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Thread: 1,008 hours

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    1,008 hours

    I'm very disappointed that Parliament voted in favour of allowing persons - against whom the police do not have enough evidence to charge them with a crime - to be incarcerated for 42 days.

    First, contrast this with the current position.
    General rule: release or charge within 24 hours of arriving at the police station
    Exception 1: additional 12 hours detention can be authorised by a superintendent or above (with strict controls as to what issues he may and must consider)
    Exception 2: if it is a 'serious arrestable offence' and further detention is necessary to secure or procure evidence (by questioning if applicable) relating to the offence then on the application of the police the magistrates (sitting privately) can authorise a further 36 hours detention
    Exception 3: for the same reasons as (2), a further 36 hours detention can be authorised, but
    subject to an overall limit of 96 hours detention

    Once the time limit is up, the defendant must be produced before a magistrates court if the police want to remand the defendant. (Otherwise the defendant is released on 'police bail'.) At that hearing, the magistrates will hear the defendant's application for bail.

    Generally, bail must be granted unless there are good grounds to apprehend:
    a) that the defendant will abscond
    b) that he will offend if released
    c) that he will interfere with the investigation and prosecution of the offence (nobbling witnesses, 'tipping off' fellow conspirators, eg.)

    (NB. As soon as c) becomes inapplicable - e.g. no-one left to tip off - the bail decision must be reconsidered.)

    Now, terrorism offences are indictable, that means they must be tried in a Crown Court. The next court appearance (whether there is bail or remand), however, is before a magistrates court (which will 'commit' the defendant for trial at the Crown Court - hence the name 'committal').

    Currently the rules say that 70 days may elapse between the first appearance and committal. Then a further 112 days may elapse between the committal and the commencement of trial.

    Looking at the whole thing: suspected of a serious crime, you can find yourself held without charge by the police for up to 4 days before you are charged. If that's on a weekend, it might be another day before you can have a bail hearing. If you aren't granted bail, then it may be another 6 months before you get to trial. (Those time limits can also be extended in restricted circumstances.)

    That means that, subject to original investigations, the police and the CPS have a further 182 days in which to, e.g., check the contents of computer hard drives, follow other lines of investigation, interview other suspects, check bank accounts, phone records, etc. etc.

    Now what I want to know is - if an extra 6 weeks is indispensable - why is it necessary for those 6 weeks (as opposed to the usual 4 days) to be prior to charging the defendant? Why not extend all the other deadlines? There can even be a special exemption - if and when the police are able to satisfy a magistrate that there is a risk of 'tipping off' - whereby special provisions should apply, enabling the police to hold the suspect incommunicado for 6 weeks. And so on.

    People talk of magna carta, and habeas corpus, which is all very grand. But the issue here is a simple one. The police screw up all the time. (Look at the guy who was shot on his own staircase, while he and his brother were being arrested.) It's important that they should not be in a position to steal 6 weeks from someone's life where they couldn't show a prima facie case against them within a week. No compensation will make up for the loss, and especially not for the fear and stress. Never mind what the suspect's family are going through.

    What would happen if you didn't turn up for work for 4 days, without explanation? What would your nearest and dearest do if they didn't know you'd been arrested? How would they feel if you were held for another 6 weeks before the police released you, saying (e.g.) 'we know you dunnit but we can't prove it, so no compensation for you, chum'.

    Next, we'll hear this. "Given that the terrorism laws enable us to keep suspects detained for 6 weeks due to the complexity of terrorism investigations, it's now time to consider whether other complex investigations should be brought in line with those provisions, rather than the antiquated 4 days we've had up to now."

    I have to say I haven't admired the actions of a politician for some time so much as I do that of David Davies today. I hope the House of Lords is similarly impressed.

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    Re: 1,008 hours

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    I'm very disappointed that Parliament voted in favour of allowing persons - against whom the police do not have enough evidence to charge them with a crime - to be incarcerated for 42 days.

    ..................................

    Next, we'll hear this. "Given that the terrorism laws enable us to keep suspects detained for 6 weeks due to the complexity of terrorism investigations, it's now time to consider whether other complex investigations should be brought in line with those provisions, rather than the antiquated 4 days we've had up to now."

    I have to say I haven't admired the actions of a politician for some time so much as I do that of David Davies today. I hope the House of Lords is similarly impressed.
    I agree with everything you say on this matter. Having been through police/court criminal proceedings in the past my fear is "Function Creep", I know from first hand experience how the police will corrupt and abuse laws to suit their own purpose.
    I remember all too well Walter Woolfgang being ejected from a NuLabour Party Conference for heckling Jack Straw and the police using Anti-Terrorism legislation to prevent him from re-entering the conference.
    The Nothing to Hide - Nothing to Fear brigade doesn't understand that we all will have reason to fear a Police State.

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    Re: 1,008 hours

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post

    Once the time limit is up, the defendant must be produced before a magistrates court if the police want to remand the defendant. (Otherwise the defendant is released on 'police bail'.) At that hearing, the magistrates will hear the defendant's application for bail.

    Generally, bail must be granted unless there are good grounds to apprehend:
    a) that the defendant will abscond
    b) that he will offend if released
    c) that he will interfere with the investigation and prosecution of the offence (nobbling witnesses, 'tipping off' fellow conspirators, eg.)

    (NB. As soon as c) becomes inapplicable - e.g. no-one left to tip off - the bail decision must be reconsidered.)

    .
    Hi Barry just to clear up a slight error above.

    The time limit of 96 hours is the upper limit the police have to charge someone.
    If the time expires, so does the police opportunity to deal with the suspect in custody.

    There is still the opportunity to summons a suspect or obtain a warrant in the 1st Instance from a Magistrate in Magistrates Court.( Both summons and charge are ways police use to get a suspect before a court).

    Police always have the opportunity, post the initial 24 hour period of detention or any other subsequent extension to detention granted by a Supt or a Magistrate in Court to deal again with a suspect by warrant in the 1st Instance.

    To do this police must have gathered evidence to the standard of a charge. When this evidence becomes available, post release from custody then police can present the evidence at court and ask for a warrant.

    This warrant if issued does not allow police the chance to interview the suspect merely arrest the suspect and produce the suspect before the magistrates to answer the "charge" evidence.

    So all your subsequent info in your informative post re granting of bail would only come into play if a person was charged and then remanded by the police custody officer and then produced to the magistrates in custody.
    In fact the police custody officer would consider all the same factors about bail before being able to remand a suspect to Magistrates court post charge.


    Re the main thrust of your thread the 42 day period it is the complexity of modern life which causes problems for the police in gathering evidence from CCTV, computers and mobile phones.
    Understanding that it takes the police 6-8 months to obtain computer evidence to prosecute paedophiles re indecent images of children. ( I must point out that evidence is gathered while the suspected paedophile is out on police bail). This is because the police have to send the hard drives to specialist companies who are capable of recovering evidence from hard drives. It costs and takes time and the time is further delayed as the experts prioritise "terrorist" work. It all takes time and it all costs money.



    As a custody officer I personally push to get all suspects dealt with expediciously, most case can easily be dealt with within 12-15 hours, in fact a high proportion are dealt with within 6 hours.
    I am not sure whether 28 days or 42 days or 90 days is what is required to get the evidence of sufficient quality to charge and prosecute suspected terrorists but the police often arrest and proceed from a standing start.
    Nobody has any idea at what stage of terrorist planning an arrest may occur and the international and pan-continental links which appear to be prevalent in modern arrests leaves me to believe that 96 hours is definitely not enough.

    I wouldn't even like to hazard a guess what period of detention is appropriate but whatever period is decided there should be regular independent scrutiny of the police's continued period of detention of suspects.

    Re your comment that persons arrested cannot contact family, the right of the police to withhold this right must be authorised by an Inspector and can only be to prevent loss of evidence or were outstanding suspects might be contacted this would only be for a limited period of time that must be justified.

    In my experience police rarely if ever withhold legal advice, it can be done with Supt's authority but there are very few good reasons for doing so.

    Good thread Barry

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    Re: 1,008 hours

    Quote Originally Posted by under par View Post
    {snip UP's post (as it's immediately above) for reasons of space}
    OK, thanks for the clarifications UP. (I'd forgotten about the separate rules re. suspect's right to representation, etc.)

    It seems that your post is not in unequivocal support of 42 days, so here's some further discussion.

    Such examination of computer hard drives is, clearly, something which may be necessary in terrorist cases. But the examination itself doesn't take six to eight months, does it? Isn't that the total time it takes the independent companies to process the request from start to finish? If so, this should not, in my view, be a reason for knocking a gaping breach in the wall of rights that has been built up over centuries. If that's the problem, then the solution is to reduce the delay in evidence gathering, rather than give up and incarcerate the suspect. What if the processing time were to go up to 12 months, or more?

    I keep thinking I'm not putting my point across with sufficient clarity. By all means take a year to work up the evidence and the case against a terrorist, two years if necessary. But why should we accept that suspects can be detained for six weeks before there is even enough evidence to charge?

    Question: in your paedophile example - presumably there must be some evidence against the suspect, else there would be no right to seize the computers, and no police bail. Isn't it more a question of working up the case rather than deciding whether there is enough evidence to charge? Whether to charge on 2 counts of indecent image or on 79 counts, etc., and the relative offensiveness?

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    Cool Re: 1,008 hours

    When I saw this thread I thought it was about the '24' box set

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    Re: 1,008 hours

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    OK, thanks for the clarifications UP. (I'd forgotten about the separate rules re. suspect's right to representation, etc.)

    It seems that your post is not in unequivocal support of 42 days, so here's some further discussion.

    Such examination of computer hard drives is, clearly, something which may be necessary in terrorist cases. But the examination itself doesn't take six to eight months, does it? Isn't that the total time it takes the independent companies to process the request from start to finish? If so, this should not, in my view, be a reason for knocking a gaping breach in the wall of rights that has been built up over centuries. If that's the problem, then the solution is to reduce the delay in evidence gathering, rather than give up and incarcerate the suspect. What if the processing time were to go up to 12 months, or more?

    I keep thinking I'm not putting my point across with sufficient clarity. By all means take a year to work up the evidence and the case against a terrorist, two years if necessary. But why should we accept that suspects can be detained for six weeks before there is even enough evidence to charge?

    Question: in your paedophile example - presumably there must be some evidence against the suspect, else there would be no right to seize the computers, and no police bail. Isn't it more a question of working up the case rather than deciding whether there is enough evidence to charge? Whether to charge on 2 counts of indecent image or on 79 counts, etc., and the relative offensiveness?
    The local paedophile looking at indecent images rarely uses encryption to cover his tracks.

    There is a difference between suspicion and evidence. Whatever lead police to a paedophile suspect, ie: internet provider, credit card company, FBI, other agency, member of family, victim it is not PC Plod who can recover that evidence from a PC(excuse the ...pun!) ... to get that evidence Plod seizes everything suspected as a result of suspicion and sends it off to be examined.

    Then the suspect on advice of solicitor says nothing in interview until actual evidence provided as disclosure when evidence is retrieved from computer.

    Re terrorism suspects.....how long?

    Encryption... covered tracks ... potential death and mutilation of innocent people... where do you start looking..

    The bits of evidence are like a partial jigsaw many pieces missing only half a dozen bits available on day 2, 10 on day 3... if the picture is 1000 pieces large how and when do you have sufficient pieces available to charge with realistic chance of successful prosecution???

    I do not claim to know the answers and I am closer than most to the heart of the problem.

    Who'd want to be a politician??

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    Re: 1,008 hours

    Quote Originally Posted by under par View Post
    Understanding that it takes the police 6-8 months to obtain computer evidence to prosecute paedophiles re indecent images of children. ( I must point out that evidence is gathered while the suspected paedophile is out on police bail). This is because the police have to send the hard drives to specialist companies who are capable of recovering evidence from hard drives.
    Sounds good, shame it's utter nonsense. I'm capable of recovering picture evidence from a Hard Drive in a matter of seconds, as is everyone else on the forum. You look in the folders, or perhaps use the operating systems search. If the files are hidden by such nefarious techniques as removing the file extension from the end, then you search the first 16 bytes for the identifier. If you want to make sure that all deleted files are recovered too, you simply use an undelete program and scan with that.

    The only reason any specialist company need be involved is if the Hard Drive is physically damaged and normal methods of recovery wont work because of it. How often is that true in cases of child pornography that go to court?

    You realise the reality is that your "specialist company" is handling all computer forensic cases and have a backlog to get through - its inefficiency at work here, nothing else. And 6-8 months per case is particularly inefficient.

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    Re: 1,008 hours

    Quote Originally Posted by Dreadful Scathe View Post

    You realise the reality is that your "specialist company" is handling all computer forensic cases and have a backlog to get through - its inefficiency at work here, nothing else. And 6-8 months per case is particularly inefficient.
    I cannot disagree with your assumption I only present the fact as I know them to be.

    Maybe I am pointing you in the direction of a "niche market".. I claim my 5% now
    Last edited by under par; 12th-June-2008 at 10:35 PM.

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    Re: 1,008 hours

    Quote Originally Posted by Dreadful Scathe View Post
    Sounds good, shame it's utter nonsense. I'm capable of recovering picture evidence from a Hard Drive in a matter of seconds, as is everyone else on the forum. You look in the folders, or perhaps use the operating systems search. If the files are hidden by such nefarious techniques as removing the file extension from the end, then you search the first 16 bytes for the identifier. If you want to make sure that all deleted files are recovered too, you simply use an undelete program and scan with that.

    The only reason any specialist company need be involved is if the Hard Drive is physically damaged and normal methods of recovery wont work because of it. How often is that true in cases of child pornography that go to court?

    You realise the reality is that your "specialist company" is handling all computer forensic cases and have a backlog to get through - its inefficiency at work here, nothing else. And 6-8 months per case is particularly inefficient.
    Well, hold up thar' Musky.

    What about disk cleaning - you know, what do they call it - can't think of the term, where the files are repeatedly overwritten with nonsense bits? Isn't that going to cause problems?

    Second, 6 to 8 months may be a consequence of backlog lack of resources rather than inefficiency. As I said, not a good reason to accept 42 day detention without charge. The company could simply take on more staff; however, the company will fear a sudden drop in work to pay for the extra staff. The real culprit is that this testing should be done in-house, the police should have their own IT forensics labs with top men and adequate resources. But then it's got to be paid for - cheaper to keep people in detention for longer.

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    Re: 1,008 hours

    On a related note:

    seems the US Supreme Court is continuing to regrow a spine and a set of balls after they disappeared about the time of the fuss over the voting in Florida in 1999.

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    Re: 1,008 hours

    Quote Originally Posted by under par View Post
    Re terrorism suspects.....how long?

    Encryption...
    As far as encryption goes, either you're going to crack it well within 30 days (because they've used something rubbish, or used an easily guessable password), or you're only going to crack it in 42 days by a miracle.

    To give you an idea, there's an IT extortion scheme going the rounds at the minute; a virus that encrypts peoples files using a version of RSA, then tells them to hand over $$$ if they want the file decrypted. It's estimated it would take around 15 million modern computers, running for about a year, to crack the encryption.

    Note that if you're not writing a virus that has to encrypt millions of bytes at an acceptable speed without the user noticing, there are much stronger encryption schemes available.

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    Re: 1,008 hours

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    What about disk cleaning - you know, what do they call it - can't think of the term, where the files are repeatedly overwritten with nonsense bits? Isn't that going to cause problems?
    Yes it would - but is this likely to be a problem in the vast majority of cases? Under par had already admitted that your normal paedophile does not even use encryption, he is hardly likely to use military grade erase (overwriting individual tacks 7 times or more) and if he did there would not be enough evidence recovered - the evidence will come from full images or video files that still fully exist on the media in question.


    Second, 6 to 8 months may be a consequence of backlog lack of resources rather than inefficiency.
    I actually assumed the backlog and considered it part of the inefficiency. Would you accept this inefficiency if it was 6-8 months for the police to turn up when you reported a robbery ?

    But anyway, I would say the majority of cases are computers recovered based on information from, as under par says; "internet provider, credit card company, FBI, other agency, member of family, victim" and that attempts at erasing or destroying the data would account for a tiny amount of cases (selecting "delete" in the operating system is not erasing). So your average turn around for enough evidence to convict should be, considering all the paperwork etc. about 7 days max. Time for enough evidence to charge? generally an hour or so if you can cover the work.

    The real culprit is that this testing should be done in-house, the police should have their own IT forensics labs with top men and adequate resources. But then it's got to be paid for - cheaper to keep people in detention for longer.
    Yes, it should be done in-house if possible - or at a government owned centre like DNA is*. When it comes to detaining people the cost should not enter into it - they should be locked up purely because its in the publics interest to do so.



    *although saying that, I worked there briefly a few years ago and when, inevitably I was discussing the merits of the CSI TV programme, I was disappointed at the real length of time it takes to turnaround DNA evidence - but that was weeks rather than months and DNA is slightly more complicated that bits written onto some magnetic media

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    Re: 1,008 hours

    Quote Originally Posted by David Franklin View Post
    (because they've used something rubbish, or used an easily guessable password)
    I use rot26 on all my text as a matter of course. Stewart38, I believe, uses a variable rot1 through to 26 algorithm.

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    Re: 1,008 hours

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    What about disk cleaning - you know, what do they call it - can't think of the term, where the files are repeatedly overwritten with nonsense bits? Isn't that going to cause problems?
    The general consensus seems to be that it is going to cause unsolvable problems (so again, 42 days isn't going to help).

    The "data can be recovered after multiple overwrites" meme seems to date from a 12 year old paper by Peter Gutmann; all he really did was show that it might be possible, and even then he was largely looking at older drives (where each 'bit' of data was 1000s of times larger, and therefore easier to recover). In an addendum to the original paper he writes:

    with the ever-increasing data density on disk platters and a corresponding reduction in feature size and use of exotic techniques to record data on the medium, it's unlikely that anything can be recovered from any recent drive except perhaps a single level via basic error-cancelling techniques. In particular the drives in use at the time that this paper was originally written have mostly fallen out of use, so the methods that applied specifically to the older, lower-density technology don't apply any more. Conversely, with modern high-density drives, even if you've got 10KB of sensitive data on a drive and can't erase it with 100% certainty, the chances of an adversary being able to find the erased traces of that 10KB in 80GB of other erased traces are close to zero.
    See also this discussion with a data recovery expert:

    I asked Jim Reinert, senior director of software and services for Ontrack Data Recovery whether any of this was possible. His answer was a blunt "No". It is possible to read traces of previously written or overwritten bits, but reconstructing any usable data from them was a horse of a different color.

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    Re: 1,008 hours

    Quote Originally Posted by Brian Doolan View Post
    I agree with everything you say on this matter. Having been through police/court criminal proceedings in the past my fear is "Function Creep", I know from first hand experience how the police will corrupt and abuse laws to suit their own purpose.
    I remember all too well Walter Woolfgang being ejected from a NuLabour Party Conference for heckling Jack Straw and the police using Anti-Terrorism legislation to prevent him from re-entering the conference.
    The Nothing to Hide - Nothing to Fear brigade doesn't understand that we all will have reason to fear a Police State.

    I have to agree with your concerns, Brian and Barry. It's yet another erosion of the rights of the citizen.

    Individually such steps may seem to some to be relatively unimportant, but collectively they do significantly increase the potential for a future police state:
    Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, Civil Contingencies Act 2004, Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005, Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006, Identity Cards Act 2006, ContactPoint, automatic number plate recognition enabled vehicle tracking, CCTV, telecoms & internet data retention legislation, the misuse of terrorism legislation, the weakening of the checks on the power of the prime minister ....

    Now where did I put my copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four?

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    Re: 1,008 hours

    Quote Originally Posted by David Franklin View Post
    The general consensus seems to be that it is going to cause unsolvable problems (so again, 42 days isn't going to help).

    The "data can be recovered after multiple overwrites" meme seems to date from a 12 year old paper by Peter Gutmann; all he really did was show that it might be possible, and even then he was largely looking at older drives (where each 'bit' of data was 1000s of times larger, and therefore easier to recover). In an addendum to the original paper he writes:



    See also this discussion with a data recovery expert:
    That's interesting. I had read about drive reconstruction with electron microscopes, and I found myself wondering about a logical problem. If the data has been overwritten 7 times, and the microscope is looking at an area of one platter - how is the operator to tell whether the alignment of a particular magnetic nano-particle, how can it tell whether it is due to the original file, the first re-write or second or so on, or some other file written at some other time? The only way of being able to make sense of one 'bit' would be context, but then the problems are multiplied by the same problem with the next bit, and the next bit - and with a 16 bit byte, you've got an exponentially difficult task with just the first byte. And how can you tell, looking at that byte, whether it's the first byte in the file, or the middle.

    I was thinking that - were I to set off on a 'mission' from which I didn't expect to return but for which secrecy was important - I would set my computer up to run a "military grade erase" just as I left, so that it would be very difficult to reconstruct the files.

    Of course, if you are still using the computer that might be less easy. But running the erase every week on your email Inbox and Sentbox might be a good idea.

    How long do these programs take to run?

    Doh. Depends on the size of the disk, I guess.

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    Re: 1,008 hours

    Quote Originally Posted by RedFox View Post
    Individually such steps may seem to some to be relatively unimportant, but collectively they do significantly increase the potential for a future police state.
    Absolutely; the "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" brigade will claim its "all ok" right up until they are arrested We have already heard the stories of anti-terrorism laws used to lock up "anti-airport expansion" protestors, people who have darker skin and have any documents on terrorism at all, and to check that children are in the correct catchment area for their school. The simple fact is, if a law is there and it CAN be used to cover whatever the police come up with, it will be used.

    Now where did I put my copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four?
    The irony would be palpable if Nick Hancock got the job as state torturer

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    Re: 1,008 hours

    What has really amazed me over the lat 11 years is how right wing and authoratarian the Labour government has been.

    Introducing so many laws and bits of legislation that in days gone by, you would have expected to be the suggested policies of a Conservative party in power.

    Labour would have been the party bleeting on about excessive abuse of authority and interference in the life of the individual.. but now it appears to be the domain of the tories and David Davies!!!!

    Where is the Socialist Workers Party and all there demonstrations now???

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    Re: 1,008 hours

    Quote Originally Posted by under par View Post
    Re the main thrust of your thread the 42 day period it is the complexity of modern life which causes problems for the police in gathering evidence from CCTV, computers and mobile phones.
    See, that's the bit I don't get. Surely the fact that this information is available digitally, rather than on paper, should make it easier to retrieve, not more difficult?

    Quote Originally Posted by under par View Post
    Understanding that it takes the police 6-8 months to obtain computer evidence to prosecute paedophiles re indecent images of children. ( I must point out that evidence is gathered while the suspected paedophile is out on police bail). This is because the police have to send the hard drives to specialist companies who are capable of recovering evidence from hard drives. It costs and takes time and the time is further delayed as the experts prioritise "terrorist" work. It all takes time and it all costs money.
    That's amazing to hear- you learn something new every day.

    I can readily believe that there's such a delay - that's beaurocracy for you. But I don't think we should pass legislation, especially legislation which infringes civil liberties, to compensate for a system's inefficiencies. Surely the better (if less sexy) solution is to improve the system to remove those delays?

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    Re: 1,008 hours

    Quote Originally Posted by Barry Shnikov View Post
    The only way of being able to make sense of one 'bit' would be context, but then the problems are multiplied by the same problem with the next bit, and the next bit - and with a 16 bit byte, you've got an exponentially difficult task with just the first byte. And how can you tell, looking at that byte, whether it's the first byte in the file, or the middle.
    With video and images - you would have to put it into context yourself, and with no pointers, thats a very difficult task. But if you can identify the beginning of the file, your job is made easier. This is something anyone can test - simply get a small gif and jpeg picture and open them in wordpad (windows). Now erase the beginning, say 5% of the file and save it as something like newgif_beginning.gif. Open the originals again and erase 5% of the middle part and save, and then again and erase 5% of the end part and save. If you then open these files in a picture viewer you'll see that if the beginning is missing, there is no chance of any of the picture being displayed - thats where all the header information exists and without it the rest of the file is already out of context. If you open the files with the missing middle bit - the gif file will display all of the image up until that point and stop. The jpeg, which stores image data in a very different way, will display ALL of the image except the missing bit - so the bottom part of the image will usually be out of line. If the end bit is missing, the gif will not display at all (there is important structure info missing) and the jpeg will display all except for the bit that is missing. Its worth mentioning that All photographic images are in jpeg format.
    Video files are similar, each type of video file will be more or less salavagable - mpeg for example, as long as the header is there, is particularly salvagable.

    All this is academic of course, I would doubt there are any convictions made purely on files salvaged from partially deleted hard drives.


    I was thinking that - were I to set off on a 'mission' from which I didn't expect to return but for which secrecy was important - I would set my computer up to run a "military grade erase" just as I left, so that it would be very difficult to reconstruct the files.

    Of course, if you are still using the computer that might be less easy. But running the erase every week on your email Inbox and Sentbox might be a good idea.
    Thats two things - yes running an erase program would be a good idea; you delete incriminating evidence with a "secure erase" to make sure its GONE but to do that with your INBOX and SENTBOX may be futile, by definition, the incriminating evidence there has already passed through lots of other computers, computers you have no control over.

    How long do these programs take to run?
    For overwriting 7 times - quite a while, but as you suggest you can "secure erase" as you go rather than do the whole hard drive - and you have no reason to destroy mundane stuff, so why bother. (in fact erasing everything is bound to come up as "suspicious behaviour" by the prosecution)

    Doh. Depends on the size of the disk, I guess.
    Well no, it depends on how much you have to erase Interestingly British Military policy on magnetic media is that when it is due to be decommissioned or it breaks, it will be logically destroyed then physically destroyed - just to be sure

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