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Adam Lanza Destroyed His Computer Before Rampage
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Here's some breaking news I saw MSNBC this morning that I haven't seen reported anywhere in the print media yet. NBC reporter Pete Williams reported on Chuck Todd's The Daily Rundown that (police) 'had been hopeful that they could extract some information from the computer at (Lanza's) home. He was very into computers. Before he left his mother's house on the morning that he shot his mother while she was sleeping, he damaged extensively his computer. He took the hard drive out, pulled the disk out, and did a lot of damage to it,' said Williams. 'It's not clear that (police) are going to be able to extract any information or not.' It has previously been reported that Lanza left no online footprint. Police had been eager to examine Lanza's computer in hopes of determining a motive in his killings or finding records of purchases of firearms and ammunition. 'If he visited certain websites, they are going to glean whatever information they can from that and see what it means,' said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly. 'Does he have friends he communicates with online? Was there a fight with somebody?'"
Premeditated. This wasn't an impulsive act.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Why do anything this guy did? Maybe he was just a crazy paranoid asshole.
Over a hundred people die from firearms every day in America. Roughly about 1/3 accidents, 1/3 suicides, and 1/3 deliberate homicides. Dwelling on massacres like Sandy Hook is not really a good idea for many reasons. Most gun homicides are committed with handguns, by people with long records of violent crime, and are done more often than not in heated emotion. But these school massacres fit none of those patterns. They are usually done with rifles, by people that are "odd" and loners but without any record of violent crime, and they are usually meticulously planned. In many ways these make them the hardest violent acts to prevent. We should focus on preventing more on the everyday killings, many of which should be preventable, instead of focusing too much on the black swans where any plausible effort is unlikely to make much difference.
We should try to learn from history: On January 17th, 1989 Patrick Purdy walked into a school yard in Stockton, California, and opened fire on the children playing there, killing five and wounding 29. In the months that followed, legislation was rushed through to outlaw rifles similar in appearance to the one he used. Back in those days, it was common for gun owners to support "common sense" gun control. But they watched gun control advocates, who often claimed that they wanted to restrict handguns and not hunting guns such as rifles and shotguns, use this tragedy to push through bans on rifles and only rifles, and do so on the basis of appearance (shape of the grip, bayonet stud, etc.) rather than functionality. The result had a negligible effect on crime, but resulted in a significant decline in support for gun control in America. There was also a strong political backlash. Many pro-gun-control politicians lost elections, and the urban-rural split between the two major political parties became more pronounced. I really hope that we do something more sensible this time.
A gun in hand is quicker than a couple passes with DBAN.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
You're the only one saying that as far as I can see. Perhaps you're just afraid of saying it straight up without the false quotes....
The guy was a diagnosed aspie and was reputed at high school to be a computer genius.
To the general public, "Plays lots of video games" == "Computer Genius".
I don't get why you'd say this?
I mean, yeah, DBAN would nuke data... but that takes HOURS when I can drill, shoot, or microwave a drive in minutes. Even an oven to degauss would be quicker.
Shattering a hard drive immediately takes it beyond all off-the-shelf forensics providers without leaving any doubts about the firmware, disk recovery sectors, MBR backups... It also takes it beyond the capabilities of most agencies that aren't commercial. You simply *can't* plug it into a purchased capture device at that point.
Yes, it's theoretically possible to recover it with cleanroom techniques at that point... but I'm pretty sure recovery is exactly...that... theory -- when you're pulling dust, debris, and shards of glass out of it... And even if it's not -- it's a massive time difference.
Are you trying to allude to the cloud data that should exist? I think half the point of the physical destruction was to delay and wholly prevent discovering any cloud sources he may have used as long as possible.
They'll have to get his email address from friends and family now, look up the logs, check with the ISP for any traffic from that originating address... look for any traffic on a huge list of known providers from the same address ...filter that down.
Unless his ISP has incredible capture, it's going to be near impossible to find what website or forums he's visited in a timely manner... much less chat programs or other likely mediums like WoW/Ventrilo
Their best bet is probably actually checking the home router to see if it has logs or DNS cached...
Physical destruction is the gold standard for this sort of thing.
Of course, the real question is why did he do any of this? The way he wiped his computer is fairly low on the list of things better left undone that day.
And because they're not really warning signs since more often than not, nothing happens when they're present and typically nobody gives them a thought except in retrospect.
I run Linux because I can't afford a Mac and I'm not a masochist.
I run Linux because I own a Mac and I'm not a masochist.
I am often confused, and more than just a little alarmed at the polarization that stories like this cause.
On one side, there are the people that would rather live in an Aldus Huxley novel than suffer the slight against their perceptions of safety that allowing the general public access to firearms presents. (Seriously. If there are 100 shootings per day, out of 250 million persons in the USA, your chances of being so shot on any given day are 4 places to the right of the decimal point in terms of percentages-- (borrowed possibly false statistic from previous poster.) At that rate, you are more likely to die in an airline catastrophe. Contemplate that when you advocate stampeeding over peoples rights because kids were involved.)
Then, on the other, you have the people that feel we are already deep inside an aldus huxley novel, and have a "freedom fighter" complex. (The types who wear the tinfoil, you know whom it is of which I speak.)
Where are the people like me, who live in the middle? The people who deplore the senseless death, but who blame a faulted cultue that stigmatizes people with mental health issues, makes care for such insanely unaffordable, and tries to pretend the problem isn't serious? The ones who understand that guns are simply a tool, and the purpose they serve in the hands of the public is a preventative measure against corruption in high places, and nothing more?
The solution to deaths like these is NOT "gun control".
The solution to deaths like this is to get people the help they so desperately need, without any overtones of disparagment, or of belittling the people who need that help.
Outlawing guns does NOT help the mentally ill get the help the need, before they snap and take others with them. It simply sweeps the issue under the rug, because outlawing the tool used for the killing is simply easier. Nevermind that any sense of security the measure brings is false, and endagers more innocent people. (If not a gun, then perhaps a bomb, or poison, or any number of other methods.)
I am tired of these stories. I am tired of the shield rattling. I am tired of the "Ra Ra Rah!" And gung-ho idiocy of both sides.
In cases like these, there are *ONLY* victims. There are no bad guys, unless you care to look in the mirror. Our blind complacency to the sufferings of others is what CAUSES this shit. Everything about this story is tradgedy. Stop looking for a fucking scapegoat.
Seriously. It confuses the fuck out of my why it always must be so, that we all lose our minds over this, and dive headfirst from the frypan into the fire.
We like to pretend that we have sharp minds.
For FSM's sake, fucking use them.
The trouble with 'warning signs' when it comes to events like this is we are talking about a FP/TP ratio of possibility millions to one... meaning that as indicators of mass shootings, they are completely useless.
Now, they might have utility in getting people help that would increase their quality of life or of that around them.. but more likely they would just be used to crack down on people who are already having trouble...
The guy killed 28 people, including 20 small kids, in a international media circus that included the personal attention of the POTUS. Every single piece of that hard drive is in an FBI clean lab with specialists trying every trick they know, and NSA consultants coming in just to see if they help. If there's anything the FBI and NSA specialists can't figure out, any university in the country will be happy to lend whatever professor is most appropriate out, and the national intelligences services of any county in western world and a good chunk of the developing world will be available for consult should it be required.
Trust me, for something like this, resources are not going to be an issue.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Four isn't exactly an arsenal. And she was into recreational shooting, they weren't just self defense. But she is indeed the answer in that she obviously did not secure her guns well enough from her disturbed son.
I'm sure he was fully aware that the authorities and the media would try to understand him. I'd guess his intent was to do something horrible, hitting the most vulnerable part of society in order to inflict maximum pain. That he could leave everyone with questions to which they'd never have answers was the final aspect of his plan.
Australia banned automatic rifles after several mass shootings and since then, they have had none.
TSA banned liquids and gels in more than small quantities, and since then, there have been no incidents of liquid-based explosions on US aircraft.
But when questioned further, they'll all remember tons of warning signs that they ignored, because nobody gives a shit until somebody starts killing.
The problem with 'warning signs' is that(without a much larger and better constructed study population, which you would be unlikely to get) is selection bias: It is, indeed, very unlikely that somebody who goes in and shoots up the place acted 100% normally in the time leading up to doing so. However, without doing an equally-invasive-and-thorough investigation of a fairly large number of demographically similar non-shooters, how do you separate signal from noise?
Practically any instance of assholery, alienation, or general dark muttering looks like a 'warning sign' once you've gone and emptied a few magazines into cowering elementary school children; but that is diagnostically useless unless you have reason to suspect that a given behavior doesn't show up(or shows up orders of magnitude less frequently) in non spree shooters.
This post went from protecting rights to advocating for thought crime. A+ would read again.
Three weapons is not an "arsenal". When people use that term, I expect to find dozens of weapons, not ten or less. Owning 3 or more shotguns means that you use shotguns to hunt different kind of game - maybe ducks, upland fowl, and squirrels, maybe a twelve guage for slugs to hunt deer.
That small .223 is great for varmints such as groundhog - generally the same person will own one or more larger deer rifles, like a 30-30 or a 30-06.
If our gun enthusiast also goes to target ranges, he may own yet another weapon that has been customized for extreme accuracy. .270, .243, or .223 are all great target rounds.
Arsenal. I've only seen three specific weapons mentioned, and some references to an "assault rifle". That "assault rifle" merits some concern, but it's not clear yet what they are referring to. Like as not, some fool has characterized a deer rifle as an "assault weapon", but he may well have been carrying an SKS or something.
As for "why so much ammo" - 100 rounds is no big deal anywhere. Ammo comes in boxes of 20, and it's not uncommon to purchase 2 to 10 boxes at a time. Anyone serious about marksmanship might buy 100 boxes at a time. It only takes several minutes to use up a box, if you're carefully aiming. If you're just having fun, it only takes a minute.
People who ask these questions and make these assumptions are obviously not outdoorsmen.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
The AR-15 is a very common rifle for recreational and competition shooting. "Nut" comment aside, she was ultimately responsible: 1) Not properly securing them, 2) Not just getting rid of them while having an unstable individual living in her house.
The responsibility lies with the nutbag who shot up the school and then committed suicide. It might be nice to try to find some reason or trigger for it, but really it was the actions of one individual performing a heinous act. He took advantage of the situation and executed his twisted plan, or reacted completely insanely, or something in between. While in a situation where he may not have had such easy access to such weapons (for whatever reason) it may not have happened the way it did, but there's no way of knowing for sure that he wouldn't have done something similar another way.
Whatever you think of her gun selection, in firepower or quantity, it seems she gained them legally and behaved with them responsibly. It can surely be argued that no matter how stringent any gun control law, short of completely banning gun ownership, she could have followed all of those more strict laws and still had weapons that her son would then acquire illegally and use incorrectly.
There's no evidence she didn't properly secure her firearms and that he simply defeated said security. Locking something in a gun safe isn't something that would stop a motivated and capable 20-year old. He could surely have known where she kept any locker or trigger-lock keys, and reached them. Short of that any number of tools could have been used to overcome many home gun lockers, especially those meant to keep children safe and not truly secure the weapons.
Some blurb I saw somewhere said that Connecticut only requires locking up firearms when there are minors living in the home, and since he was 20 he was not a minor. Yes, a responsible gun owner should have locked up the weapons regardless, but again, a 20-year old familiar enough with the weapons to do what he did would have surely been able to open said locks.
Additionally, while the actions show in hindsight that he was plenty unstable (tore up first-graders...'nuff said), there's not been convincing evidence presented (that I've seen or read) that indicates he was unstable to the point that one might think he would do what he did. Too many interviews point out "what a quiet person" or "nice fella" or whatever. I'm sure his mother thought she understood whatever was going through his head, as most parents will believe with their kids, even when they're wrong. We'd all like to believe that we'd be able to see the breakdown coming, and even if there was any indication he was about to snap, perhaps she didn't envision he'd snap like this, or on that day.
These are the basic facts. She had legally obtained weapons. He obtained them from her (and killed her with them). He is responsible for the actions that took the lives of those children and their protectors.
End the FUD
It was motivated by availability of guns.
No, wait -- because of mental illness issues in America.
No, wait -- because of video games.
Wait, wait, -- I mean, because of goths.
Wait, no, I mean it was because of music.
What am I saying? I meant to say it was because of movies and television.
Oh, geeze, I forgot -- it's because "they took god out of schools".
Oh, whoops. No, it's because not enough people at the school were armed.
Uh oh, no it's because of the evil internet.
No, no, no -- it's because of bad parenting.
Oh, boy, it's actually because he was a loner and didn't fit in.
No, wait a minute -- it's clearly because of bullies.
Or maybe everyone on the planet should shut the fuck up, grow up, and acknowledge that fucked up shit happens that is beyond our control and you can't blame freak occurrences into never happening and therefore somehow assuring eternal safety. People will lose their shit. Nature will throw something totally fucked at you. Accidents will happen. Mistakes will be made. Instead of realizing fucked up shit happens, we aid those trying to manipulate these freak events to push their personal agendas by somehow trying to reverse-engineer a stream of chaos -- which butterfly's flapping wings in the world lead to the hurricane?
You should read the DSM-IV sometime.
Pretty much anyone can be "diagnosed" with something. It's not just Aspergers.
This is one good reason to never trust anyone that calls themselves a mental health professional. You never know when the Soviet or McCarthy era abuses will begin again.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Right wingers believe that new laws will prevent people from getting abortions. Why don't they believe that new laws will prevent people from shooting guns at people?
actually, it's pretty much the quintessential american tragedy
we gut mental healthcare safety nets, and healthcare in general we don't care about
we flood society with guns
and here we have a deranged person with a gun. it's called cause and effect. of course lanza can happen anywhere in the world, but because of american society, adam lanza becomes more likely here
adam lanza as a phenomenon says a lot of about the USA's culture and priorities in regards to healthcare and guns, and less about humanity in general
and we as americans can do something about it, by emphasizing healthcare as the solution to our problems, and deemphasizing guns as the solution to our problems, and we can make adam lanzas less likely to happen
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Aspergers has ZERO to do with the killer's rampage. I have a son with Asperger's (yes, diagnosed by a doctor and, no, it wasn't an easy process to figure out what was going on with him) and I can tell you that the nature of Asperger's is completely counter to something like this.
First of all, people think Asperger's means a lack of empathy. It doesn't, though. It's a lack of an ability to pick up on social cues. My son can't tell if his endless story about the video game he's playing is boring you or if you are riveted. Communication is 20% words and 80% non-verbal. Aspies have trouble deciphering the latter 80%. Imagine trying to read Slashdot posts/comments with only 1 out of every 5 letters in place. C____ __u ____y __ _n_ __ ___m? O_ _____d ___ __t___a_ __o_ ___ __n____a___n? (i.e. Could you reply to any of them? Or would you withdraw from the conversation?) Aspies might withdraw simply because they don't understand how to respond/interact, but they *WANT* to participate.
In addition, Aspies tend to be over-sensitive to the emotions of others once they are told about them. If you tell an Aspie they they offended you with somthing they did, the Aspie will likely feel awful. They might not know how to "make it better", and might withdraw more for fear of making more mistakes, but don't mistake withdrawal for lack of empathy.
Finally, I've found that Aspies (like my son) tend to be sticklers for the rules. They find comfort in rules and get upset when people violate them. So an Aspie isn't likely to plan something that completely "violates the rules" to the degree that a mass shooting does. (They might not get subtle social cues, but they understand that hurting people is wrong.)
Anyone who tries to link mass shootings (including this one) to Asperger's/Autism is just displaying a vast lack of understanding of what Asperger's/Autism is.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
You are wrong on several counts:
1) This kid had mental issues since birth. He had Aspergers and difficulty dealing with others and was a problem kid his whole life.
2) The mother bought these guns to teach her kid how to shoot so he could learn about responsibility. Talk about the stupidest fucking thing you can think of to teach a mentally ill kid responsibility...
3) It's the mother's responsibility to make sure her mentally ill child does not have access to deadly weapons. You can't blame a nut for their actions when everyone knows he's got major problems. If she felt the need to have guns, she should have properly secured them such that he could not get access to them. (Maybe that should be a law?)
In short, his mom was completely irresponsible. If she weren't dead, I'd say she should be prosecuted (at least for being a complete fucking moron).
Are agnostics skeptical of unicorns too?