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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.
Can he packet sniff?
I had no idea the contents of a physical drive changed its smell!
This is very intriguing!
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".
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Does bubble wrap count as concealing now?
If so how can you safely ship stuff like HDD's with USPS, UPS, FEDEX with out damage?
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...
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
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.
>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
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Typical government bureaucracy, relying on outdated technology.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.
If so how can you safely ship stuff like HDD's with USPS, UPS, FEDEX with out damage?
Include a few dried habanero peppers in the package.
Yeah that's my real worry about all this child porn stuff - "everyone" turns their brains off and starts getting their pitchforks ready to lynch you.
;).
Guess how convenient this is if the powers that be want to get rid of inconvenient you...
And for what? Even if some pervert watches child porn doesn't make him a rapist or molester any more than you wanking off to "normal porn"[1] makes you a rapist or molester. If you say he's supporting child porn, then you should follow the money and jail those responsible for creating it. If he's torrenting it, then using the **AA's logic, he's killing the child porn industry
[1] in some countries "normal porn" is illegal. Go figure.
A search cannot be legally executed unless there is probable cause established before hand.
1. That's naive. It's quite common to conduct a search and then dream up the probable cause later.
2. Establishing probable cause is easier than most people think.
3. They don't need probable cause to search when crossing the border of the country.
4. Or when you're within an area referred to as a 'buffer zone' or 'national security corridor', which extends something like 100 miles from the international border itself, and can go even further in some cases.
Have gnu, will travel.
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!
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"? :(
Since the dog can't smell memory, it must have been trained to smell something about the electronic components. That's bound to trigger a LOT of false positives in the modern world.
:P
This might be a fun thing to do. Get a lot of old flash drives, sd cards, and the like, the old super cheap ones of course, and stick them everywhere. Under the carpet, taped to the bottom of the drawers, in the hem of the curtain, etc. After 30 or 40 of them, somebody is going to get sick of playing that game, and it might be the dog, If you're really mean, store a picture of a treasure map on each one, and maybe some lists of random hexadecimal numbers.
It'll drive them nuts. To really get the point across when they ask, just tell them the truth, that it's a joke, there's absolutely nothing of value stored on them, and yes, you want them back and undamaged.
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
No judge will go on that......in this case, the police had been following the guy compiling evidence for seven months before getting a warrant. The guy was abusing a 7 year old girl and taking pictures of her. They brought the dog in after the search warrant was obtained, because a lot of times child-molesters hide the pictures on small SD cards in ceiling tiles or something. At least read the article before getting outraged. Even if it's not as fun.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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.
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.
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.