AFP: I’m still staggered by the power of this warrant. It allows the AFP to “add, copy, delete or alter” material in the ABC’s computers. All Australians, please think about that: as of this moment, the AFP has the power to delete material in the ABC’s computers. Australia 2019.
[0]https://twitter.com/TheLyonsDen/status/1136124130204442624
It sounds stupid, but I could see it happening.
they don't have imaging tools and/or write blockers?
Afaik it is practice in rule-of-law countries to hand a clone to each party in the case.
The ABC staff literally copied all the stuff that might be interesting (found using keyword searches) into a folder, which the ABC legal and AFP investigators went through one by one to determine what was of interest to AFP. The items of interest was then copied to a “sealed” package which the AFP pinky swears nobody will look at for two weeks while the ABC seeks an injunction.
Isn't this a huge problem? That the police can forcibly install surveillance applications in a news organizations computers.
Something like, allowed to copy and if that has an unintended consequence of modifying the machine, that is fine so long as evidence is not destroyed.
(offsite = not here, offline = not powered on)
The news director's thinking was "they can't subpoena what we don't have."
This was in a city where the local police would subpoena at the drop of a hat, and used it as a harassment tool. The goal was to keep the subpoena storms from getting in the way of people actually reporting news.