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Police Using Dogs To Sniff Out Computer Memory
First time accepted submitter FriendlySolipsist points out a story about Rhode Island Police using a dog to find hidden hard drives. The recent arrival of golden Labrador Thoreau makes Rhode Island the second state in the nation to have a police dog trained to sniff out hard drives, thumb drives and other technological gadgets that could contain child pornography. Thoreau received 22 weeks of training in how to detect devices in exchange for food at the Connecticut State Police Training Academy. Given to the state police by the Connecticut State Police, the dog assisted in its first search warrant in June pinpointing a thumb drive containing child pornography hidden four layers deep in a tin box inside a metal cabinet. That discovery led the police to secure an arrest warrant, Yelle says. “If it has a memory card, he’ll sniff it out,” Detective Adam Houston, Thoreau’s handler, says.
Any Memory?? what judge will go on just that?
hidden four layers deep why that for a USB stick? doing that will make them want to look at the data.
Just shipping them unhidden is more likely to just pass though
Can he packet sniff?
I had no idea the contents of a physical drive changed its smell!
This is very intriguing!
that those dogs can distinguish between kiddie porn and say, databases of purchase orders just by sniffing around. From what I've heard, the pat req technology at Facebook and Google isn't nearly as advanced.
I'm pretty sure there's porn of that.
you need to be on the jury.
While child pornography is bad the lost of rights / junk science to by pass your rights is much worse
Your Honor, this person of interest may have hard drives or thumb drives, and these types of storage devices are commonly used to store CHILD PORNOGRAPHY OHHHH GOD THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!!! WHY WONT YOU PROTECT THE BABY JESUS??????"
Warrant granted -- get those scumbags. And I wont cry if they die before seeing a jail cell!
Yeah, the dogs were trained to find hard drives that contain child pornography. Cause that's the impetus for this kind of search.
Or could it be that technology is everywhere now so any place the dog triggers on could have some type of memory.
Next thing you know, they will have dogs that can sniff out penthouse and leave playboy behind.
This is right up there with lie detectors and the people who make $$$ convincing idiots to pay for them.
Especially old SCSI drives. Peuw! Stink-o-rama! It's like really bad B.O.
Does the memory smell once it is packaged? Or when it is being built? Before a logo is put on it or after? Does ECC memory have a different smell than non-ecc?
Please tell me the police are not actually believing this crap.
Typical government bureaucracy, relying on outdated technology.
Nearly 10 years ago, top minds in the private industry already developed super dogs that not only detected DVDs but could also determine the legal status of said DVDs by smell alone.
...on where said thumb (drive) was recently stuck.
Just store pics of skunks
Table-ized A.I.
Is the dog also trained to crack truecrypt files?
because child pornography on a thumb drive smells entirely different from vacation photos on a thumb drive.
Let's get this out of the way. Search tactics using dogs is always going to be prone to abuse. However, dogs have been sniffing out electronics for years now. Additionally, and this should be obvious, the dog isn't sniffing out hard drives that contain child pornography, it's merely sniffing out all hard drives. In this case, the dog was deployed as the result of a search warrant that undoubtedly allowed for the seizure of all electronic devices within the home. Use in this manner is much less controversial than using the dog to find the drive, thus establishing probable cause to bypass a warrant entirely.
Are you telling me that they can't stop people from making child pornography by identifying the children in the films and finding the perverts who do that kind of stuff? There must be mountains of other forensic evidence they can use to connect the people that actually did these crimes than the sick people that view that stuff.
There must be all kinds of techniques they can use to uncover the equipment that the stuff is made on, identifying the children that are in the the stuff, and finding the perps. I am sure that a ton of children could be saved by basic investigation techniques. But they find something like this and get money from the feds for dogs that sniff memory on the chance that someone has ratholed a usb stick with illegal stuff on it. And the long arm of the law grows longer and longer as they get tools like this and need a purpose for them.
This has unreasonable search and seizure written all over it. To go to such lengths to find a usb stick with some pictures on it seems more like a justification for an invasive use of investigative powers than a legitimate tactic to protect children from abuse. Next it will be used on investigative reporters in the interests of "national security".
How can they tell the difference between a stick of memory, and some random PCB, by smell alone?
Buck Feta. You know what to do.
I'm envisioning something like a very-short-range wireless-access data-storage device that charges itself wirelessly, but one with a hardware on/off switch. When it's off, it's completely off.
It's in a hermetically sealed environment, with the on-off switch activated in some way that won't require breaking the hermetic seal. The hermetic seal is made of a substance that is either undetectable by dogs or one that is so common that a dog won't be able to detect it from the "noise" in typical household.
Wrap one of those babies in a few layers of aluminum foil then hide it. Tell Fido "good luck, you'll need it."
At first, I had a real good laugh when I read this. There's no way the dog can smell certain memory cards with certain content on it, anyone with half a decent brain and some knowledge in electronics knows this.
But then it occurred to me, it's not the card/usb-stick the dogs are smelling, it's the fact that some human touched it, probably repeatedly from using the USB-memory (or harddrive) for a long time, this is bound to leave your human scent on them, and thus making it easy for the amazing dog nose to sniff it out.
Yeah, I'd say that's fully plausible!
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
the fourth amendment won't allow such intrusion into our personal belongings. Thoreau will have to be sent to China or North Korea to use his talents. also, I'm pretty sure Henry David would not be happy with the choice of the dog's name.
I shouldn't need to point this out given the regular clientele of Slashdot, but as usual the title doesn't match the summary. It looks like the dogs are trained to sniff out computer storage media, not memory (i.e. RAM). There is a difference, unless you think keeping all your valuable data in volatile space is a good idea.
Not that the editors or even samzenpus would know (or care) about the difference.
I would assume the dogs don't get their treat if the flashes drives are encrypted.
A) There is this little thing called "The Internet" that people use to send each other information. Why the hell would someone go to the risk of keeping a thumb drive that can be identified as in their possession and have their fingerprints, when they can just send an encrypted file?
B) I doubt the dog can smell memory in particular, he can probably just sniff electronics. Everything nowdays has some kind of electronic component, I doubt this will be very useful.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
But can the dogs sniff out the LEDs? Do they contain memory?
If you read the article, the police got a search warrant based on other evidence. The dog was subsequently used to locate the device which led to an arrest warrant.
In my home I have way too many hard drives laying around from old computers - and a lot of other electronic parts. It will take quite a while for them to go through the stuff - provided that they can find useful controller cards for reading them.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
the difference between my encrypted child pron, pirated media and leaked documents
As the drugs war winds down... another war on freedom starts.
I am not surprised that the reporter is a technical illiterate who cant tell memory from storage, but surely the submitter or the editor one could show half a brain cell working and correct it?
All the devices mentioned are storage, not "memory".
Anyway, police dogs are a scam. Like Clever Hans, they are more attuned to their trainers emotions than s/he is, and can baffle and impress the unwary with seemingly impossible tricks as a result. Granting a warrant based on a dog alerting is effectively the same thing as granting it because a cop has a hunch.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Leaky stolen child pirate pron!
Did you actually read the article? It's very clear they're NOT talking about merely finding concealed hard drives, but actually determining the content of the memory using a dog's sense of smell.
I understand that.
My point is that the as the
a) long arm of the law grows longer the potential for misuse grows larger as well
b) that the cops in this case are either
1) probably going after someone that there is very little evidence against or 2) that they have overlooked significant evidence against if they have rip the whole place to shreds and need to use a dog to find deeply hidden usb stick.
Seriously, this sounds like that ep of Always Sunny where Dolph Lundgren is the voice of a dog that can smell crime, and then it wound up being a giant nose on Dolph Lundgren's body. (Doctor) Dolph Lundgren could smell the crime before it even happened, though.
Have gnu, will travel.
So now I can't even hide my one time pad? Which I keep for perfectly legitimate purposes.
I'm going to start hiding beef jerky in random places in my house.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
One step closer to 'thoughtcrime' ;(
Side note, there's a shortage of dogs capable of doing real work, like search and rescue. why waste good talent on this shit? I can't think of a reason this should ever be an issue.
Is the end game going to be that whenever going through customs all storage will be scanned and stored "just in case"? :(
It is the self-important nobodies like you that are special. Your mommie even told you.
I need one of these dogs to sniff my ram packages from eBay and let me know next time I get one that's going to fail within 6 months. Son of a bitch. You know I never suspected the ram, I thought it was the hard drives failing me.
I think the cops probably need to do more old-school investigating and undercover work. I think that we need the death penalty for child molesters and life imprisonment for anyone caught in possession of or distributing child pornography. I think it'd be great if there were any tool under the law besides the second amendment with which to handle the chimo problem, but that only allows us to kill them when they're actively raping or attempting to rape our kids.
Does prohibition work? No. Does this government regularly over-reach? Yes. Can we trust law enforcement at any level to protect our children from bad people? Unfortunately, my life says no. So what is to be done? Well, we as developers and hackers and such could do a lot more of our own vigilante work, but it goes fundamentally against our beliefs in privacy and such. But I mean... what do you do with these people? I know, here's a great idea. Let's just deport them to Europe, anywhere, where they can be "recuperated" or whatever it is called. But it's not a thing that happens, rehabilitation. You're talking about people between the ages of 25 and 85 who are guilty of these crimes. This says to me that some of them get away with it for 60 odd fucking years unscathed. I'm sure there are plenty of liberal and conservatives who believe there are more "real" problems for the govenrment to focus on, but honestly, for my tax buck, you can take away everything and just put in place a Child Molestation and Pornography Eradication Bureau and I'll be completely satisfied. Throw away the army, the whole welfare state, and every law you claim that protects me. I only want this one authority to exist and I only want it to exist because I can't see any other way to stop these bastards besides using the collective violence that is the state but using it more efficiently and more regularly.
I don't disagree with you, I think it's totally unnecessary, and I think we should hold them accountable: that is, in accordance to how much child pornography in that jurisdiction an outside source believes is occurring, preferably a reputable outside source like one of the apprehended, the law enforcement must have a significant increase in CONVICTIONS (not busts, which are not necessarily based on facts or evidence).
Parallel Construction
Or some German word thats whispered during a search with the handler pointing to an area. :)
The dog then slobbers or moves ie 'alerts" - instant "probable cause"
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
That will be the new reality. Enter the country without any electronic equipment. Buy from a 2nd hand computer/recycling shop. Use new storage in computer at one secure location via a trusted VPN and no driving around with your cheap laptop. Return computer without storage when done. Exit.
The big risk was having your laptop like device cloned at the border. Now just having a computer is part of a civil forfeiture risk.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I never knew pornography had a smell. Although I guess it would smell like tears and loneliness.
Now I guess I'm going to have to rub all my hidden hard drives on a rancid bologna once a week.
A small quantity of _DRUG_TYPE_ were also found.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
How much memory does your device have?
-2GB
Lycos, fetch memory!
Woof, woof, woof, woof
FREEEEZE DIRT BAG!
Impressive how these dogs can detect "storage with child porn", as opposed to storage with business data. It would be interesting to try some stenography tests, to see if the dogs can sniff through that as well. Maybe the stored data has some karmatic "bits of intent" floating around that the dogs can detect, just like they can implicitly growl at burglars but not ordinary visitors.
If you're smelling memory, that's what you're smelling.
This is why we store our data in the cloud (tm)
Sniff my cloud pig dog :)
Apparently the Rhode Island State Police posted a photo and plausible statement:
https://www.facebook.com/Rhode...
The post says the canine is "trained to detect electronic devices".
That does not look as bogus a claim as training specifically for storage media: the chemicals used in the soldering, cleaning, and IC packaging conceivably could have a detectable smell.
Oh for crying out loud. In the article, which you all surely read, it is described that dogs are used to sniff out electronics during a raid. That is to locate hidden disks and drives. NOT to find out what's in the drives.
Memory sticks shaped like Snausages, stored in a baggie with real dog treats. The dog will still find it, but the police will likely ignore.
I hide the memory sticks inside my TV? LOL...Either this is bullshit or dumb. Hey, we were doing illegal surveillance and already knows where the perp hides his "stash", lets bring the dogs and say they can smell it, otherwise it wont be admitted in court.
So if you attempt to conceal records, that you don't want someone else to see then your automatically a criminal. Wonder if they recovered a thumb drive that was encrypted and they couldn't break the encryption how well their warrant would hold up. What if the information is on their cell phone. (after all a federal judge just ruled they cant search that without a warrant.) The only time this might come in handy is if they were to already have a warrant then search the premiss for any dives that may contain any data. Which is a rather specific warrant.
But for this general case they just wasted a lot of tax money to train a dog to do something that was not needed. And they are excusing it as though it is because of child porn, the dog cant tell what data is on the drive. So, how do they know it is child porn prior to recovering and searching the device?
I can just imagine the headlines, "Man arrested for hiding a thumb drive containing child pron under the floor boards in his home." Later they discover that the thumb drive contained scanned copies of his tax documents for the last several years. After they bring in the child porn sniffing dog, he is probably going to have to move to get over all the rumors, even though he did nothing illegal or wrong.
There was a Mythbusters where they tried to fool a drug dog. I only caught the tail end of it (no pun intended) and the only attempt I saw was the target item inside a suitcase with dirty diapers in a room full of suitcases. If I remember the wrap-up scene the dog always found the target.
I'm curious what else they tried to trick the dogs with. The cynic in me believes the cops wouldn't have cooperated if they had actually come up with a technique that worked.
I wonder if vacuum sealing works -- presuming of course you wash the exterior of the vacuum sealed container and possibly double-bagged it. I use a FoodSaver model for food items and since the sealed bag holds a vacuum, presumably there's no way for the odor to migrate out.
Did you actually read the article? It's very clear they're NOT talking about merely finding concealed hard drives, but actually determining the content of the memory using a dog's sense of smell.
I saw no such claim in TFA.
However, the article does seem to add "which could contain child pornography" after every mention of a storage device. While technically true, it could just as easily have said "which could contain pictures of cats with grammatically incorrect captions" to avoid sounding so fanatical.
Shut up! We don't needs things like facts or context getting in way of our paranoid anti-government rants here on Slashdot!
Just another article from the Onion.
Wow, modded as troll for actually presenting the facts?
Did you actually read the article? It's very clear they're NOT talking about merely finding concealed hard drives, but actually determining the content of the memory using a dog's sense of smell.
I saw no such claim in TFA.
However, the article does seem to add "which could contain child pornography" after every mention of a storage device. While technically true, it could just as easily have said "which could contain pictures of cats with grammatically incorrect captions" to avoid sounding so fanatical.
Yes, it could just as easily have said that, but the point was, the police had a warrant (based on a legitimately built case, from following a trail of evidence from another CP case) to go in there and find more evidence of CP. So the dogs are brought in to show them where devices are hidden that may contain the evidence they are looking for. The thing they are specifically looking for is CP, so the dog is (indirectly) showing them where it may be hidden.
Officer doggie is so cute! Looks like a Yellow Lab.
I understand that.
My point is...
b) that the cops in this case are either
1) probably going after someone that there is very little evidence against
From TFA:
They found a photo with a young girl and a gmail address. They found other photos of the same girl which were pornogaraphic. They traced the email to a russian website. On that website they found more child porn photos of the same girl linked to that same email address. They subpoenaed google for info about the account. Google gave them info, and they were able to tie that info to a phone number which belonged to a woman who had a daughter, and the daughter happened to be the same girl as in those photos.
So yeah, very little evidence. [sigh]
or 2) that they have overlooked significant evidence against if they have rip the whole place to shreds and need to use a dog to find deeply hidden usb stick.
I don't know about you, but If police were serving and initial warrant on me, I'd rather have them do a somewhat concise search by letting the dogs find the evidence, rather than just tearing the house to shred before they've found something. That way, if it turns out they were somehow wrong, my place is at least only minimally destroyed.
They SUSPECTED this guy was part of a ring of people who traded child porn between themselves. So they searched his house and used the most efficient means to them (i.e. the dog).
> Are you telling me that they can't stop people from making child pornography by identifying the children in the films
First you have to break into the ring to find the pictures, then you need to find the pictures. Plus do you think pictures to trade grow on trees? No people within the ring are creating them.
FFS you freedom at all costs people are fucking retarded. If the police were just walking about with this dog harassing everyone who happened to be hiding a USB stick I'd understand, but instead you are foaming at the mouth at an efficiency gain once a warrant has been granted.
Are they going to distinguish this new type of K-9 unit in any way, or is he going to be rolled in with the drug dogs? Because this seems, to me, like another way to drum up "probable cause" by sicking the dog on your car and "getting a hit," which then gives the SS an excuse to shred your vehicle and rifle through your belongings.
Because who, in this day and age, doesn't carry some sort of electronic memory device with them almost everywhere they go?
Kiddie diddlers my ass, they're making a new excuse to search you.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
all the way through.
What if the hardware contains information that is classified at a level above that of the police's security clearance?
The dog in question not only packet sniffs, but also is able to sniff out encrypted drives hidden within other drives, as it seems there is a telltale odor that attracts dogs.
If I could train my dog to do this, I'd never lose a micro-SD card again.
Of course, my dog would probably just eat the card if/when he found it.
While technically true, it could just as easily have said "which could contain pictures of cats with grammatically incorrect captions" to avoid sounding so fanatical.
For people who distribute pictures like that, hangin's too good for 'em.
When I was sixteen a friend and I were stopped {by military police} because someone had reported gunshots in the area. We had no fire arms or drugs but the officer was certain that we did so they called the dog unit. My friend told them he was allergic to dogs and begged them to call his parents and keep the dog away from him or the car. {he was allergic to dogs and a long list of other things}
Then after ignoring him, searching with the dog, and not finding anything my friend started to have a reaction and ended up going to the hospital. The officers were dishonorably discharged and I think the one controlling the dog spent time in Leavenworth prison.
Seriously? Was it treated with something that make it smell like a dog-treat?
This is a strong case for Liquid Ass. A couple drops, then wrap the drive in a pair of undies, or something.
That's some strong nose that doggie has! Good thing they didn't have a case of blank media, or something.
is keeping self-important people who feel that they are so special that they can endanger the rest of us in their place. If you don't like it, no problem, as you are not all that special.
Deuteronomy 22 talks about sex crimes. It doesn't say sex crimes are fine, it acknowledges that they exist. I acknowledge hat you exist, but clearly you are not fine, you are in need of serious help.
Further, 28-29 talk about an unmarried woman. Only really sick people would think "hmm, slept with an unmarried woman - she must have been a little kid, and that sounds great". Suck, sick bastard.
Depends on the country. The majority of US states have "shall issue" statutes or regulations requiring the state weapon control authority to issue a permit to carry a weapon to any member of the public who meets a few straightforward criteria.
If the cops were executing a search warrant on you, and you had a USB stick in your desk drawer. You would not be surprised if they took it and looked at it. Not happy about it, but not surprised surely. But you're upset that now the cops are going to be able to find the thumb drives people bury behind walls and hide in clever places.
I know you all want your data to be sacrosanct, and you want search warrants to only cover confiscating drives that are proven to contain illicit data. But how can we prove anything without collecting all the data a suspect has and pawing through it a bit. Anything discovered not specifically related to the original warrant is not admissible. You're a tax cheat but we grabbed your account data through a child pornography warrant, we're not really supposed to go after you for taxes after that.
I don't want to know what the dogs actually smell for - it all seems rather fishy to me...
Camouflage your memory in a bag of cocaine to throw off the dogs.
Darrel Issa could really use this dog.
They can take my LifeAlert pendant when they pry it from my cold dead fingers.
To weed out all that child porn? or how does this work?
Today they are in "Think of the children" mode. Tomorrow mission creep will kick in and it will be "Everyone is guilty of something."
Ascii artist &
Drug and explosives dogs work because you can't have what they can detect, so if I have little bits of dud memory cards ground up and spread all over the place I have not broken the law, but the dog is useless.
Humans can teach dogs to do tricks like sit, roll over, etc.
What's to stop the police training this dog to act like it's found something, then plant a Micro SD card (which let's face it, is no bigger than a thumb) containing child pornography at the supposed location it "found it."
Esp. if they really have a hard-on for jailing somebody.
"Hey, I found this. Looks like it's been wiped clean of thumbprints!"
And does anyone believe the jury'll side with the accused just because he says it's been planted, especially when it has? No. As soon as they hear the words "child porn" they'll shut their brains off to logic and reason.
Just curious; if your sword is hanging off your hip, it isn't concealed, so do you still need a "concealed carry" permit to carry it?
Some states require a permit for open carry as well.
How does the Second Amendment work, if you need permission from the government to have a weapon?
It appears that courts have interpreted the Second Amendment to allow the several states to decide which gun clubs qualify as "a well-regulated militia".
Thanks to the plea bargain system, the conviction rate already hovers in the 96% range, at least for the jurisdictions I know about (Los Angeles County for one).
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Oh goody, another technological innovation that will inevitably used against innocent people.
a porn sniffing dog. wow.
Utter and complete bullshit ...
You guys swallowed it hook, line and sinker .........