Technology

37713 readers

370 users here now

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

172

FBI Seizure of Mastodon Server is a Wakeup Call to Fediverse Users and Hosts to Protect their Users (www.eff.org)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

51 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How is a law enforcement agent staring at some workstations and computers to know what equipment was involved in the alleged crime they are raiding the facility for?

That would be a valid argument if they timely returned whatever they don't need, but they don't, so it isn't.

If the FBI was raiding a home for child abuse and pornography, there’s no way they have the access or expertise at the time of a raid to know the server in the corner is only for Mastodon, the box over there is just a Linux firewall, and that box over there is a porn server.

Maybe not, but if they're not completely incompetent, they'll have images of all of those devices within a day or two. They don't have any legitimate need to keep the seized equipment after that.

The cruelty is the point.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

We're talking about law enforcement agencies, not an IT department. Of course it's technically possible to image a machine quickly. However, there are all kinds of steps and rules for chain of custody, transporting evidence, cataloging it, storing, examining it, etc. and a finite number of personnel to perform the work. Revisiting the child pornography example I used, fingerprints and DNA evidence on equipment could be quite relevant to a case. There may even be a need to examine hard drive platters (old school spinning disk, not SSD obviously) to determine if there was data deleted in the past. It's rather simplistic to say it's a matter of just imaging and returning as quickly as possible. I agree the equipment being gone often presents a hardship for a defendant, but arguing that it's intentionally set up this way to inflict cruelty ignores the reality of investigations.