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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.
I am never, ever getting into the data recovery business.
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.
Yes. But after 4 days (RTFA), there would be legitimate medical reason to worry about whether it was going to make its own way along.
FTFA:
When Necula was unable to pass the item after about four days, doctors--concerned that the drive was not compatible with the suspect's GI tract--concluded he "would be injured if they allowed the flash drive to remain inside of him," reported Borger. Necula eventually agreed to allow doctors at New York Downtown Hospital to remove the item, according to a source familiar with the incident.
Do Not Eat (if containing evidence in a federal investigation)
The enemies of Democracy are
I'm just glad we never got raided when I was storing data on the Vax 6000 tape drives.
Well realize, Kingston is not a manufacturer of the flash drive chips. They just package and rebrand other manufacturer's flash drive hardware.
There was a Slashdot article on Kingston a week or so ago covering this topic.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
I wonder if they clicked the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon first?
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.
Yeah, what a noob. Real geeks have numerous USB ports throughout their intestines and patch their firmware frequently to keep functionality regular.
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.
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.
RTFA? You do know this is /., right?
Twelve-and-three-quarter inches. Unyielding. This wand belonged to Bellatrix Lestrange.
A man brings his pet monkey to a bar. The monkey runs around eating everything in sight. First the cherries used for garnish. Then all the peanuts. Then the deviled eggs. Finally, he stops after eating a cue ball off the pool table.
The next week, the man returns with his monkey. Once again, the monkey runs to devour the cherries. But this time, instead of just eating it, he shoves the cherry up his ass first, pulls it out and then eats it. The bartender, quite disturbed by this, asks the man why the hell he shoved it up his ass first. The man replies, "Well, after the cue ball incident, he checks the size first before eating anything"...
If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good
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.
I'm surprised they left it in there that long. PCB's have a lot of materials in them that are extremely hazardous to your health. The PCB itself is compressed fiberclass impregnated with thermosetting plastics or other resins.
It's just nasty shit.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
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
They have special toilets, attached to sealed booths with attached rubber gloves you put your hands in, and a hose to wash the stuff down...
Immigration officials use equipment like that all the time to retrieve drugs and other illegal items people try to import by swallowing.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
REGIS: For $16,000, the question is, 'What right do they have to risk the life of a presumed innocent man with dangerous surgery?' Your choices are...
A. The Patriot Act
B. The Alien and Sedition Act
C. The Jack Bauer Act
D. The part where he agreed to the surgery.
CONTESTANT: Hmmm. Hmmm. Hmmmmmmmmmmm.
Hmmmmmmmmm.
Um. I'd like to use a lifeline.
REGIS: Alright! Which lifeline would you like to use?
CONTESTANT: I think I'm going to use my "Read The Fucking Article" lifeline, Regis.
REGIS: Alright! Computer, please print out a copy of the article for our contestant!
CONTESTANT: *reads* Regis, I'm going to have to go with 'D', "The part where he agreed to the surgery."
REGIS: Final answer?
CONTESTANT: Final answer.
After four days, it probably felt more like FireWire...
Isn't this man considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law?
No, not at all. He is in America, and we don't do that sort of thing anymore.
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?
In fact I would say his actions show he is perfectly aware of how screwed he is/could-be.
The USB stick is a red herring. The REAL evidence is on the microSD card he shoved up his nose.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
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 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.