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Comment by NathanKP | Hacker News Reader

It seems like a bad idea to store anything incriminating on your local hard drive. Why not keep your encrypted files on a flash drive? If the police show up destroy the flash drive using a hammer, ensuring that the flash memory chip is thoroughly pulverized and completely unreadable.

Likewise, if you are going to be using the internet for devious purposes drive around and use a neighbor's open wireless network access point, which highly reduces the chances that anything can be traced back to you. Or set up your own unsecured wireless network point and suggest to officers that illegal use came from an outside source.

Not that I want to condone illegal activities, or condone lying to police officers, but to the hacker in me these seem like simple, sensible steps to take that will be more dependable than even a 50 character password.

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Yes, of course any smart criminals will do that.

But my goal is not to be a smart criminal. My goal is to have a right to privacy to my own stuff.

That said, I don't see why the well-established precedents of opening locked doors and safes shouldn't apply to computers. If you subpoena my safe, I have to open it for you. Otherwise, I certainly won't.

Intentionally destroying incriminating evidence is probably not something you should ever do. Certainly not in such a way that leaves evidence in the form of pulverized IC remains all over your kitchen counter.

Good point, I didn't think of that. Obviously I'm not a master criminal.

But how can they prove that it was incriminating evidence?

Usually there'll be a reason for the police to kick your door down. I imagine that plus destroyed evidence would be enough to prove beyond reasonable doubt.

Also, I don't think it necessarily needs to be proven that the evidence was incriminating; just destroying evidence is criminal behavior.

Of course, IANAL, but that's how I'd do it if I ruled the world...

How do you know it was evidence or related to the bust?

There might be all sorts of reasons - if you're being busted for fraud or tax evasion and all of your hard drives are mysteriously blank, or there are empty filing cabinets and a big pile of ash then I would imagine that would go down fairly badly in court.

The modern equivalent is a whole bunch of destroyed media - thumb drives, flash cards or hard drives.

Depends on what it's evidence of. If you're destroying evidence of murder, treason, or something else that'd guarantee you a life/death sentence, an obstruction of justice charge isn't going to seem like very much in comparison.

I can see there will be a market for edible micro SD cards.

"Sir, we see from your blood sample that you have recently digested some silicon wafer..."

Under danish law, it is not illegal to destroy evidence of your own or your loved ones wrong doing.

Maybe you just put your private data on flash drives and smash it to bits with a hammer for your own personal privacy, or to get rid of pictures of an ex-girlfriend. There's no way of knowing.

I understand that in some areas, not only is it illegal to operate an insecure wireless access point (in the UK at least), you can be held accountable for the actions of people that use the access point.

that's amusing, considering that every wireless access point is insecure

WPA2 with authentication or WPA2 with a 64-character line-noise password?

> disposing of evidence

Authorities are very aware of this. One reason for "raids", no knock warrants, arresting you on the road, at work, away from home, etc.

That doesn't cover you for swap files / hibernate files or memory dumps which are written unencrypted and largely outside your control. Obviously it's hit or miss what may or may not be included in there but there are a fair number of leaks where even "secure" information is handled in an insecure fashion.

The TrueCrypt section on data leaks (http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/data-leaks) talks about them and how to get round them.

But if you're really serious about these things it's more complex than not storing things on your local drive or even using encryption.

I don't think that a flash drive would have been enough in his case. Maybe he had lots of pornographic pictures or videos with children.

My understanding is that the "oops Agent Smith, my WiFi was unsecured" is not legally feasible, or is going away.. you are responsible for access to your pipe. Which sucks... heh.

Where did you get this idea from?

I got this idea from the MPAA telling my ISP to tell me to secure my WiFi or lose my connectivity.

The MPAA telling you that is no different than me telling you that. I have no legal authority to do so, no matter how many lawyer's names appear on my letterhead.

That doesn't sound feasible to me, because there are so many older people and non-technically savy individuals who don't know how to secure their wireless access point. In addition, some models don't support security that is strong enough to prevent hacking, or they are set up using default or easy to guess passwords. Lastly, many wireless points are deliberately left open so that they can be used by customers of cafes, etc.

So in summary, I seriously doubt that you can be held responsible for another person's use of your pipe.

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