What is Digg?151 Comments
- inactive, on 12/07/2007, -2/+86Nothing they do is legal - hijacking their domain, threatening their users without evidence, wiping server info, etc. Seems kind of hypocritical to me - charging a site for illegal activities through illegal practices in the process of doing so.
- Lixie, on 12/07/2007, -3/+64They just didn't wipe the data, first they copied every data bit to their own hardware. Now the police can basically claim anything they want was on the server, or place anything incriminating in the data, and Ellis won't be able to refute it with evidence from his own server.
- Dmitrik, on 12/07/2007, -5/+61Can someone with legal background tell if what they did to servers is legal?
Seriously, if not, I don't see what's keeping OiNK from suing the police. - oldhick, on 12/07/2007, -0/+46One, its difficult to sue the police. Second, the police don't have to return property in the condition it was in. For instance, if your car gets searched and they rip the seats out, they don't have to put the seats back in for you or fix the dash or door panels. It really sucks. I would assume a computer hard drive would be the same. But on a better note, if the police destroyed evidence for you, it means a criminal case is highly unlikely!
- vernsan, on 12/07/2007, -1/+33Lets hope they only quick formatted it.
- lordsandwich, on 12/07/2007, -0/+32And here I was hoping my 98% complete torrent was going to finish. :-(
- JasonCox, on 12/07/2007, -0/+32Wait, how can they wipe the servers? That's willful destruction of property, tampering with evidence, etc. That's *illegal*.
- homesickalien, on 12/07/2007, -11/+40These pigs are like retarded schoolyard bullies that steal other kids toys then break'em before returning them.
The RIAA/MPAA/IFPI are nothing but a bunch of greedy, mouthbreathing old men with shriveled dicks who are so technologically inept they couldn't operate a ***** bank machine.
That run-on sentence just gave me an appetite...think I'll have me some waffles.
Long live OiNK! - dunk71, on 12/07/2007, -1/+29But by the same token they can't prove data wasn't added after the image was made, or even before for that matter, and any good defense lawyer will be able to exploit that in the defense's favor. By wiping the server, the police have kinda shot themselves in the foot.
- Rev0lver, on 12/07/2007, -0/+21We miss you, OiNK.
- bbqsalad, on 12/07/2007, -1/+17Since OiNK's closing I have been downloading more music than ever! I love the new sites that opened, I just got about 60gb of new albums last week and have been uploading my lil' butt off!
- postingbh, on 12/07/2007, -7/+23They were probably wiped by the hard drive fairy. I was skeptical at first, but Karl Rove told me he's real so it must be true.
- olegk, on 12/07/2007, -3/+18I'm not a lawyer, but it's definitely illegal. It's called "Spoliation of evidence" and "Adverse inference"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoliation_of_evidenc ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_inference
And probably also "Suppression of evidence", if they actually destroyed it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suppression_of_eviden ... - spyrochaete, on 12/07/2007, -0/+15I didn't even know trackers like OiNK existed until the antipiracy groups started bragging about its demise. Now everyone knows that there's communities of rabid fans of every genre of music trading super high quality versions of their favourite songs for free!
- magicaltrevor, on 12/07/2007, -2/+16I thought the same thing. It'd be great to see them go down for what they've done to the servers.
- aztuscani, on 12/07/2007, -0/+13The police have a forensic copy of the original evidence. The integrity of the forensic "image" is preserved based on an MD5 or SHA1 hash generated at the time the image was taken. If the police modified the evidence before making the image, then this could be spotted by the defense and argued to help their case. Otherwise, the hash value preserves the whole evidence in that a change in just 1 byte will change the entire hash of the image, thus causing spoliation.
- earthceltic, on 12/07/2007, -1/+12We all agree to that by default these days, no reason to scream it.
The mafiaa will continue to be a thorn in our side until they financially collapse or are split up (our government is obviously not doing anything about it). And yes, we realize the only reason you posted that is not to give us relevant information pertaining to the article but to monger comment points :P - spyrochaete, on 12/07/2007, -2/+12What if OiNK wants to appeal? The police have destroyed the evidence! Can't they get off scot free now? Or is it too late to appeal?
- missingnoh4x, on 12/07/2007, -9/+18Anyone else getting sick and tired of unrelated thumbnails next to news stories? I'd rather just have them for when the submission is actually a picture or video so there's a point to having a thumbnail.
- turpenine, on 12/07/2007, -1/+10TURTLES (i like them)
- renesisx, on 12/07/2007, -0/+9As someone who has been raided, interviewed and bailed before, I know that the Police don't usually care too much about smashing or stealing your property. Sure, you can try taking them to court for it, but it requires a lot of time and money.
In this case, I would say they've created a problematic situation. The hard bit is that this was a multi-country operation. Alan is in England, the servers were in the Netherlands. Which police force was in charge of imaging the drives? Also, the drives were only rented by Alan and actually belonged to the ISP.
I've never heard of anyone having their drives returned. Often the Police will return items they have finished with as the investigation proceeds. For instance, they returned my mobile (cell) phone to me 2 months into an investigation.
The Police typically image the drives using a piece of software called Encase which is the industry standard for this type of operation. The idea is to not tamper with the original drives at all, as they could be required to be presented as evidence in court, and have had to be produced in previous cases.
This could definitely be a great opening for his solicitor or barister to follow up on in court. Although I suspect the hard drives and the hard drive images and only a small element of the evidence the Police will bring to court. There is enough external evidence to prove what Oink was about and who ran it, where the donations went, etc, etc.
They'll get him on something. Unfortunately, in high profile situations like this you are unlikely for the Police to give up easily and admit defeat. - JFetch, on 12/07/2007, -1/+9I don't know if it's legal, but they probably just allowed them to get out of the charges by deleting the evidence. Even if they made copies, the defense has to be allowed to see the evidence for themselves on the original servers.
- roastedbagel, on 12/07/2007, -0/+8So the long and the short of it is....If OiNKs ever came back online, my ratio is back to 0.0
- capiCrimm, on 12/07/2007, -5/+12Without Nazis the Germans would have been afraid to go outside too, right? (Don't count the Jews, they were illegal anyway. Everything Hitler did *was* Legal. IN that respect your logic makes him even better then Bush.) -- wait, sorry, I forgot the American system is perfect.
Order != Good - frostbyt, on 12/07/2007, -5/+12Oh noes! The server are wiped!
Someone call the Ron Paul! He will fix everything. - ObeseSnake, on 12/07/2007, -1/+8Backups?
- silveravnt, on 12/07/2007, -1/+8I know you are just trying to be cool but...
None of us likes the idea of being watched by the athorities. We all know that we are taking a risk if we break the law. We only have ourselves to blame if we get caught not some guy doing his job. - Nougat, on 12/07/2007, -2/+8That's not unrelated, nutbag.
- oldhick, on 12/07/2007, -0/+6Of course they should. I have never even been CHARGED with a crime and I've had my van ripped to shreds. They did not replace/fix a thing and simply left me on the side of the rode and drove off. I contacted 2 attorneys and was told I didn't have a complaint that would make it to court. The way things should be and the way things ARE are two different things!
- thatbox, on 12/07/2007, -0/+6What illegal data would be in the servers?
- tendonut, on 12/07/2007, -1/+7Did you so something borderline illegal or extremely suspicious that caused the police to give you a problem? I've never met anyone who hated the police that wasn't either from a really bad neighborhood or who was almost involved in something illegal. I have never in my life been bothered by the police. They are always very helpful when I need them.
- KyleGoetz, on 12/07/2007, -0/+6I've studied spoilation, and this is not spoilation. Adverse inference is merely the action a court takes when there has been spoilation. As the saying goes, omnia presumuntur contra spoliatorem ("presume all against the spoiler"). Wow, I'm proud of myself for being able to pull some legal latin out of my ass. One example of spoilation would be if someone at Wal-Mart has a heavy display fall on their head and tells the manager: "I'm going to sue Wal-Mart." Then Wal-Mart proceeds to destroy every copy of the original display across the US. In this case, the jury may make an ADVERSE INFERENCE that the display was as heavy as the plaintiff claims.
Spoilation is intentional destruction and, in this case, there would be a high burden to prove that they intentionally destroyed the evidence. I think that, because there is a copy, that's prima facie evidence of a good faith effort to preserve the evidence and thus it would be very difficult to prove BEYOND A SHADOW OF A DOUBT that the police intentionally destroyed evidence (since there is still a copy).
That being said, if this OiNK owner goes to court, he could probably suppress the evidence, since the original is required. A copy is permissible, but is not if there exists "(1) a genuine question is raised as to the authenticity of the original or (2) in the circumstances it would be unfair to admit the duplicate in lieu of the original." Fed. R. Evid. Sec. 1002-1003. - edicius, on 12/07/2007, -0/+5What if you're found completely innocent of all charges and wrongdoing, shouldn't the be responsible for fixing what they messed up if you weren't doing anything wrong? If that's not the way it is, then that's the way it should be.
- luchid, on 12/07/2007, -2/+7You are seriously retarded. There were no songs on the server. Do you even understand how BT works? This is a case of destroying evidence.
- mephistus, on 12/07/2007, -0/+5I'm not sure of the laws where the OiNK servers were located, but it seems that the actual servers themselves were the property of the ISP, not OiNK themselves. Please correct me if I'm wrong. As far as the data wipe goes, you actually can remove the data from the drives and still have it be forensically sound. Since it's possible to copy a drive bit by bit to another medium and store it there, they may not actually need the physical drive on which the data was originally stored on.
The explanation is a little more technical than "I haxx0rz teh intertubes with uTorrent" but for those who would like to know here's a very high level description. Probably when the servers were seized from the ISP, the police came in and yanked the power cord out of the back of the servers. Why not just shut it down? Because if you yank the power cord, you get the hard drive in the exact state it was in when it was seized by the police. Shutting down the machine would change that state and corrupt the evidence. Of course you don't get whatever was in memory at the time, but in all likelihood there's enough data on the swap file and logs to give a fair reconstruction of what was probably there.
After the servers make their way to the police station or wherever they yank the hard drives out of the servers and make bit by bit images of the drives. Most organizations can use something called a write blocker that sits between the forensics computer and the evidence drive that physically prevents any write commands from being sent to the evidence drive. Once that's in place the forensics investigator uses their preferred method to make an image of the drive and create an HMAC, MD5, or other hash to ensure the integrity of the image. Once that's done, you have an exact copy of the suspect's drive for use as evidence against them. Any changes made to that image would result in a different hash value if computed again, barring hash collisions which are pretty impossible to perform without using a data set that is dramatically different from the original. Besides, the police probably don't need to plant evidence on the OiNK servers to take them to court, they probably had enough evidence against them to get them in a good amount of trouble without the cops making stuff up.
I'm not saying what OiNK did was morally wrong, just illegal in their jurisdiction. Hate the laws? Vote. - mOdQuArK, on 12/07/2007, -0/+5Hash is meaningless when you don't trust the motives or ethics of the people generating the hash.
- tsos2, on 12/07/2007, -0/+5Illegal? You bet. Can they be sued for damages? Yup...especially if there was important or valuable data on those servers.
- capiCrimm, on 12/07/2007, -1/+6only if they didn't make a copy. Forensics isn't supposed to alter the data on the hard drives at all, so they normally make a working copy to deal with. If they gave you back your the original without any data I suppose you might be able to argue that they tampered with the data. I doubt you would get the evidence thrown out on that account, though.
- forcedfx, on 12/07/2007, -0/+5Having a hash means nothing because it could simply be regenerated.
- WalesAlex, on 12/07/2007, -0/+4No it's Blackmail.
- tendonut, on 12/07/2007, -0/+4There is a running joke going on at my LAN parties that if the police were to raid my garage with 20 or so computers in there, we'd have some major legal issues. So I constructed a red box that resembles the "In Case of Fire, Break Glass", stuck a Kill Disk in it, and re-labeled it "In Case of Police Raid, Break Glass". This box now sits permenantly on the wall near the light switch.
I wonder if OiNK had anything like that set up. Maybe a script or something long those lines to cover their tracks. - Murdats, on 12/07/2007, -1/+5there is always reason to say it.
its like a priest complaining that noone needs to say amen anymore because its implied.
this is our amen (or ramen for the more enlightened of us) - tendonut, on 12/07/2007, -1/+5"And data seems likely to fall foul of that as it's not a physical object."
That doesn't seem to stop downloaded music being known as stolen music...it would be interesting if the police got away with it because of that exact reason. - PPCG4, on 12/07/2007, -0/+4Get it? See (C) you (U) auntie (NT)
- Nougat, on 12/07/2007, -1/+5It would seem to me that in order to have a valid case, they would need to retain the hard drives with the original data. You take a forensic snapshot of the data from the drives, then you manipulate that, which changes nothing on the original, so that the original is not damaged and can be used as evidence.
I would think. - cawpin, on 12/07/2007, -0/+4"Second, the police don't have to return property in the condition it was in."
Um, yes they do. - sspirit, on 12/07/2007, -0/+4pink pigs will fly
- KyleGoetz, on 12/07/2007, -0/+4I've not taken Evidence yet, but I have it next semester. However, if we're talking about US Federal Evidence, what I know is that the original recording is necessary to prove the content of a recording. A duplicate is admissible as evidence, but not if a "(1) a genuine question is raised as to the authenticity of the original or (2) in the circumstances it would be unfair to admit the duplicate in lieu of the original." Fed. R. Evid. Sec. 1002-1003.
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