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Vermont Attorney General's dog sniffs out electronic storage devices

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

#31

Post by simplicio »

heads wrote: post #2

The officers are busy. Last year nearly 800 cyber tips filtered through the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Officers are carrying out search warrants on a weekly basis and some electronic files have been spread so widely that officers know their hash value by heart. It’s difficult to say whether sexual exploitation and the spread of sex abuse materials has actually increased dramatically in recent y…

I mean, the dog angle is legitimately interesting. I've never heard of police dogs being used to sniff out things other then drugs or people.

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

#32

Post by chrisandchris »

simplicio wrote: post #31
heads wrote: post #2

The officers are busy. Last year nearly 800 cyber tips filtered through the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Officers are carrying out search warrants on a weekly basis and some electronic files have been spread so widely that officers know their hash value by heart. It’s difficult to say whether sexual exploitation and the spread of sex abuse materials has actually increased dramatically in recent y…

I mean, the dog angle is legitimately interesting. I've never heard of police dogs being used to sniff out things other then drugs or people.

In Europe, there are dogs sniffing bark beetle, which destroys forests. Much more faster than any humands checking the trees. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bark_beetle

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

#33

Post by chrisandchris »

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 article does not fully support the claim.

> Whether or not the dogs were "incorrect" was a definitional question for Dr Malins.

The dog was accurate, however the dogs definition of accurate (there is some minimal smell) vs. the enforment officers (i need some smell so i have a ground for search) vs. the people (i walked through a cloud of smell) might be very different, which makes the measure "accurate" - well - very inaccurate.

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

#34

Post by LeifCarrotson »

eesmith wrote: post #11
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

Seems possible. The linked-to article in turn links to https://indianapublicmedia.org/news/indiana-man-training-k9-... dated January 27, 2017 describing how ""I had to pay a chemist to actually find the actual odor," Jordan says. "So it's an odor that's within the actual SD cards, the thumb drives, cell phones."" This is further detailed at https://www.techrepublic.com/article/electronics-sniffing-do... where "[Dr. J…

Anyone who's worked in electronics manufacturing knows that printed circuit boards and soldered assemblies have a distinctive smell. The epoxy laminate boards get washed, but still have an odor, and we wash the flux residue off after soldering, but there are still odors that linger when acres of PCBs go across your manufacturing floor.

I am a little surprised that a dog's nose is sensitive and rapid enough to find the circuit board in a microSD card. The number of atoms of this residue that off-gas and waft through the air to the dog's nose must be tiny!

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

#36

Post by Beijinger »

simplicio wrote: post #31
heads wrote: post #2

The officers are busy. Last year nearly 800 cyber tips filtered through the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Officers are carrying out search warrants on a weekly basis and some electronic files have been spread so widely that officers know their hash value by heart. It’s difficult to say whether sexual exploitation and the spread of sex abuse materials has actually increased dramatically in recent y…

I mean, the dog angle is legitimately interesting. I've never heard of police dogs being used to sniff out things other then drugs or people.

Dogs are used to detect:

people cadavers drugs explosives electronics cash bed bugs

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

#37

Post by Hnrobert42 »

simplicio wrote: post #31
heads wrote: post #2

The officers are busy. Last year nearly 800 cyber tips filtered through the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Officers are carrying out search warrants on a weekly basis and some electronic files have been spread so widely that officers know their hash value by heart. It’s difficult to say whether sexual exploitation and the spread of sex abuse materials has actually increased dramatically in recent y…

I mean, the dog angle is legitimately interesting. I've never heard of police dogs being used to sniff out things other then drugs or people.

I went to RSA in San Francisco. At the time, I was staying with friends in San Mateo, but I got a hotel for a night in SF. Rates were outrageous, and we were a small startup. The cheapest hotel I could find was $400/ night for a bedroom with a shared bath down the hall.

The next night, back at my friend’s house, I noticed the telltale 3 bite pattern on my shoulder. Breakfast lunch and dinner. It itched like CrAZy. It was bedbugs. There was no way to know if I’d only gotten bit at the hotel or if I’d brought bugs to my friend’s home with me.

I learned you can hire a sweet yellow lab like Mojo to sniff out bedbugs. The dog wandered the whole house. My heart dropped when he alerted on the sofa where I’d been remotely working.

It cost about $3500 to treat the house. They rolled in fans that heat the whole house above 105°F for an hour. Sure enough, they found some bedbug eggs. It all worked out, damn what a hassle.

Note: the dog was from a different company than the treatment folks. They do that to avoid conflict of interest.

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

#38

Post by LeifCarrotson »

bombcar wrote: post #29
hhh wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But why?

I'm also concerned. The only reason I can guess at would be to prevent data from being seized when going through a security crossing, such as when going from one country to another or into/out of a secured corporate facility.

Maybe we can be charitable and assume that the parent commenter did undercover work as a journalist/mule in an authoritarian regime, eg. bringing photos that North Korea didn't want to be public out of the country? They're not likely to let you leave with an encrypted uSD even if you claim you forgot the password. But the vast majority of reasons to employ such deception are more nefarious - either illegal corporate espionage or military espionage across an airgapped/monitored network, or distribution of CSAM.

Or maybe he just likes the taste of microSD cards?

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

#40

Post by gadders »

harimau777 wrote: post #28
gadders wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...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.

I've not seen any evidence either way, but I'm not sure you'd get an RCT of this past an ethics committee anywhere.

For now, I'm inclined to err on the side of caution and not enable perverts.

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