Homestead mailing list

[Roy Morgan <k1lky AT earthlink.net>]

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