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.

Comments

Any Memory?? what judge will go on just that?

[Joe_Dragon]

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

Re:Any Memory?? what judge will go on just that?

[Frosty Piss]

Any Memory?? what judge will go on just that?

Uh, yeah. Most judges rubber-stamp search warrants.

Also, does concealing a memory device now automatically imply child porn?

The cops get bolder every year, and people just go along.

Cop: "I asked him for his ID, and he went fishing in a pocket. IT COULD HAVE BEEN A GUN OR KNIFE, SO I SHOT HIM".

Re:Any Memory?? what judge will go on just that?

[kesuki]

i guess if dogs can smell memory sneakernets into dictatorships to provide outside information is doomed. i wonder can they smell a blu-ray too? cause 25 GB is a lot of storage...

Re:Any Memory?? what judge will go on just that?

[Anonymous Coward]

The dog is not being used to establish probable cause, it is being used to aid in the execution of a search warrant where probable cause has already been established.

Re:Any Memory?? what judge will go on just that?

[TechyImmigrant]

>where probable cause has already been established.

Or where a suitably incriminating memory stick has been prepared just in case there isn't one inside the metal box

Re:Any Memory?? what judge will go on just that?

[SeaFox]

Also, does concealing a memory device now automatically imply child porn?

Where have you been the last ten years? Trying to conceal anything at all from a law enforcement officer implies you're up to something. Only criminals insist on privacy now, citizen!

Re:Any Memory?? what judge will go on just that?

[hooiberg]

Child pornography is the Digital Godwin. So if budget has to be made available, and ridicule from the thinking part of the world ensured, this is a valid argument.

Re:Any Memory?? what judge will go on just that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine, if you will, people filming murders and then trading those videos around.

Then arrest the murderers. This is not hard. Stop trying to push draconian laws and censorship on everyone else.

I think the problem is that the video drives people to create more. Making it illegal to possess them might cut down on the child abuse happening. If that's not good enough, then consider it a form of copyright infringement to possess said videos.

Not only do you have no good scientific proof that this is true, but even if it were true, censorship is 100% intolerable even if it did cut down on crimes.

As for copyright, that needs to be gotten rid of as well.

Re:Any Memory?? what judge will go on just that?

[jeIIomizer]

Imagine if you were kidnapped, raped, while being videotaped. Should said video be allowed to circulate all in the name of anti-censorship?

Absolutely.

While I feel copyright reform needs to be dealt with, I don't believe it should be gotten rid of.

The problem is, there is no valid scientific proof that it's even effective to begin with. Furthermore, it violates free speech rights (to enforce it, censorship is often required) and private property rights (Can't have people sending certain non-private data using their own equipment!). I would oppose it outright solely because of the latter two reasons combined.

Re: Any Memory?? what judge will go on just that?

[Cito]

Those that use Leviticus are idiots as crazy as Jew and Muslim fundamentals

Leviticus is the entire basis of sharia law in Islam exact book is used and mosaic law in Torah

Jesus was specifically asked in new testament about the old law of moses, Jesus replied that he was the new law, inferring that the old ways were over and antiquated, he simplified the entire belief. Instead of all the stupid rules Jesus says there is just one, "god sent his only son, so that anyone believeth in him shall have everlasting life"
No its/buts/addendum

So crazy Christians saying otherwise are as insane as fundamental Muslims and Jews.

Now I'm not claiming or saying what to believe, but fundamental Christians who use old testament are wrong/jehova witness/Mormon or some other cult

Re:Any Memory?? what judge will go on just that?

[Jane Q. Public]

Also, does concealing a memory device now automatically imply child porn?

This is a fine argument for universal use of full-disk encryption.

And I sincerely hope that real child pornographers get it wrong.

Even so, let's drop political correctness and tell it like it is: our culture embraced "innocent until proven guilty" and "freedom from unreasonable search and seizure" for very good reasons. While we can all agree that harming children is abhorrent, removing those rights and freedoms from society at large does far more harm, to more people, and is the greater evil.

Amazoing

[governorx]

I had no idea the contents of a physical drive changed its smell!

This is very intriguing!

Before we go down the misinformation rabbit hole

[Warhawke]

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.

Lots of false positives ...

[PPH]

... on the child porn. But it creates 'probable cause' to hold someone and go through the rest of their personal belongings, car, house, etc.

useless.

[rogoshen1]

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"? :(

Re:you need to be on the jury

[SuricouRaven]

It's not the dog that decides if the car contains drugs. It's the handler. If the handler wants to see a search carried out, the dog will find something suspicious.

Re:right...

[jeIIomizer]

It is the self-important nobodies like you that are special.

In a country where most people support the TSA, the NSA's surveillance, free speech zones, protest permits, DUI checkpoints, copyrights, patents, stop-and-frisk, unrestricted border searches, constitution-free zones, mass public surveillance conducted by the government, anti-gun laws, plea bargains, or some form of warrantless wiretapping in general, it is not difficult to be "special"; you just have to oppose all of those things.

Re:How do you defeat dogs?

[disposable60]

It's kinda remarkable how rarely Mythbusters bust a law-enforcement myth, or fail to bust an evasion myth.