How to go about nicking e-Stuff
Posted by Tim Stevens on 5 July 2008
Best Practices for Seizing Electronic Evidence, manual by the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the United States Secret Service:
Computers and digital media are increasingly involved in unlawful activities. The computer may be contraband, fruits of the crime, a tool of the offense, or a storage container holding evidence of the offense. Investigation of any criminal activity may produce electronic evidence. Computers and related evidence range from the mainframe computer to the pocket-sized personal data assistant to the floppy diskette, CD or the smallest electronic chip device. Images, audio, text and other data on these media are easily altered or destroyed. It is imperative that law enforcement officers recognize, protect, seize and search such devices in accordance with applicable statutes, policies and best practices and guidelines.
[h/t DJ Technocrat]
7 July 2008 at 10:08 pm
I noted with simultaneous satisfaction and alarm that Neil Entwistle’s conviction for the murder of his wife and child was partly secured on his Internet search history. His “username” had searched for the “best” way to kill someone four days before the murders. I wondered if he had left himself logged in to his gmail while searching, but maybe they just scraped his browsing history: GET formdata is encoded in the URL. So, use Scroogle over SSL for the win:
https://ssl.scroogle.org/sslnote.html
For the discerning cyberwarrior, TrueCrypt offers the best protection for your storage. My favourite feature is the second hidden volume. When tortured for your passphrase, you can provide the key that unlocks the less-sensitive of two areas of disk, safe in the knowledge that your real secrets remain hidden.
7 July 2008 at 10:38 pm
Bruce Schneier digs TrueCrypt so that’s good enough for me. Not that I use it or anything, but I should. As for GMail, jeez, I know those bastards are tracking me relentlessly. I’m adopting an openness policy here - how intelligence (or God forbid, the police) would ever be able to parse my surfing habits, given what I look at for academic and work purposes, is beyond me. Good luck trying though. You’ll never catch me alive, copper, etc.
8 July 2008 at 8:09 pm
Just for the sake of argument, I’m going to be bold and interpret this to mean “I’m doing nothing illegal, so have nothing to hide”. This is the sort of thing that makes security researchers hopping mad. They usually counter this argument by asking whether you send all your private correspondence on picture postcards.
Most people only worry about using over-the-wire encryption to protect their banking activities. Almost all other traffic is sent en clair, to say nothing of the contents of people’s hard drives.
ISPs now routinely inspect packets to see whether you’re up to tricks, like sharing your Abdullah Ibrahim mp3 collection to all and sundry, and shape (or, like Virgin Media, block) your traffic accordingly. To counter this, SSL is being offered by services like The Pirate Bay, and μTorrent offers easy encryption by default.
At this rate, there’s a real danger that any SSL traffic will soon be treated as suspect, if not downright villainous. Wouldn’t it be better all round if exercising your right to private communication were the norm, rather than the exception?
It’s interesting you mention Bruce Schneier. He’s now the Chief Security Technology Officer at BT, an ISP that has recently engaged the services of those purveyors of über-Stasi snoopware, Phorm.
8 July 2008 at 8:20 pm
Just for the sake of argument, I’m going to be bold and interpret this to mean “I’m doing nothing illegal, so have nothing to hide”.
That’s not what I meant at all, but since it’s for the ’sake of argument’ I’ll let it slide.
Wouldn’t it be better all round if exercising your right to private communication were the norm, rather than the exception?
To quote Homer Simpson, “You’re living in a land of make-believe!” If only the default condition of individuals in the war
ofon terror were indeed innocence rather than guilt, nobody would be able to wave the ‘if you’re doing nothing illegal, you’ve got nothing to hide’ in our faces. At least the principle of habeas corpus seems to be making a bit of a comeback, but it’ll probably go the way of Rick Astley’s recent resurgence.Schneier at BT. Hmm. Thought I’d heard that somewhere, but must have mentally dismissed it. Will look into it. What’s Phorm?
24 July 2008 at 9:05 pm
Just to close the loop, here’s a collection of Phorm-related atricles at The Register:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/29/phorm_roundup/
Remember that El Reg is pretty hard-right Libertarian on Internet privacy matters, but we’re not looking of balance on this issue, are we?
24 July 2008 at 10:14 pm
Not in this case, no. The U.S. is taking the lead on this kind of thing though, I’m glad to see.