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>The government argued that because it had found “numerous files which constitute child pornography,” “detailed personal financial records and documents belongi
by 3825 13y ago
>The government argued that because it had found “numerous files which constitute child pornography,” “detailed personal financial records and documents belonging to Feldman,” and “dozens of personal photographs of Feldman," Feldman therefore has “access to and control over” the set of drives.
So if the FBI puts my bank statements (PDF) and my photos in a drive along with "some files that constitute child pornography", am I guilty as well? "We found three safes. We opened one of them and found some illegal things in it. We swear we didn't put them there. We also found some financial records and photos belonging to this guy. We didn't put those there either. Pinky swear!"
- DanBC 13y agoI'm assuming they would have taken forensic images of the drives, rather than the drives themselves. Tampering with evidence would be stupid. They'd go to jail, they'd risk all previous cases they've been involved in, etc. I guess it happens, but you need a lot more than "I bet they did it".
- yebyen 13y agoYeah, so I'm convinced that the FBI would not have done the tampering. Now show that no other person has had access to the drives' contents prior to their collection as evidence. He would certainly strengthen the case for that (his ownership and control of the data) if he was able to decrypt the drives himself.
- gamblor956 13y agoThey don't need to do that. The drives went from the defendant's house straight to the FBI evidence bag when they were picked up by the FBI evidence tech while searching his home. If the defendant wants to argue that someone hacked his computers and put the CP on his drive before the FBI took them, that is for him to argue. If he can't provide any proof of such (note that he is not required to provide proof), it is unlikely that the jury will believe such a defense.
- yebyen 13y agoYeah, you're right. I would like to know how they decrypted the drive though. "Substantial resources" does not say much. It could mean a lot of computing power, or just a lot of brute-force sleuthing to find the backdoor. What exactly should a third-party frame-up look like? In my mind, at least, how they came to be able to decrypt the drive could possibly lend some credibility to their claim that he owned it and was in control of it, and the remaining drives as well.
- rosser 13y agoTotally guessing, but the password is probably the weak point.
- yebyen 13y agoI would have guessed otherwise, if this guy is an IT pro, he probably knows to use a long and secure passphrase. I'll be surprised if someone who knows can say the password was the weak point. Maybe you're right, but... I'd think the most likely way to get in would be to find the passphrase had been cached somewhere, or the unencrypted key was accidentally copied somewhere onto a swap file from some shoddily built backup process that used up most of the RAM compressing files, resulting in that or some similar leak. Same as you though, I don't really have the slightest idea.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]