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Vermont Attorney General's dog sniffs out electronic storage devices

vtdigger.org

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Re: Vermont Attorney General's dog sniffs out electronic storage devices

#21

Post by _a_a_a_ »

smt88 wrote: post #9
iamben wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! I saw a presentation a couple of years back from police dog trainers. Different dogs would specialise in different things - drugs, guns, and amazingly - hard disks! They train them specifically to do so. What blew my mind was the reward was always just a tennis ball. But the dog was soooo happy to get the ball for a short amount of play when it did well.

Drug-sniffing dogs are a myth[1]. They're used as a pretext for illegal searches, not to detect drugs. I suspect this is similar. "Detecting off-gassing" is vague enough to sound like it makes sense, but there's a variety of materials in electronic devices and many of the ones that off-gas (like plastic) are found in millions of other products. 1. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-03/fact-check-are-drug-d...

> Drug-sniffing dogs are a myth

your link does not support that.

Re: Vermont Attorney General's dog sniffs out electronic storage devices

#22

Post by miki123211 »

malwrar wrote: post #19
miki123211 wrote: post #14

> The workload has flooded,” Raymond told VTDigger. “And I think a lot of it is the availability of it online, obviously, but the other part is just, I think platforms are getting much better at controlling their own environment and finding and rooting that stuff out A lot of that stuff will be much harder to find out if end-to-end encryption stays legal. Is it still worth it? Very possibly, but it's definitely a tra…

This technology protects everyone equally, and more importantly will exist regardless of whether or not you want it to. Any regulatory attempt to kill FDE will only result in the use of more deniable systems by criminals and the mass exploitation of everyone else who relies on the physical security of their computing devices. The tech isn’t magic. We must simply live with the consequences of the reality we exist in,…

The fact that the storage media that this dog can find contain anything but Veracrypt volumes proves that (most) criminals have terrible opsec. Most people who own CSAM are ordinary people, teachers, plumbers, truck drivers etc, not hackers, programmers and IT technicians.

Child abuse is just like everything else, low-friction solutions are going to win over high-friction ones. If you have to get an Android phone and sideload a shady app to get E2E encryption, many people won't even bother. In the world where E2E is banned, half of the shady E2E apps would be police sting-ops in the first place, and the other half could be seized and turned against their users with a strategically placed update. Just like with money laundering, you don't even have to prove that a crime occurred, simply getting the list of all IP addresses of people using E2E would go a long way in putting those people behind bars.

Again, I'm not saying that this is necessarily a good thing, but it's undeniable that many children would be saved here.

Re: Vermont Attorney General's dog sniffs out electronic storage devices

#23

Post by gadders »

vasco wrote: post #18
miki123211 wrote: post #14

> The workload has flooded,” Raymond told VTDigger. “And I think a lot of it is the availability of it online, obviously, but the other part is just, I think platforms are getting much better at controlling their own environment and finding and rooting that stuff out A lot of that stuff will be much harder to find out if end-to-end encryption stays legal. Is it still worth it? Very possibly, but it's definitely a tra…

You can justify anything with that line of thinking. To anyone paying attention I think it's obvious that AI image generators are going to end this problem. No need to hurt anyone and people can look at all the depraved things they want in the comfort of their homes.

...until they get so excited they want to try it in real life.

Re: Vermont Attorney General's dog sniffs out electronic storage devices

#24

Post by VHRanger »

smt88 wrote: post #9
iamben wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! I saw a presentation a couple of years back from police dog trainers. Different dogs would specialise in different things - drugs, guns, and amazingly - hard disks! They train them specifically to do so. What blew my mind was the reward was always just a tennis ball. But the dog was soooo happy to get the ball for a short amount of play when it did well.

Drug-sniffing dogs are a myth[1]. They're used as a pretext for illegal searches, not to detect drugs. I suspect this is similar. "Detecting off-gassing" is vague enough to sound like it makes sense, but there's a variety of materials in electronic devices and many of the ones that off-gas (like plastic) are found in millions of other products. 1. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-03/fact-check-are-drug-d...

Having trained a dozen dogs in scent detection: Drug dogs are not a myth.

Dogs really dog learn to detect scents.

They're used unethically by handlers in police work however, yes.

Re: Vermont Attorney General's dog sniffs out electronic storage devices

#26

Post by sneak »

RockRobotRock wrote: post #3

>Mojo can quickly sniff out devices like hard drives, flash drives or SD cards — often leading officers straight to the evidence they need to make an arrest. Do nand flash chips and magnetic platters have a distinct smell? lol :) I'm not saying its impossible but really really outlandish

It’s called “probable cause on four legs” for a reason.

Parallel construction is endemic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

There is no universe in which the surveillance state tips its hand about just how widespread and deep the surveillance of the population goes.

The idea that we aren’t subject to arbitrary search at any time is fiction.

Re: Vermont Attorney General's dog sniffs out electronic storage devices

#27

Post by tokai »

_a_a_a_ wrote: post #21
smt88 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Drug-sniffing dogs are a myth[1]. They're used as a pretext for illegal searches, not to detect drugs. I suspect this is similar. "Detecting off-gassing" is vague enough to sound like it makes sense, but there's a variety of materials in electronic devices and many of the ones that off-gas (like plastic) are found in millions of other products. 1. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-03/fact-check-are-drug-d...

> Drug-sniffing dogs are a myth your link does not support that.

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=da&as_sdt=7%2C39&q=Dru...

Re: Vermont Attorney General's dog sniffs out electronic storage devices

#28

Post by harimau777 »

gadders wrote: post #23
vasco wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can justify anything with that line of thinking. To anyone paying attention I think it's obvious that AI image generators are going to end this problem. No need to hurt anyone and people can look at all the depraved things they want in the comfort of their homes.

...until they get so excited they want to try it in real life.

Does the evidence support that idea? My understanding was that the information we have right now seems to suggest the opposite.

Re: Vermont Attorney General's dog sniffs out electronic storage devices

#29

Post by bombcar »

hhh wrote: post #15
robin_reala wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nintendo uses bittrex in the plastic for their Switch cartridges to stop kids from swallowing them. Potentially this is more widespread in the SD card industry? (I don’t have any around me to test-lick unfortunately.)

i’ve swallowed several microsd cards and they’ve never tasted of anything but plastic

But why?

Re: Vermont Attorney General's dog sniffs out electronic storage devices

#30

Post by IggleSniggle »

smt88 wrote: post #9
iamben wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! I saw a presentation a couple of years back from police dog trainers. Different dogs would specialise in different things - drugs, guns, and amazingly - hard disks! They train them specifically to do so. What blew my mind was the reward was always just a tennis ball. But the dog was soooo happy to get the ball for a short amount of play when it did well.

Drug-sniffing dogs are a myth[1]. They're used as a pretext for illegal searches, not to detect drugs. I suspect this is similar. "Detecting off-gassing" is vague enough to sound like it makes sense, but there's a variety of materials in electronic devices and many of the ones that off-gas (like plastic) are found in millions of other products. 1. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-03/fact-check-are-drug-d...

Your citation pretty clearly demonstrates that drug-sniffing dogs DO work. And anybody who has ever had a dog sniff something out would find this to be an obvious fact.

The omitted figure is how large the sample size is. If the dog sniffs 100,000, and identifies 10 as having drug odor, but only 2 of the 10 are currently in the possession of drugs, that doesn't really indicate that the dog "has a failure rate of 75%" because it doesn't take into account any of the "negative identifications." We don't know how many of those other identifications were false negatives, but certainly I wouldn't expect 25% of the population to be carrying illicit drugs at any given time, and especially not in scenarios where there may be a checkpoint with a dog involved.

The dogs may be misused, but that doesn't make their ability a myth, and neither does this article claim that a dog can't sniff out the trace scents of a drug. It carefully skirts around this assertion, because dogs absolutely can sniff out drugs. They're just not infallible, and may also be used as pretext.

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