I work with prosecutors, and some of them will straight up misrepresent innocent facts to paint them as evidence of malicious intent and pressure parties to plead guilty.
I have seen stuff like "defendant had TOR installed - a popular program for criminals" in court filings. ...and judges and juries accept that as fact because they just don't understand the technology. For example, having a bookmark for "Hacker News" would absolutely show up in court. Crazy stuff meant to bias judges and juries that don't know tech.
The point is that the situation is 100x worse in tech where prosecutors, judges, and juries simply do not understand the evidence. ANYTHING can be painted as incriminating evidence.
I have seen saved credentials on automation jobs being used to incorrectly establish people's network activity. I have seen routine maintenance being used to establish obstruction charges just to intimidate possible witnesses... Like stuff you would not believe happens, happens.
It's even worse in civil suits, where opposing counsel will subpoena as much as possible (mountains of data) just to give you more work and fish for trade secrets or anything they can twist in court.
When I was junior, I proudly told my legal team "good news, I added space to keep our transaction records for 20 years!" and was aghast when they said they wanted files deleted THE DAY the legal requirement to hold it expired because it increased legal liability.
Now I totally get it. Today we only store the bare minimum - everything else is deleted immediately. ... and I have to re-explain this to junior employees each year to their disgust.
> I have seen stuff like "defendant had TOR installed - a popular program for criminals" in court filings. ...and judges and juries accept that as fact because they just don't understand the technology. For example, having a bookmark for "Hacker News" would absolutely show up in court.
Both of those are really good examples of how a statement of fact that is literally true can still be a lie. Politicians do this kind of stuff all the time especially in their attack ads that make TV unwatchable around this time of year in every even numbered year. Amazingly what gets a politician called out by the other party's press as a "liar" is the opposite of this kind of statement: something that is fundamentally true but where the politician got one minor irrelevant detail wrong. That's also a major reason why it isn't a good idea to represent yourself in court or to explain yourself to the police when you get arrested because people are prone to accidentally getting minor details wrong or misspeaking even when they're telling the truth to the best of their ability.
For anyone that isn't convinced, here is a talk by a lawyer and a police officer discussing the idea of never talking to the police [0]. It's interesting that they largely agree that talking to the police is not a good idea.
> ... prone to accidentally getting minor details wrong
I know a prosecutor who had to investigate the statements made by the husband of a person who (presumably) had drowned themself in their pool (she used workout weights to keep herself at the bottom). The statement to be investigated: "Those were her weights. I never touched those weights!"
Now all of a sudden maybe his fingerprints are on the weights and that statement is untrue...
I also got to learn that they scoop the weights into a bucket because I guess they need to keep them submerged in water, otherwise the prints will wash off.
Bigtech will happily store data on their users indefinitely so they can mine it in the future, should they think of new profit-generating ideas. But they will absolutely delete their employee's emails after N months unless they are on litigation hold (i.e. legally required not to do so). Complete double standard.
I was punished in school for having NetHack source code in my home dir.
And it was not because it was a game but because it allegedly was a hacking tool.
In highschool I was sent to detention and almost suspended because a study hall teacher overheard me talking about the "black market" feature of an roleplaying game I was writing on my graphing calculator. It took an hour of trying to explain TI-BASIC to my principle (and I think some angry phonecalls from my mother, a teacher in that district) before they relented with the insane mafioso accusations.
>Was it really routine maintenance to BleachBit an entire server after you receive a subpoena from the FBI?
I would hope so, since presumably the storage devices on that server would either be resold or sent to a dump.
The info on those storage devices (assuming backups/existence of that data elsewhere for government data retention purposes) should not be let out into the wild.
In fact, I (and I don't work/exist in areas with confidential data) have a dozen or so hard drives that sit in a closet as I don't have the interface cards (any more) to hook them up and securely delete the data.
Eventually I'll probably purchase a bulk eraser[0], but until then, those disks will sit in my closet as my business is my business and no one else's.
I understand why people want to erase hard drives permanently and totally. My point was more about, isn't it a little weird to do so after the FBI says they want to look into the status of said devices.
lol, dude, just take out the screws and toss the platters in the oven. you need software to retrieve data, but not necessarily to destroy it.
I made a cool spiral chandelier out of fishing wire and hard drive parts. The platters don't chime as harmoniously as I had hoped, but it still worked out great - and I have enough super fridge magnets to last the rest of my life.
> In July, FBI Director James B. Comey said while the investigation revealed potential violations, “our judgement is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.”
In other words, crimes were probably committed but the FBI dropped the investigation because they figured that no prosecutor would file charges in the case.
A plausible justification was given. It makes sense. It also has nothing to do with Hillary's decision-making. You can call all the people involved liars, or just deny the facts that have been presented to you - but the facts, as presented, do portray innocent behavior.
> having a bookmark for "Hacker News" would absolutely show up in court
And would the defense be allowed to show the legal and harmless conversations we have here? Or ask the prosecutors which HN posts they believe influenced the accused to commit a crime?
> Today we only store the bare minimum - everything else is deleted immediately. ... and I have to re-explain this to junior employees each year to their disgust.
Same in software-land. Nobody wants to have years of who-knows-what subpoenaed.
I have seen stuff like "defendant had TOR installed - a popular program for criminals" in court filings. ...and judges and juries accept that as fact because they just don't understand the technology. For example, having a bookmark for "Hacker News" would absolutely show up in court. Crazy stuff meant to bias judges and juries that don't know tech.
The point is that the situation is 100x worse in tech where prosecutors, judges, and juries simply do not understand the evidence. ANYTHING can be painted as incriminating evidence.
I have seen saved credentials on automation jobs being used to incorrectly establish people's network activity. I have seen routine maintenance being used to establish obstruction charges just to intimidate possible witnesses... Like stuff you would not believe happens, happens.
It's even worse in civil suits, where opposing counsel will subpoena as much as possible (mountains of data) just to give you more work and fish for trade secrets or anything they can twist in court.
When I was junior, I proudly told my legal team "good news, I added space to keep our transaction records for 20 years!" and was aghast when they said they wanted files deleted THE DAY the legal requirement to hold it expired because it increased legal liability.
Now I totally get it. Today we only store the bare minimum - everything else is deleted immediately. ... and I have to re-explain this to junior employees each year to their disgust.