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Usually the answer is that police, generally, have no clue about computers - enough to seize machines but not to safely remove the drives. Clearly that's not th
by ErrantX 17y ago
Usually the answer is that police, generally, have no clue about computers - enough to seize machines but not to safely remove the drives. Clearly that's not the case in this specific incident.
But there are other reasons. Firstly, when you remove drives from the machines you have to open it up, photograph them in situ, remove the drives, image and replace them. It's a reasonably time consuming job (and I doubt you'd want police in your home for hours doing it :)). Secondly there may be issues imaging the drive; wrong connectors or just fickle drives. Usually in such a case you can fire up the original machine with the drive attached and load a forensic imager from CD to pull the data (in other words it's a fail safe). And finally you have to photograph the computer CMOS time next to an atomic clock to help validate any timestamps on the hard drives.
- sophacles 17y agoAwesome detailed answer, thanks! My questions come from a basic concern for the suspect, and presumption of innocence before proven guilty. A confiscated computer not only may require extra care in "plain sight" restrictions as outlined in the article, but also extra care in "undue hardship". If I keep all my records on a computer, and that computer is confiscated, I am now without any way of doing basic stuff like paying bills. It would seem that being able to retain a copy of the data is relatively trivial, so such an option should be made available. Given that current practices seem to be "never see your stuff again", is there any reason not to allow it? (Perhaps not as its taken, but shortly thereafter).
- ErrantX 17y agoYeh. You've touched on the inherent trade off of my job. If you have critical stuff on your computer then we will do our best to get a copy back to you asap (of course I can only talk for us). The problem is not retaining the data. We work from images anyway. The issue is that if the drive contains evidence returning the original would probably kill the case in court. If a defence analyst questions the data - say accuses us of faking it - how do you prove that if it goes back to the suspect.
- sophacles 17y agoI totally understand that last part, about evidence custody stuff. I find it vaguely totemic, in that the "one true datathingy" must be preserved. (not on your part necessarily, on the whole court system in general). Good on you guys for getting data back to the suspect. I presume that if it all comes from Images anyway, it would be trivial for me to bring in a couple TB of NAS and say, "data please" and just get raw image dumps. I think to clarify my above stuff: Rules of evidence should state that images of the computer files in custody should be made available to suspects in some short amount of time after they are processed, due to the easy copy aspect of digital media, and the critical nature some data on the drives.
- ErrantX 17y agoYes I wish that happened more to be honest. Currently the issue is that it is a logistical nghtmare die to how large police forces work. Unfortunately we are on the outside so our suggestions mostly fall on deaf ears at management level :(