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Meet URL, the USB Porn-Sniffing Dog (cnn.com)
HughPickens.com writes: CNN reports that URL, the porn-sniffing dog, is the newest crime-fighting tool at the Weber County Sheriff's office with a nose that could help put away some of the country's most predatory and dangerous criminals. URL (pronounced Earl) sniffs out electronic storage media. Still just a pup, the 18-month-old K-9 is one of fewer than two dozen such dogs in the United States that hunt the unique chemical compounds emitted from flash drives, memory cards, cell phones, iPads and other similar devices. While dogs like URL can't tell detectives if a device has electronic evidence on it, they are able to find devices that humans might otherwise miss. Detective Cameron Hartman points to the high-profile case of former Subway spokesman Jared Fogle, who was convicted on child pornography and other charges last year. A K-9 named Bear, who was trained by the same man who trained URL, led investigators to hidden thumb drives inside Fogle's home. The U.S. Attorney's office for Southern Indiana confirmed those devices contained evidence against Fogle. URL has found evidence relating to pornography during the execution of search warrants for the task force in several investigations of child sex crimes and child trafficking. "He actually found a USB that was in this jar that was closed, and the jar was in a box, and the box had stuff in it. The jar itself had stuff in it."
1) Having a flash card is not a crime ...."Whether it’s child porn, terrorism intelligence, narcotics or financial crimes information, "...
2) Having a flash card concealed is not a crime
3) Having a flash card concealed that contains porn is not a crime
4) Possession of child porn is a crime.
You make a blind false *blanket* accusation, which you then use to justify a blanket fishing expedition, which you occasionally catch a criminal.
Your dog cannot sniff out child porn, terrorist intelligence, data on narcotics, or data on financial crimes. You just haven't been stopped in your random searches yet, and you hope by marketing this miracle dog the courts won't take action.
Either:
a) You are a liar doing blanket searches and occasionally catching someone.
b) You are hiding parallel construction (i.e. being given evidence illegally obtained by mass surveillance and then using a dog to conceal the source of that evidence to fool the courts).
c) You pick a victim and set the dog on them, this has been done in drugs cases where the dog is used to sniff around cars and signalled to give a bark which is then used as excuse to justify a search you already decided you wanted to make.
I recall this:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/federal-court-rules-search-laptop-border-unreasonable/
A Korean man was stopped at the border, his laptop cloned and searched for evidence while he was detained for hours (missing his flight).. 'on a hunch'. They had a hunch he might have data on illegal sales of exports.... on a hunch.... and lo and behold they found some evidence on that hunch.
The court was not fooled and suppressed the evidence. There was no way an expensive forensic data search was done on a hunch. It was likely parallel construction to conceal a previous illegal hack or search.
Is this a voodoo divining rod, or an actually-useful tool? It's hard to tell in the field, with so much electronic stuff everywhere.
Probably not Voodoo. I doubt that a dog would ever be brought in to sniff for thumb drives in general, but there was already a case building against Fogle, and they just were looking for corroborating evidence. As for the smell of electronics, hell I can smell them, so I'm certain that a dog will do just fine.
The smell of electronics would be on everything, and the dog wouldn't be able to sniff out anything useful.
Depends on who and when you are looking for something. Using Fogle's example, they are going to take every piece of electronic storage in the house and go over it as part of the criminal investigation. A false positive means nothing, they'll just move on to the next thing the doggo alerts at. Outside of a criminal investigation, the doggo probably won't ever be used - at least for that. There's just too many of the devices sitting around.
I fear you might not know just how accurate some critter's sense of smell is.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
So they're basically polygraphs on 4 legs with fur?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Now I can finally find out what device my porn is on and what contains my presentation! It's always so embarrassing to plug in that USB stick and hear my boss mutter "Say, didn't we see that last week... no wait, that was last night..."
Unfortunately the subject line is as usual completely bogus and the dog simply finds electronic devices. Which is essentially useless. Yes, you might find the odd hidden USB device, but since it's not the device but its content that is "dangerous" when found, criminals will adapt and store incriminating evidence off site and encrypted.
So what is that story, essentially? A heads-up for criminals?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
... a police officer decides that he does not like your face and "magically" find a hidden USB drive in your luggage in places where you would never think of putting one? Where I live no one trusts the police (for good reason), and if the possession of something small and easy to plant as a USB stick becomes a crime so will be even more reason for me to avoid the US as one avoids a city infested by ebola.
P.S: No, I not a international terrorist or something like that (only the Dark Lord of Hell, but this is not a crime right?). But I'm not willing to test my chances facing a TSA gorilla and ruin my vacation because he had not liked my face.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
That's the problem with people these, days. They're pussies. You need to protect yourself, and not rely on others to fight your battles for you. Take the time and expend the effort to get the resources and training to protect yourself and your family and never, ever rely on the police or anyone else. Maybe they'll be there to help you, maybe they won't. Maybe when TSHTF it's them you'll need to protect your family from, who knows. But if that's your idea of being safe, you're living in la-la land. Being reliant on others doesn't make you safe, it makes you cattle. Moo.
"He actually found a USB that was in this jar that was closed, and the jar was in a box, and the box had stuff in it. The jar itself had stuff in it."
Maybe, just maybe, he didn't smell the USB flash drive that was in a closed jar inside a box. Maybe, just maybe, he smelled the residue that the owner had left on the outside of the box when putting the flash drive away.
It's very, very challenging to completely isolate something from ordor-based detection. You need to work with clean instruments and put the item in a clean container, operating ideally in a clean environment. Then, because you probably slightly contaminated the outside of the bag, you need to do it again, with a completely new set of clean instruments, in a new, clean environment. And then you probably need to do it again. And probably again.
Otherwise, the owner might as well have just rubbed the flash drive on the outside of the box.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
So they're basically polygraphs on 4 legs with fur?
It's much worse than that.
Polygraph evidence is not readily admissible in court. Dog noses on the other hand...