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  • From: Roy Morgan <k1lky AT earthlink.net>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] warrantless searches okay - Texas - border -email- blackberries-phone.
  • Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2008 22:20:09 -0400


On Oct 29, 2008, at 11:13 PM, bob ford wrote:
... customs officials and police officers have been carrying out warrantless searches of the contents of laptops, mobile phones and other wireless devices.


There is a lot more to this than would appear to the technically unfamiliar among us. The topic area is Computer Forensics. Some of our Guvmint agencies are really big into this.

Along the hallway where I worked till early this year were the folks who assembled a database of known program files. This data helps investigators ignore standard stuff on a computer during a search for useful or interesting information. The data about common files included the file name, program source, and an all important digital signature ("hash") of the file which dependably and uniquely identifies the file.

The challenges in this situation are:
- To be really sure that tools used in computer forensics really do what their producers say they do, and do not do things you don't want them to.
- To be able to competently convince a jury that the search of the computer storage was done in a way that did not change any of the data
- To be able to sift out the changing or changed information on the computer from the gobs and gobs of normal program files that really are of no interest.

Doing all this is quite a bit more involved than a customs agent looking at your laptop mailing list.

For more info, see: http://www.nsrl.nist.gov/

Roy

Roy Morgan
k1lky AT earthlink.net
529 Cobb St.
Groton NY, 13073









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