrieve it a few trucks passed over it, or it shattered from the impact altogether.
They may be tiny, but they are not fragile. The worst that is likely to happen if one is run over is that the connector gets crushed. That won't render the data irretrievably lost.
Seriously, try to break one of these things sometime. Without resorting to pliers or some kind of heavy duty shredder, it's pretty tough.
I wonder if it would be possible to make the printed circuit board out of a starch that would dissolve in water?
If the flash chips were erasable by exposure to light (like the old UV-erasable EPROMS), then just having the plastic enclosure dissolve away would be enough to destroy the data.
Putting moderation advice in your
Sure it does. Printing money steals from everyone else with the currency. If you have some amount of value or wealth in your country in terms of goods and land, and suddenly there's twice as much money in circulation, everything would suddenly have to cost twice as much for the same amount of value to be exchanged. In essence, by introducing twice as much money into circulation, the money printer has just stolen half the wealth from all users of the currency. The same thing happens for trivial amounts of money, the effect just isn't as pronounced. The first time it's used the money has the same value as it used to. So the effect is especially nasty because it takes a while to materialize.
I actually knew someone whose job was to negotiate with dictators in African countries to trade $1M for some large quantity of newly printed money in the local currency. He'd then take that money and spend it on as much stuff as he could, take it to America and sell it at a profit. The dictator is happy to have a big pile of almost universally accepted US currency and doesn't understand (or care about) economics well enough to understand that he's just helped someone steal both goods and the intangible value of his country's currency.
Because that could make a great ad for Kingston.
On a side note, they make -- albeit expensive -- flash drives with a kill switch. If you're tromping around with incriminating data, it might not be a bad plan to pay a little more cash and be on the safe side. Not that the criminal element was ever known for their forethought.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
Sarcasm detector on the fritz?
It was only a matter of time before the newly merged Frito-Kingston corporation cornered the chip market.
That green slime had it coming.
I tried a microwave oven once.
Worked perfectly (smelled awful), so... it's not hard if you're trying!
I imagine hooking it up to a brief 220 voltage source would probably do the trick as well - and laundering often works too. Not enough to be relied on, however, since I've laundered 3 flash drives and 1 worked.
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
Printing money steals from everyone else with the currency.
No. The value of their currency is reduced. Nothing was stolen. It’s just worth less than it was before.
He'd then take that money and spend it on as much stuff as he could, take it to America and sell it at a profit.
If you can’t see work being performed and value being added, you’re blind.
Sure the dictator could have just as easily exported all of those goods himself. He didn’t. He chose to have someone else do it, because it was a quicker payout and less work for him. Absolutely nothing was stolen.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Seems like a bit of an over complex solution when you could
High volume+ effeceint:
1:
encrypt the drive.
2:
encrypt the drive with some deniable style system like truecrypt.
lower volume high secrecy:
3:
carry around a USB key full of your holiday snaps.... and hide an encrypted drive in the least significant bits of the photos.
Remember the old days when spies would swallow their instructions, written on paper (hopefully they had the foresight to use rice paper)?
I wonder whether this event might qualify for the largest documented quantity of artificially encoded information (as opposed to naturally encoded information like in DNA) ever ingested.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Thank the gods there's nothing with a name similar to The Rederal Feserve that prints money (based on nothing) to 'bail-out' an economy (based on nothing).
I work in a chem lab. I would be willing to volunteer time, expertise, and chemicals to test the effects of sulfuric acid at varying concentrations if someone would be willing to donate several Kingston USB drives to test on. Load em up with media and programs, soak in varying concentrations of the acid, clean with distilled water, let dry, attempt to access data. I would imagine the issue would be a matter of liquid tightness of the seals, the chemical makeup of the plastics and metals used in the flash drives, and if/how the bits retain their state on the drive (I don't know much about the way data is stored in the drives. Non-volatile I would imagine as the drives don't have power supplies.).
its a Message Digest...
I have washed and dried USB sticks before(Rally2) that have worked fine afterwords. It would be interesting to see how digestion effects them.
Plausible deniability is pretty much your best bet. The courts kind of frown on people who clearly / intentionally destroy incriminating evidence.
If, upon opening the truecrypt, all they find is a folder of "My favorite porn pics"... he's good to go.
Plus, unlike option 3, you don't have to roll any custom software.
Don't be intentionally dense. It's theft, no way around it. Instead of stealing from you personally, the counterfeiter steals a marginal amount of value from everyone holding that currency by just a small amount. All objects have value, which is a combination of the effort that went into creating it, the demand for that object and the scarcity of that object.
Without a fixed or regulated amount of money in existence, it has no value. If I print $1 trillion in cash tomorrow and hand it out on the streets, suddenly your house and everything you own is worth less. You still have a house, I didn't take that from you. I just stole it's value.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Uh.. of course it's stolen. The value is stolen. Your {currency unit}'s utility is reduced and the counterfeiter gains {currency unit} with a value roughly equal to the aggregated loss of buying power.
You are deprived of "ability to get stuff" and the counterfeiter has more of the thing you were deprived of. How is that not stealing?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
It’s NOT theft.
Nor is it theft when that asshole’s blighted lawn reduces your property value.
You still have a house, I didn't take that from you. I just stole it's value.
No. You still have the same amount of money, it’s just worth less. The value of your non-cash assets, such as the house, is exactly the same, and in fact the cash equivalent is greater than it was before, because dollars have less value.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
This too, shall pass.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
Would you want to be the guy having to retrieve it from the other end?
And this btw is the real life proof of the crypto-nerds fantasy being just that, a fantasy.
Crypto-nerd: Ooh I encrypted this file with a secret password that they can't break with a thousand super-computers.
Secret service: Hit him with this stick until he tells everything. If he doesn't, well that proves he was an highly trained enemy agent.
And WAY to give the game away. Now they know exactly where to look and that there is something to look for.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The value is stolen. Your {currency unit}'s utility is reduced and the counterfeiter gains {currency unit} with a value roughly equal to the aggregated loss of buying power.
In the same sense that the horse-and-buggy industry’s value was “stolen” by the automobile industry, sure.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
http://xkcd.com/644/
From TFA:
A Kingston executive said it was unclear if stomach acid could damage a flash drive. "As you might imagine, we have no actual experience with someone swallowing a USB," Mike Sager wrote in an e-mail to TSG.
As opposed to, say, "HALP, I SWALLOWED A SERIAL!"
Quite frankly. While stomach acid might work to some degree, it's absolutely unreliable and we're not even getting to where it gets stuck inside of you and you're going to be unconscious when they retrieve it.
It's not absolutely reliable, but you could definitely do worse. Gastric acid is largely Hydrochloric acid, which reacts readily with metals like lead and copper commonly used in electronics.
That being said, I really wouldn't recommend eating a USB flash drive. It may or may not actually be effective in destroying the data, could require surgery to remove, could add some nice heavy metals to your diet, could get you charged with destruction of evidence, etc. Much easier to just encrypt the data and memorize the key. Encryption won't get you charged with destruction of evidence and you can't (yet) be forced to turn over passwords to assist in your prosecution (5th Amendment).
If I print $1 trillion in cash tomorrow and hand it out on the streets, suddenly your house and everything you own is worth less. You still have a house, I didn't take that from you. I just stole it's value.
No you didn't; my house is still as valuable as it was the day before, only the measure of it's value with that specific currency has changed. If the printed money was handed out equally "on the streets" all you did was cause inflation, my house now 'costs' more, as does everything else.
Isn't this man considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law?
What right do they have to risk the life of a presumed innocent man with dangerous surgery? A surgery like this permanently disfigures, in our legal system you can't even sentence someone to disfigurement like this as punishment after they have been convicted of a crime!
If I were the man in question I would sue. If they try to press whatever charges are involved then I would claim double jeopardy, they have already exacted a cruel and unusual punishment.
Yes, like the government's quantitative easing policy...
Did this friend of yours contribute to the laughable state of the zimbabwean economy? I bought a 100 trillion zimbabwe dollar bill a while ago just for fun, its worth about 3 cents.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
The dictator may be unable to export the goods himself, perhaps due to sanctions or similar... Or he may have to export them on the black market and accept an extremely poor price for them.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Uh.. of course it's stolen. The value is stolen.
That's actually called fractional reserve banking. As to how it's not stealing, well, ask the Fed...
Seriously tho, if you're worried about the loss of value of a fiat currency, don't store your buying power in it. No counterfeiter in the world can do anything near what's done every day by those running the monetary systems.
It's funny that USA liberals refuse to understand how (their) non-violent crimes cause damage.
We can explain value loss and inflation by using a less politically loaded example, waiting a week for the person to forget his agenda. Tell the same person that gold is dropping at twice the rate, so he can be twice as rich. Then, you can let him figure out that everyone else is thinking the same thing (unfortunately, in the world of counterfeiting, this is not the case, and that's why the benefit is only for the criminal and the hurt is for everyone.)
Users will see how futile their new money is when everyone wants to get at the increased amount of gold. Auction (or whatever term WOW's inter user market system is called) prices will take off. His piggy bank with 50 hard-earned gold pieces can now be traded for much less elite armors than before, because other players know he can get off his ass and gather more cash to come back and trade. Eventually the system is so warped by user pricing that NPC sales go down after everyone has purchased the generic goods. The prices are low compared to player character shops, and all the non-generic good armor sales for a lot more. Other patches will eventually nerf monsters to be stronger to try to balance out the excess power given to the players, so the advantage in added gold is "gone," like when real world prices go up after your minimum salary increases by law... What doesn't go away with the changes is the fact that you still need to pay higher prices, or get lower quality goods at the old prices. If for some unfortunate disability, you can't farm the extra drops of gold now "available" to your peers, then your wallet effectively loses power to buy at the same value levels as before.
People then start to leave the game in anger. Back in reality, we can't "leave" the "game." We can even put the counterfeiters in jail, but the money can't be rounded up after it reaches innocent peoples hands. The prices won't go down. The grind will be a much steeper for them, while the counterfeiters create value to themselves from the illusion of unlimited amounts of "gold"
Your house and other goods you owned would still retain value (and its value in terms of the currency would actually increase since more of the devalued currency would be required to purchase a house), the only thing that would lose value is any cash you held.
Obviously if you wanted to sell those goods, you wouldn't accept payment in a currency that was rapidly losing value. This is why people in countries with hyperinflation typically abandon the local currency and deal in dollars or euros.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Not neccessarily, A house in a country with a functioning economy and useful medium of trade is worth way more than a house somewhere without that.
http://notanumber.net/
That could never amount to anything significant!
I've machine washed and dried (accidentally of course) several Sandisk Cruzers, and all functioned perfectly well afterwards. (Yes, I'm comparing agitation in water and tumble dry to throwing it into the street)
I'd say bring a hammer and just smash it to bits.. even if by throwing it on the street you'd managed to crack the PCB or destroy the USB interface itself, you'd still likely have the actual storage chip intact and readable via other mechanisms. You'd want to smash item #4 in this reference image to dust.
----- The internet has given everyone the ability to have their voice heard equally as loud.. even if they shouldn't be
I think I’ve gotten e-mails from some of those guys.
In seriousness, though, even then you’re providing a service for the money you make. You’re doing something that he either can’t do or simply would prefer not to do himself.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Still not theft.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Ummmm.... If I do something illegal that makes you poorer, and at the same time enrich myself due to my actions, I have most certainly stolen from you as I have illegally and immorally enriched myself at your expense, and without your permission.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
I dropped a Kingston USB drive in the parking lot at work & didn't realize it was missing till 2 rainy days later. When I found it, it had been ran over by at least one car & was sitting in a puddle. I let it dry out, bent the connector straight, plugged it in & got my data off of it.
There is a war going on for your mind.
The Woz used to tell stories of him making blueboxes rigged with thermite in case his customers were raided. Complicated true, but much more fun than a hammer.
No. The value of their currency is reduced. Nothing was stolen. It's just worth less than it was before.
I have a dumb question: If I use a fake twenty at a store, and then they turn around and take that to the bank, and the bank says "that's counterfit!"... does't that mean the store is out the $20?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
this. I once dropped a USB out on the street in front of my parents house and didn't realize I had done so until the next day. I came outside to find the USB had been ran over several times. I still own said USB drive, and it still works just fine.
There's probably a market for a USB drive storage case with a battery operated high voltage power supply. See the cops coming, push the button and smoke them all.
Have gnu, will travel.
No. The value of their currency is reduced. Nothing was stolen. It’s just worth less than it was before.
1 a : to take or appropriate without right or leave and with intent to keep or make use of wrongfully. d : to appropriate to oneself or beyond one's proper share. 3 a : to seize, gain, or win by trickery
I've pretty sure you just said value/worth was stolen.
Care to try again?
Yes, it certainly does mean that.
If a store takes your fake twenty and you walk away with a product, that store cannot re-spend that twenty. The store has lost a product. Theft.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
It's NOT theft
So you have an xbox for sale on craigslist, and a guy comes over and pays you $200 for it. When you go deposit that money in the bank you're told it's counterfeit and useless - So you have no xbox and no $200. Has that guy stolen your xbox?
If I am ever involved in a crime I am going to have to make sure all of the incriminating stuff is on digestible flash drives.
And I suspect there will suddenly be a market for these soon. Watch soon for the "Kraft Foods Yum-Drive" series!
*clicks link*
*disappointed is no X-ray image turns on my screen*
Yes. Care to explain how that relates?
You have stolen from the store because the arrangement was that they give you $20 worth of real goods in exchange for $20 face-value in US currency. You took $20 worth of goods and did not give them $20 in US currency. That’s theft. You stole from the store.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
RTFA
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Value/worth is not something that can be stolen. It exists only if people agree it exists.
If you have a $20 bill, there’s no arguing that it exists. However, the only reason it has any value is because it is backed by the US government... and if that value is less tomorrow, nothing has been “stolen” from you. People simply value it less than they did before.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
*NM*
You have done something illegal that made me poorer and you richer. Yes, it was illegal. Yes, it was immoral.
It was not, however, stealing: I have exactly the same as I did before. What I have is simply less valuable than it used to be.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Sold a truck once for 1400 USD cash, guy paid in all twenties, he then thought it odd that I asked him to walk next door to the 7-11 with me, you shoulda seen the look on his face when I asked the clerk if I could borrow the use of their counterfeit pen for a minute. Sold the truck pocketed the cash, no fake bills. A four dollar investment into one of those pens could save you alot of grief.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Sweet, if that's the case, let's just print a hundred trillion dollars for everyone!
It worked in Zimbabwe, it can work here!
Yes. The fake bills never had value in the first place and you were tricked into making an exchange for something worthless.
If, on the other hand, he paid you with good US currency and tomorrow the economy collapsed and the bills were worthless, you now have no xbox and a worthless pile of bills whose face value is still $200. Your xbox was NOT stolen from you.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Here's the "ads by google" that shows up for this article:
https://www.ironkey.com/l-gov-evaluate-1?ik_c=USA_Branding_Content_CPC_Image&ik_t=IronKey-Gov&ik_s=google&ik_k=Content&ik_v=yro.slashdot.org&ik_ad=true
I'm glad he didn't try to swallow that one!
Best "String" Ever!
If what you have is now of less value I have stolen from you.
Let's say you have $1000 in your billfold and I steal a $10 bill from you. The value of the money in your wallet is now diminished. That is stealing. Now let's say I create counterfeit money that reduces the value of the $1000 you have to $990. What's the difference between the two, other than by my counterfeiting even the money you will earn in the future will be of diminished value?
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
I apologize if I'm being dim, here. I've just woken up and haven't had my required dose of coffee yet. I will be up front with you and tell you I have not read all the way up the thread. But I don't quite get why it doesn't relate.
The point was made at the beginning that counterfitting doesn't hurt anybody. But it's conceded that it lowers the value of the money. Then it's claimed that lowering the value of money isn't theft. I don't really get this one either, you're leaving people with less value than you had before. Okay, that invites the argument that somebody ripping your shirt is 'theft'. Alright. Distinguishing that is tough. But what's the point of counterfitting? It's so you can go spend money that you didn't really earn. The result? You end up with stuff and the other guy ends up losing stuff with nothing of comparable value to show for it. I do not get why that is not theft.
I took the scenic route to get here, but I figured if I'm putting my foot in my mouth by answering the wrong question at least you'll be able to tell me where I messed up.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Feel free. It’s not theft.*
*Other applicable anti-counterfeiting laws still apply.
Counterfeiting is illegal because it’s a government-backed monopoly, and for good reason. The Federal Reserve is the only entity permitted to create US currency. Similarly, patents and trademarks are government-backed monopolies on particular methods and logos. However, counterfeiting, copyright infringement, and unauthorized use of trademark are not theft.
Spending counterfeit bills is theft for a different reason (fraud, really, but I’ll accept calling it theft). You are lying about the value of the paper, exchanging it for something that has real value and defrauding the seller.
The same thing goes for any form of forgery: you are stealing from the person you sell it to. They think they are getting something of value, when in reality it is worthless. However, unless you are claiming that your bootlegged DVDs are genuine, this doesn’t apply to simply making illegal copies.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Can they surgically remove the key without his consent?
That's a pretty terrible analogy.
The automobile industry supplanted the horse/buggy combo (except in Amish country, I guess) because it introduced a product with greater utility, mass reproducibility, economy of scale, and value than the average horse. On the other hand, a counterfeiter introduces a "product" which has no purpose but a one-way transfer of value to the counterfeiter through the reduction of value of legitimate goods.
How is that not theft? You've been asked that question by three different people and have yet to provide any other answer than a very wordy "because I said so." Come up with a real answer, or quit trolling.
Arr! The laws of physics be a harsh mistress!
What's the difference between the two
In one case, something left my wallet. In the other case, it didn’t.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
But what's the point of counterfitting? It's so you can go spend money that you didn't really earn. The result? You end up with stuff and the other guy ends up losing stuff with nothing of comparable value to show for it. I do not get why that is not theft.
That IS theft.
My argument is with the claim that “Printing money steals from everyone else with the currency” by reducing the value of their money. Reducing the value of their money is not theft.
If you print ten million dollars in fake $20s and buy a mansion, you stole from the person who sold it to you. If the fake $20s are excellent forgeries and successfully make it undetected into the market, reducing the value of everyone’s dollar by 2 cents, you did not steal 2 cents from everyone’s dollar. You stole the mansion. Nothing more, nothing less. There were other harmful effects, but they were not “theft”.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
I had to read your sig 4 times to get the joke inside the joke inside the joke. Well played!
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
I think the confusion stems from the fact that we are talking about money (even though it's not real).
A better example would be instead you getting counterfeit money, you are trading for a fake Rolex watch.
So you trade your car for a watch you thought worth $1000. After the trade you found out its real value is $10. Would you call that theft?
Wait a second I think there is a term for this kind of situation...I think it's something that rhyme with 'floor'....It's fraud!
Is fraud the same as theft? That's the argument you are having. The effect is the same in which you are deprive of $990, but is it theft?
Personally, like you, I don't think so, even though the end result is the same; but that's just a technicality.
Ah. I get you now.
You have a tough battle ahead of you on this argument. The first problem is that counterfeiting isn't something that anybody does for any purpose other than to receive ill-gotten gains. It's not like somebody is, for example, using counterfeit money to wallpaper their room. They take the money and use it to steal something from somebody. The second problem is that often the money is successfully used to exchange goods. It is later discovered and is taken back out of circulation. Whoever had that money just loses it. Now they are missing money, a victim of theft. For this reason, it is very difficult to separate counterfeiting from theft. What is really lacking are cases of counterfeiting that don't result in somebody losing something. This isn't like file-copying where somebody ends up with the goods without somebody losing them.
Good luck.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
On the other hand, a counterfeiter introduces a "product" which has no purpose but a one-way transfer of value to the counterfeiter through the reduction of value of legitimate goods.
No. The transfer of value is through the exchange of something valuable for something claimed to have value but in fact worthless.
That is theft.
If you sell me a hotdog for a “buck” and I kick you in the ass and call that a “buck”, I stole the hotdog. We both knew the agreement was one hotdog in exchange for $1 in US currency. The same applies if I give you a counterfeit bill.
The reason the horse-and-buggy analogy is good is because it’s an illustration of a monopoly on the right to produce goods with a particular assessment of value. The Federal Reserve is the only entity permitted to print US dollars. They have markings of particular value and this is protected by law. Trademarks are similarly claims of value: marks I place upon goods which I trade in, claiming my warranty of their value. Thus trademarks are also protected by law. You can’t put Microsoft’s name on your products. You’re claiming a value (“warrantied by Microsoft”) that the products don’t have. However, you are not stealing from Microsoft... you are stealing from the people who BUY the fake Microsoft products.
In fact, you could make a product that is better than Microsoft’s, and you still couldn’t put Microsoft’s logo on it. This paints even more clearly the fallacy of calling unauthorized use of a trademark “theft”: In this case, the value of the trademark wouldn’t get less, it would get greater. People mistaking your superior counterfeits for the real thing would actually find their overall opinion of Microsoft increasing. But you’re still going to get your britches sued off.
Suppose the production of products that “take me where I need to go” was protected in the same sense that “warrantied by Microsoft” is, and only buggy manufacturers could produce these products. Then automobiles would be “stealing” from them in just the same sense that trademark infringement “steals” from Microsoft: not at all. Obviously the government is very careful about what sort of monopolies it will permit: you’re allowed a monopoly on a particular name, method, etc. You are not allowed a monopoly on a whole category of product. However, this doesn’t invalidate the analogy.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Is fraud the same as theft? That's the argument you are having.
Actually, my answer is yes. I’ll let you call fraud “theft”; there’s not enough of a difference to draw a distinction between the two.
Reducing the value of something that a person has, however, is not theft. Not even if it was done illegally.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Yes... as you said; it is very difficult to separate counterfeiting from theft.
However, the original claim was this:
And this is simply not a valid argument.
I suppose I might have avoided all of this if I’d pointed out from the outset that buying something with counterfeit bills is fraud, and I’m willing to call that theft. But you have stolen from the person you defrauded: not from “everyone else with the currency” whose dollar is now worth slightly less.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Printing money steals from everyone else with the currency. If you have some amount of value or wealth in your country in terms of goods and land, and suddenly there's twice as much money in circulation, everything would suddenly have to cost twice as much for the same amount of value to be exchanged. In essence, by introducing twice as much money into circulation, the money printer has just stolen half the wealth from all users of the currency.
If the money printer doesn't print twice as much as in circulation (geez!) but say 1% as much, it will prompt people to stop sitting on their savings in a deflationary economy and start spending and loaning the money again.
Remember money itself is not a commodity like bread; you can't eat it or build a house with it or clothe yourself with it. You use it to get other people to help you out with these things. It's a tool we use to operate an economy, and when the tool jams everything up by appreciating in value by itself, someone gets to do us all a favor by stealing it a little. The "theft" is handled by the government (as opposed to counterfeiters) since the government does not counterfeit its own currency.
No high voltage necessary. All you need is a straight 48VDC shot through the USB's power rail and the whole thing should be toasted. 24VDC might work but heck, you want to see the smoke for positive confirmation don't you?
If all things failed and there's a traditional POTS line available, the voltage difference between the line and ground will also work.
3a: to seize, gain, or win by trickery
Value/worth is not something that can be stolen.
Just to make sure we are on the same page, your argument is that a counterfeiter is *not* gaining value by trickery. Is this correct?
No... my argument is that this statement is false:
Spending counterfeit money steals from the person you bought something from. It does not steal from everyone else whose dollars are consequently slightly less valuable because of the inflation you caused by printing money.
Then the anecdote fusiongyro used to back up this claim was an example of where money was devalued by inflation... Not theft at all.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Basically, my argument is that gaining value, or causing someone else to lose value, by illegal means, trickery, or any other means... is not “theft”.
“Value” cannot be “stolen”. Things of value can be stolen, but value itself cannot.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
You still have a house, I didn't take that from you. I just stole it's value.
In this case, the value of the house would actually be the same, and the value of your cash would diminish. Your house would, in fact, be worth more dollars than it was before because the dollars would be slightly less valuable.
But anyway, you can’t steal value.
Things of value can be stolen, but value cannot be “stolen” from a thing.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
They didn't lose the product. They traded it for fake money. Not theft.
They took something of value and distracted him by waving fake money around. Theft.
..I think it's something that rhyme with 'floor'....It's fraud!
Is English your first language?
What's the difference between the two
In one case, something left my wallet. In the other case, it didn’t.
Yes, it did, in both cases. You were once able to $1000 worth of goods with what was in your wallet. Now you are only able to buy $990 worth of goods in both instances, and in both instances the ability to purchase that other $10 worth of goods is now in my possession.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
The fake money was misrepresented as real money. Theft.
You were once able to $1000 worth of goods with what was in your wallet. Now you are only able to buy $990 worth of goods in both instances, and in both instances the ability to purchase that other $10 worth of goods is now in my possession.
I’m not arguing with that.
In one case, something left my wallet. In the other case, it didn’t.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
You didn't do very well in poetry class, did you?
You were once able to $1000 worth of goods with what was in your wallet. Now you are only able to buy $990 worth of goods in both instances, and in both instances the ability to purchase that other $10 worth of goods is now in my possession.
I’m not arguing with that.
In one case, something left my wallet. In the other case, it didn’t.
Ummmm... How do you figure that when you're now $10 short either way?
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
Maybe my argument would make more sense if I said it thus:
In one case, something of value was taken from my wallet. In the other case, value itself was lost by the things inside my wallet. This, however, is not “theft”... exactly the same outcome could be produced by simple inflation and that wouldn’t be theft either.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
In the first case, I have $990 in my wallet. You stole $10.
In the second, I still have $1000 in my wallet, but it’s only worth as much as the $990 is in the first example. My $1000 lost $10 in value, but it wasn’t “stolen” any more than the Federal Reserve “steals” my money when it prints dollars and causes inflation.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
If reducing the value of something is not 'theft' then the situation is either:
A) Some other crime with a different label and you're just being difficult
or
B) Not possibly criminal due to some differing value system where 'theft' is the only crime possible, etc
If 'A', please stop playing so coy and just apply the label you're seeking to make others use.
If 'B', that's not terribly interesting, and I'm not sure why you're so worked up about insisting people acknowledge that. In your world other things then would not be crimes such as vandalism and rape.
In both cases value (something) left your wallet.
laundering often works too. Not enough to be relied on, however, since I've laundered 3 flash drives and 1 worked.
Embarrasingly I'm 2 for 2. Laundered twice and they both work. (Including full HOT dryer cycles).
The bills in your wallet have no intrinsic value as physical objects. Their usefulness lies wholly in the fact that they represent a value you can trade for a good that does have intrinsic value, like food.
You would say you still have the physical object, but you have to understand the object itself isn't of use. It's real value is intangible, and that has been taken from you.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Outside of any context and in theoretical terms, that makes sense. You know the next word will be "but" or however"...
You assume the store cannot re-spend that twenty. Any employee could swap the fake for a real twenty of their own, and spend the fake one. If it's at another store, the other store can repeat the process. If it's for goods or services in the same store, you can keep the fake twenty going around until it wears out and has to be destroyed. No loss occurred. At that point, it's up to the bank to validate each bill that comes in. Either the bank realizes it's fake, or it doesn't, or maybe it finds a few and misses a few. Point is, in a real-world scenario a person can mistakenly, or purposefully, mistake it as genuine. Your argument is theoretical, not practical.
The end result in a practical world is that the store made $2000 in profits that week, and deposited $1980 - in the event that the store does not swap the bill out, and the bank catches it as fake. The value of their deposit is diminished, which is the original point way up in this abysmal thread. A store will typically lose lots more than that due to internal theft, breakage or spoilage, discounts to whining customers, or unexpected surge in operating costs such as energy prices. So it goes in the column marked 'shrinkage' along with everything else. No one is going to call police and report a "theft" if they spot a fake $20, they would report a fake bill, or if they wanted to be sophisticated they could try to pronounce "counterfeit".
Let's take a twist now. The local sub sandwich store runs a marker over any bills over $10. They could choose to include $10 bills, or I could slip them a fake $10 which they don't check. They could have a n00b working who skips the marker check. They could decide it slows down the register and do away with the marker completely. Or they could refuse cash, operating completely electronically. Credit cards, debit cards, or electronic checks only.
In your example the store is accepting fake currency. No one made them, and they could completely prevent it if they wanted to. They opted to accept. When someone engages in theft, the victim typically does not opt to accept. Your conclusion is invalid, that's why we have the term "fraud" instead.
If you really wanted to make your point, you could note that people passing money can be charged with, among other things, theft by deception (TBD). As an aside, you could pass a non-existent $3 bill or $200 bill and only get "theft by deception", while passing a forged legitimate currency could also get you "counterfeiting", "possession of a forged instrument", "money laundering", or many other related crimes. Anyone whose job entails working with money and accepts a $3 or $200 bill is a victim of theft about as much as a typical citizen donating money to a homeless-looking person asking for money for food. He doesn't want food, he wants liquor (offer to buy him lunch and see if he sticks around). He lied to you, but you chose to believe it. You were deceived.
Theft by deception is usually a state-level law, however, not federal, so the criteria depends. In my state, the wording around TBD is more oriented towards bouncing checks, and a person in this situation would be convicted of counterfeiting or one of the related laws instead of TBD. That's because the law is more clear, and you're likely to get an easy conviction when the facts clearly match the wording of the statute.
"Loss of value" or "loss of object" or "loss of usage" or any other loss does not automatically mean it's theft, and your simplistic example does nothing to support that usage.
mod +6 please
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It's not theft because it's not theft. The former owner of the property hands it over willingly without coercion. Ergo, not theft. It is depriving someone of property by means of fraud, which is just as bad as (non-violent) theft, and is still a crime, but it isn't the crime of theft. I'll admit there's a gray area of overlap. For example, if you disguise yourself as an armored car company guard and show up and are willingly handed big bags of money, is it theft? Honestly speaking, that's fraud too, but it will generally be prosecuted as theft (or whatever crime sort of fits and has the harshest punishment, with conspiracy charges tacked on).
Also, to all those confused people who think that this was about currency counterfeiting, it's not. The suspect is being accused of connecting devices to ATMs to skim peoples card information and use it to take money from their accounts. This is where the gray area between fraud and robbery gets really sticky of course. In one sense, it's fraud, you provide the encoded data from the magnetic strip and the PIN and the ATM and bank server think you're the account and hands over the cash. On the other hand, is it fraud if the other party is a machine? If the other party were someone elses safe and you opened it with a combination you got by peering through their window with binoculars as they opened it then took their money from it, we would consider it theft. Fundamentally, that's not different than the ATM scam, so we should consider it theft rather than fraud. Either way, it's taking property you have no right to from another person and is, and should be a crime, the classification is just a pain if you think about it too much.
Sorry, I couldn't quite make sense of your rambling example, but I wanted to make sure I understand your first sentence. Are you trying to say that only liberals commit crimes? Actually, it looks like you're saying that all liberals are criminals.
The difference is that I, the counterfeiter, am enriching myself at your expense. There is a reason counterfeiting is illegal. It robs people of the value of their money. Any time a person is deprived of what they have lawfully earned by illegal/immoral means it's theft in my book.
"while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude." de Tocqueville
Yes, you have hit upon a legal principle.
Depending on jurisdiction it is called theft by trick or theft by fraud. Where you induce someone to part with their item of value by giving them something you have falsely claimed is something of value when it is in fact not what you claim.
Printing money steals from everyone else with the currency.
* Witty, easily-overlooked commentary about government *
Also, Hitler!
Thanks. That's actually a good point.
counterfeiting is illegal
illegal/immoral means
Still not arguing with any of that.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
theft by deception
Everything is porn to somebody.
You forgot:
C) Not always a crime.
That was the purpose of my horse-and-buggy analogy. The automobile industry, nearly overnight, reduced the value of the horse-and-buggy’s industry to virtually zero, and gained the entire value of the industry for itself. However angry the buggy manufacturers may have felt because of this, no crime was committed.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
I do not disagree with anything you just said. I disagree with the idea that taking value is theft.
I can prove this with two simple examples, illustrating two opposite extreme cases.
Suppose you have a materially worthless glass ring which holds sentimental value to you, and I take it. I have not taken any value away from you. However, it was theft. I took your ring.
Conversely, suppose you have a flawless diamond ring worth tens of thousands of dollars, and I invent a method to make flawless artificial diamonds cheaply and overnight the value of your ring plummets. I have taken value away from your ring. However, I have not stolen from you.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Inventing something better is a natural right.
All rights are given to us by God until taken away through due democratic process.
Once one of those is taken away, the label 'crime' does attach.
Your pointing out that natural rights exist doesn't change the nature of law as practiced by society.
If you go that way, you are saying that “stealing” is not always a crime.
I prefer to have “stealing” be a crime and then define it in such a way that devaluing someone’s assets is only a crime when it is a crime... i.e. not stealing by definition, but other laws may make it illegal.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Just use encryption and a really, really long password that is too long to remember. Write it on a bit of paper. If you need to destroy it, swallow the paper. It will be destroyed in your gut and you can honestly claim not to have ever known the password by memory.
Of course it's still destruction of evidence but depending on the crime that might be a much lesser charge.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I got ya. The thing is, the law isn't designed to match your preference. Once you've conquered the world, you can change things.
If it were something like that, you can just deny to use the password via the 5th amendment (in the US anyhow).
The point is that you don't want anyone able to use the drive as evidence. Encryption isn't really 'all that', depending on how important you are.
Also - simply encrypting can make some charges appear more valid. "Why would you hide if you had nothing to hide?". It's BS but doesn't stop the argument. I say encrypt EVERYTHING, all the time, by default.
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
But will it blend?
Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
The problem is there are at least three grades of data that you might have:
The problem with #2 is that in general law enforcement already knows what the material is and just requires it for "proof" at trial. So you encrypt it or destroy it - and the law enforcement folks can no longer use it at trial. However, they can use the fact it is encrypted and/or destroyed at trial. While not absolute proof, this can certainly be spun in a way that looks very, very bad. You are then faced with the plea bargain - 10 years if you admit to it or the possibility of 100 years if you don't. This sort of argument can be pretty persuasive.
For #3 it is a whole different ballgame. You are up against an adversary that needs the data and probably has no real idea. Say it is a list of Al Queda operatives within current law enforcement establishments in the UK. Every single one of them will likely be put to death should this list be discovered. What steps are you prepared to take to ensure this information doesn't fall into the wrong hands? Obviously, if you fall into law enforcement hands and they even suspect this information exists virtually nothing is going to stop them from gaining access to it. Suicide is probably required, but that still leaves the data hanging around.
So what do you do? Eating a USB drive probably isn't anywhere near good enough. I'd say holding the USB drive with a hand grenade (pin pulled, spoon flipped) in your armpit might be a good start.
I would like to think that nobody here has to worry about step 3 :)
But if they did, you'd want a custom-built USB drive with say, C4, or some heavy acid packets in it. Something you could rely on to self-destruct if you didn't activate it properly.
I would like to think that any agency that has this sort of data has these sorts of precautions. Unfortunately, I bet that some bean counter decided not to get that option and put countless lives at risk.
All my data is type 1 in your list. I encrypt all of it, mainly because I tend to lose drives. No sense making it *too* easy on people :)
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
More correctly, it's fraud.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
altslashdot.org: The future of slashdot.
You are even more off-topic than the GP and got stuck at the first sentence. tl;dr?
You're using a typical example of political confusion tactics. The GP hasn't said what you are implying.
Reread that sentence and substitute "spyware-crippled Windows installs" where the original word "crimes" was. Trying to read too much between the lines does nobody any good, when the lines clearly state something different from what you're trying to make it.
Can we be confident that at least you understood the rest of the post? Oh, but you would need to read it first.
Actually there is a simple way around all that.
Truecrypt supports hidden containers. Basically you have an encrypted file with two passwords. One password unlocks the real data, and you keep that secret. The other unlocks some data which you are willing to give up. If you are required to hand over your password you simply give them the latter one.
There is no way to determine if a hidden container exists. Of course in some parts of the world they might torture you if they think there is one, but in less barbaric countries there is pretty much nothing they can do.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC