Comment by oh_sigh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by oh_sigh | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious if this lady is a serial social media user like most young people? Going on a 70 mile trip and not doing social media updates or taking more than 2 pictures would be suspect behavior for some people.

Does iPhone have location history option like Google maps does on android?

How did she get there? Did she just drive herself 70 miles? Does she own a car or did she rent one? Did she take a train or bus and still has the ticket? Did she go with a friend? Did she eat a meal and pay with a credit card there? Did she buy gas?

How about checking in the provided photos if features present in the photos match what would be there at the date in question. Does the forecast show it was rainy there but it's sunny in her provided pictures? You could measure shadow length if it may have been faked at a particularly different part of the year. You could search social media for tagged pictures from others which may show her in the background. Were there displays or construction that was modified between the date of the alleged hack and when she could fake a photo there?

Does the xiaomi tracker differentiate between (on a human and human sleeping) vs (not on a human and sitting on a nightstand)?

Did any other student grades get modified upwards?

Shit, you're making me concerned that I should open a facebook account and start uploading records of everything + making paper trails of everything I do in case I'm accused of a crime in the future

Well, generally it couldn't hurt your defense case to have exculpatory evidence on a third party server which you don't have control of, whether it be Facebook, Google, cell tower records, etc.

Also please note that I did not day that not having social media updates is indicative of guilt in itself. Absence of evidence isn't evidence of a crime. Even if she was an obsessive social media user, maybe her phone died and she couldn't post that day.

Social media posts have helped exonerated people in the past

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/11/16/his-ex-accu...

I once read about a black guy who would, when out and about, make it a point to stop by places which have cameras (ATMs, stores, etc.) periodically, just so he would have proof of being near those places. I'm sorry I don't remember where I read it, but it stuck with me.

I remember Patrice O'Neal had a bit about this.

https://youtu.be/0xVF7yCKWno?t=60

Think you’re being downvoted because of “young people” generalizations, but you are absolutely correct that forensic analysis of her cellphone could provide countervailing evidence.

It’s too bad her Mac was wiped. It’s clear Tufts messed this up, and they should forgive her loans; it’s not clear she’s innocent.

According to Techcrunch, it has been done (after the expulsion evidently):

We asked Jake Williams, a former NSA hacker who founded cybersecurity and digital forensics firm Rendition Infosec, to examine the metadata embedded in the photos. The photos, taken from her iPhone, contained a matching date and time for the alleged hack, as well as a set of coordinates putting her at the Mark Twain House.

While photo metadata can be modified, Williams said the signs he expected to see for metadata modification weren’t there. “There is no evidence that these were modified,” he said.

I’ve met Jake a couple of times, he’s a good examiner.

TFA says he looked at the [EXIF] metadata of the photos. There’s nothing in here to suggest a comprehensive forensic analysis of the cellphone itself (eg from a Cellebrite extraction). A phone is a treasure trove of SQLite databases.

> A phone is a treasure trove of SQLite databases

This is so true. I've thought for a long time that a cool art experiment would be a blackbox with a lightning cable protruding out of it. You plug your phone in and answer "Do you trust this computer?" And if you do, those "SQLite databases" you mention get projected on the wall. A bit like the wall of sheep, I guess, but more for the purpose of educating people just how much data is actually on their phone.

>While photo metadata can be modified, Williams said the signs he expected to see for metadata modification weren’t there. “There is no evidence that these were modified,” he said.

Assuming the person changed all data/time fields including those in the file system, what other signs of modification would there be? I poked around online and didn't find anything.

My first guess would be weather records from that day, if the photo was taken outside.

Her loans are almost certainly not originated by Tufts, and even if they wanted to, the university wouldn't be able to unilaterally forgive them.

Also, what kind of student loans are dependent on graduation? If they were, we'd probably have cases of people intentionally being expelled to avoid debt shortly before graduation.

Or a market emerging of companies offering jobs to near-graduates with the understanding that dropping out wouldn't result in revocation of the offer. Actually, that might not be the worst outcome if it encourages a focus on abilities over credentials.

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