Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!uunet!world!eff!mnemonic
From: mnemonic@eff.org (Mike Godwin)
Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Re: "Bad" backups
Message-ID: <1990Dec9.155404.4847@eff.org>
Date: 9 Dec 90 15:54:04 GMT
References: <1990Nov29.164728.504@digibd.com> <1990Nov30.133254.3737@eff.org> <1990Dec08.171628.10447@digibd.com>
Organization: The Electronic Frontier Foundation
Lines: 35

In article <1990Dec08.171628.10447@digibd.com> merlyn@digibd.com (Brian Westley (Merlyn LeRoy)) writes:
>
>And I never approved no-knock searches by ignorant, incompetent
>authorities, but I'm willing to provide suggestions on how to
>beat them at their own sorry game.  You seem to think my suggestion
>(keeping everything in RAM) was legitimizing their fascist tactics;
>I think it combats their tactics by staying ahead of them, and makes
>their police state mindset more obvious and open to criticism.

Not only will law-enforcement officers regard your suggestions
(not yours in particular, but similar suggestions by others)
as legitimizing no-knock searches, but this already has been the 
case. See, e.g., McEwan and Conly's articles on computer crime.

Moreover, anyone who arranges for the destruction of data in
the belief that his equipment is likely to be seized is laying himself
open for an obstruction-of-justice prosecution.

If data are destroyed as part of the normal course of operations, that's
one thing. But if you deliberately destroy data because you think your
system may be seized, that's quite another. Ditto if you arrange for it
to be destroyed upon seizure.



--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