Canada vs US: Race for the stupidest interpretation for a serious crime

electricitylikesme

It's not an electron microscope as far as I know, it's a magnetic force microscopy which is a scanning probe technique and very different. I'm not sure it would be a very good idea to hit a magnetic platter with a concentrated beam of electrons, though conversely I can imagine it would visualize the magnetic domains to an extent.

But SPM can give you atomic resolution quite easily - of course, magnetic force can't since you can't make a point magnet. EDIT: Apparently it's completely infeasible for a disk where you don't know what you're looking for - 89 years to possibly image a 1TB drive and you won't find overwritten data.

EDIT: Yeah there is an SEM technique but I've no idea what it's limitations would be.

EDIT 2: The punchline seems to be that wiping a disk is more effective then shattering the platter.

Linden

electricitylikesme wrote: »

EDIT 2: The punchline seems to be that wiping a disk is more effective then shattering the platter.

Of course, if you're feeling paranoid, there's always the possibility of a malicious drive.

Incidentally, this is from Peter Gutmann, the author of one of the more frequently-used methods for securely deleting data (by which I mean used by the paranoid. I'd guess also a lot of businesses, for much the reason outlined here).

In the time since this paper was published, some people have treated the 35-pass overwrite technique described in it more as a kind of voodoo incantation to banish evil spirits than the result of a technical analysis of drive encoding techniques. As a result, they advocate applying the voodoo to PRML and EPRML drives even though it will have no more effect than a simple scrubbing with random data. In fact performing the full 35-pass overwrite is pointless for any drive since it targets a blend of scenarios involving all types of (normally-used) encoding technology, which covers everything back to 30+-year-old MFM methods (if you don't understand that statement, re-read the paper). If you're using a drive which uses encoding technology X, you only need to perform the passes specific to X, and you never need to perform all 35 passes. For any modern PRML/EPRML drive, a few passes of random scrubbing is the best you can do. As the paper says, "A good scrubbing with random data will do about as well as can be expected". This was true in 1996, and is still true now.

PantsB

shryke wrote: »

The Mike's Hard Lemonade incident should only have led to the father having his child taken away IF it was merely evidence of a larger pattern of abuse/neglect.

This is fucking obvious.

I wonder if everyone decrying the story realizes that this is exactly what happened. He was caught giving his young child alchohol, the kid was examined medically and held for two days. After a hearing two days later, the child was returned to the family. It was pretty reasonable IMO

zerg rush wrote: »

I wasn't aware of that. I assumed the front page was always SFW, and I've edited my post to something more innocuous (CNN).

My point was supposed to be that it's very easy to run afoul of laws through no fault of your own. I guess I did that too well. My bad.
Edit: That is not to say that I wasn't at fault, but that anybody clicking wouldn't be at fault. That link could be any hostile place on the net. I just didn't think it was so hostile. Again sorry.
Editx2: Checking rules seems to indicate nothing special about that site, but I'll err on the side of caution anyhow.

The federal child porn statute requires knowingly downloading the illegal material. Its one of the things that makes the unsubstantiated story in the OP questionable. There are a number of examples of child porn cases being dismissed because they found the material was downloaded by malware or virus. The idea that the FBI is tracking down every example of child porn found on LimeWire and going straight to a home search based on a single example of mislabeled child porn strains credulity. I've never downloaded child porn in my 15 years of internet usage that ranges from IRC/Usenet to Napster to Bittorrent but supposedly its not that uncommon. If we assume that is true, the FBI doesn't have the manpower to go house to house on single cases