Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!lll-winken!uunet!world!eff!mnemonic
From: mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Re: "Bad" backups
Message-ID: <1990Nov30.133254.3737@eff.org>
Date: 30 Nov 90 13:32:54 GMT
References: <1990Nov20.041806.29066@digibd.com> <1990Nov22.123610.27246@eff.org> <1990Nov29.164728.504@digibd.com>
Organization: The Electronic Frontier Foundation
Lines: 53

In article <1990Nov29.164728.504@digibd.com> merlyn@digibd.com (Brian Westley (Merlyn LeRoy)) writes:
>
>This seems to be a difference over theory vs. practice.
>All the anecdotes about actual confiscation talk about the police
>impounding & hauling away computers.  No-knock break-ins would just
>push things one level further (dead-man power switches, or something).
>Besides, it would be trivial (for a Mac, at least) to have a power-down
>key always active on the keyboard.  And there's always the power strip
>rocker switch.

Apparently you are unaware that a substantial percentage of the
seizures were based on no-knock execution of warrants, Merlyn.
With all due respect to you, my job requires me to be up on the
details of these seizures.

One of the reasons for no-knock searches and seizures seems to
be that the National Institute of Justice publications favor them,
precisely because prosecutors have been told by "security experts"
that hackers routinely set up degausser boobytraps and keep all their
evidence of illegal activity in RAM.

I hasten to add that anyone who believes his computer or data is
about to be seized, and who arranges for it to be automatically
destroyed upon such seizure, may well be indicted on obstruction-
of-justice charges.

>And if I advocated "keep everything in your memory" I'd be
>confirming brainwashing techniques?

No, I never said this. Keeping information in your own memory,
rather than in your computer's memory, implicates the Fifth 
Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.

>Get real.

With all due respect to you, Merlyn, I'm pretty realistic when
it comes the searches and seizures of Operation Sun Devil and
other computer-crime operations. After all, I do have a law degree,
and my job requires me to be knowledgeable about the facts surrounding
the current searches and seizures. I don't know how to be more "real"
than I already am.



--Mike



-- 
Mike Godwin, (617) 864-0665 |"If the doors of perception were cleansed
mnemonic@eff.org            | every thing would appear to man as it is,
Electronic Frontier         | infinite."
Foundation                  |                 --Blake