Hacker News Reader

> I have seen stuff like "defendant had TOR installed - a popular program for criminals" in court filings. ...and judges and juries accept that as fact because they just don't understand the technology. For example, having a bookmark for "Hacker News" would absolutely show up in court.

Both of those are really good examples of how a statement of fact that is literally true can still be a lie. Politicians do this kind of stuff all the time especially in their attack ads that make TV unwatchable around this time of year in every even numbered year. Amazingly what gets a politician called out by the other party's press as a "liar" is the opposite of this kind of statement: something that is fundamentally true but where the politician got one minor irrelevant detail wrong. That's also a major reason why it isn't a good idea to represent yourself in court or to explain yourself to the police when you get arrested because people are prone to accidentally getting minor details wrong or misspeaking even when they're telling the truth to the best of their ability.

> ... prone to accidentally getting minor details wrong

I know a prosecutor who had to investigate the statements made by the husband of a person who (presumably) had drowned themself in their pool (she used workout weights to keep herself at the bottom). The statement to be investigated: "Those were her weights. I never touched those weights!"

Now all of a sudden maybe his fingerprints are on the weights and that statement is untrue...

I also got to learn that they scoop the weights into a bucket because I guess they need to keep them submerged in water, otherwise the prints will wash off.

Ah, too bad he could not use the Slick Willie defense and make the claim that it depends on what the definition of "touch" is.

> explain yourself to the police when you get arrested

Cannot emphasise this enough.

Unless you live a criminal lifestyle (if so, you can learn nothing from me) you may encounter cops once. They do it every day.

Often police job advancement is helped by making your life hell. Say nothing you are not legally obliged to.

For anyone that isn't convinced, here is a talk by a lawyer and a police officer discussing the idea of never talking to the police [0]. It's interesting that they largely agree that talking to the police is not a good idea.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE

I was just about to post this. It's long, but so good.

Don't forget the followup...

"Don't Talk to the Police Part 2" - https://youtu.be/tIt-l2YmH8M

Bigtech will happily store data on their users indefinitely so they can mine it in the future, should they think of new profit-generating ideas. But they will absolutely delete their employee's emails after N months unless they are on litigation hold (i.e. legally required not to do so). Complete double standard.

The data is their business model so I don’t see how it’s a double standard

> having a bookmark for "Hacker News"

I was punished in school for having NetHack source code in my home dir. And it was not because it was a game but because it allegedly was a hacking tool.

"No, wait, I can explain! You see, I'm just a tourist in search of an amulet..."

At least they didn't sanction you for eating corpses...

In highschool I was sent to detention and almost suspended because a study hall teacher overheard me talking about the "black market" feature of an roleplaying game I was writing on my graphing calculator. It took an hour of trying to explain TI-BASIC to my principle (and I think some angry phonecalls from my mother, a teacher in that district) before they relented with the insane mafioso accusations.

the principal's your pal

I'd like to request a change to that mnemonic: your principal is not your pal!

At least you didn't have Dopewars installed!

This reminds me of an article (re-)posted recently here on HN:

https://web.archive.org/web/20031114161830/http://www.adequa...

Your Honor, we were horrified to discover the largest collection of "PDF files" we have ever seen on the defendant's hard drive!

> I have seen routine maintenance being used to establish obstruction charges just to intimidate possible witnesses

You're talking about Hillary Clinton, right? That's literally one of the arguments they used against her.

Same thing occurred to me. The Bleach Bit BS.

Was it really routine maintenance to BleachBit an entire server after you receive a subpoena from the FBI?

Yes, it really was. The FBI investigated and found as much.

https://www.denverpost.com/2016/09/03/fbi-report-platte-rive...

I don't see this really addressing the fact that deleting data permanently after you find out the FBI wants to look at those devices is a bit weird.

A plausible justification was given. It makes sense. It also has nothing to do with Hillary's decision-making. You can call all the people involved liars, or just deny the facts that have been presented to you - but the facts, as presented, do portray innocent behavior.

> In July, FBI Director James B. Comey said while the investigation revealed potential violations, “our judgement is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.”

In other words, crimes were probably committed but the FBI dropped the investigation because they figured that no prosecutor would file charges in the case.

>Was it really routine maintenance to BleachBit an entire server after you receive a subpoena from the FBI?

I would hope so, since presumably the storage devices on that server would either be resold or sent to a dump.

The info on those storage devices (assuming backups/existence of that data elsewhere for government data retention purposes) should not be let out into the wild.

In fact, I (and I don't work/exist in areas with confidential data) have a dozen or so hard drives that sit in a closet as I don't have the interface cards (any more) to hook them up and securely delete the data.

Eventually I'll probably purchase a bulk eraser[0], but until then, those disks will sit in my closet as my business is my business and no one else's.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Degausser-Electricity-Required-Mainte...

I understand why people want to erase hard drives permanently and totally. My point was more about, isn't it a little weird to do so after the FBI says they want to look into the status of said devices.

More info on that degausser. https://www.mediaduplicationsystems.com/sd-1-hard-drive-tape...

On sale, now only $3,990.00 (previously $6,999.99).

If the OP only has a dozen drives to wipe, I think a drill and some liquid to pour over the platters would be a sufficient alternative.

>If the OP only has a dozen drives to wipe, I think a drill and some liquid to pour over the platters would be a sufficient alternative.

An interesting idea and one I hadn't considered. Thanks!

lol, dude, just take out the screws and toss the platters in the oven. you need software to retrieve data, but not necessarily to destroy it.

I made a cool spiral chandelier out of fishing wire and hard drive parts. The platters don't chime as harmoniously as I had hoped, but it still worked out great - and I have enough super fridge magnets to last the rest of my life.

No, I was not talking about any politically driven case at all.

> having a bookmark for "Hacker News" would absolutely show up in court

And would the defense be allowed to show the legal and harmless conversations we have here? Or ask the prosecutors which HN posts they believe influenced the accused to commit a crime?

> Today we only store the bare minimum - everything else is deleted immediately. ... and I have to re-explain this to junior employees each year to their disgust.

Same in software-land. Nobody wants to have years of who-knows-what subpoenaed.

wisdom and experience. TIL