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Rethinking Police Searches of Computers

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Re: Rethinking Police Searches of Computers

#11

Post by pyre »

epochwolf wrote: post #3

> At the very least, the courts should forbid the police from looking at any file timestamped before March 18, 2010 Except that timestamps can be altered.

True, but if someone is ordered to turn over 'all documents pertaining to topic X', they still might withhold documents. We don't allow the police to search all documents, just in case.

{edit} It would get messy if he was on a computer that had a faulty cmos battery (i.e. randomly your system clock is reset to the unix epoch). Trying to figure out the true date of files with timestamps of December 31, 1969 would be difficult. ;-) (I know that's prior to the epoch, but I had a faulty cmos battery in an old PowerBook and that's what would happen)

Re: Rethinking Police Searches of Computers

#12

Post by pyre »

wizard_2 wrote: post #7
protomyth wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the feeling that your "cloud" service provider will turn over your stuff quickly and inform you later.

IANAL but I don't think they can compel you to give your truecrypt passwords as they're in your head. There was an ongoing court case (involving child pornography) about this topic.

IIRC, in that case the guy unlocked his encrypted drive for a border agent, the border agent saw child porn, then the computer was turned off (disabling access to the encrypted drive). The guy already showed the authorities that he had incriminating evidence on his encrypted drive. It's not exactly the poster-child case for being compelled to turn over your encryption keys/passwords.

Re: Rethinking Police Searches of Computers

#13

Post by ErrantX »

At the very least, the courts should forbid the police from looking at any file timestamped before March 18, 2010

As already pointed out timestamps can often be a problem.Limiting searches to a specific timeframe is difficult because of how the forensic tools work. It's infeasible to tell the tool "only search files and data between these dates". Indeed I wish that was possible - it would make things much faster!

But more importantly we are limited in what we can investigate. Not just for legal reasons but for cost as well. As a forensic examiner I feel (and I know most of my colleagues do as well) ethically obliged to stick to the requirements of the case - as tempting (for personal interest) as it is to poke into other corners of peoples lives it is entirely unethical and wrong.

Re: Rethinking Police Searches of Computers

#14

Post by pyre »

slantyyz wrote: post #10
wizard_2 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IANAL but I don't think they can compel you to give your truecrypt passwords as they're in your head. There was an ongoing court case (involving child pornography) about this topic.

Even then, I think TrueCrypt lets you create a second volume within the initial volume, and leaves no trace that the second volume even exists.

The problem therein is programs that record your 'most recent documents.' If they refer to documents that aren't anywhere in what they confiscated, and/or on a volume that doesn't exist they may suspect that you have a hidden volume.

Re: Rethinking Police Searches of Computers

#15

Post by ErrantX »

slantyyz wrote: post #2

If I'm a paranoid tech journalist (I'm not), everything would be tucked away in a hidden TrueCrypt volume masked as a swap file, and all my other files would be in the cloud. Not sure seizures are even useful in such a case.

It's a good idea - and will definitely help.

However it's very hard to hide everything simply because your operating systems and programs love to store stuff.

One solution might be to use a vm stored inside an encrypted partition. So all that "meta" information is also encrypted - and the host is just clean.

Re: Rethinking Police Searches of Computers

#16

Post by ErrantX »

kjhgfghjklkjh wrote: post #6
slantyyz wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's still an uphill battle, especially if stuff ain't hosted in the country you live in. Like I said, I'm not paranoid, so I don't have time to go to such lengths, but simply having physical access to a computer these days may not yield nearly as much evidence as it may have a decade ago.

It can yield a lot more useful evidence though. You can't get the guy for the iPhone thing - but you now have: Every website he has visited (are all those boys/girls/sheep over 18?) Every book/dvd/toy he has bought - did he declare state tax on all the stuff from Amazon. All his tax and business records. Everywhere he has been, everyone he has phoned,emailed, texted tweeted. The police could get all this from other s…

No they do not. Not at all.

If I'm looking at a computer I may keep an eye out for overtly illegal stuff, but you cannot go fishing. It's probably inadmissable for a start.

Re: Rethinking Police Searches of Computers

#18

Post by sophacles »

If the police are going to confiscate, why would they confiscate the whole computers, and not just the drives? Furhter, why not provide the option for the guy being served to get some new drives and copy the data to them before the police confiscate the original?

Re: Rethinking Police Searches of Computers

#19

Post by ErrantX »

sophacles wrote: post #18

If the police are going to confiscate, why would they confiscate the whole computers, and not just the drives? Furhter, why not provide the option for the guy being served to get some new drives and copy the data to them before the police confiscate the original?

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.

Re: Rethinking Police Searches of Computers

#20

Post by _delirium »

epochwolf wrote: post #3

> At the very least, the courts should forbid the police from looking at any file timestamped before March 18, 2010 Except that timestamps can be altered.

And they do use such limitations in cases where it'd be difficult/unlikely for them to be altered, such as timestamps kept by a third party. For example, subpoenas demanding that Google turn over email from a Gmail account usually specify a date range (I think there's even precedent that they're normally required to).
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