This might be of interest to some people

[Dace]

****ing fags

Personally i think it's wrong (ie tougher sentences on those they suspect of wrong doing but have no real proof).

They should just get better at catching them (ie retrieving the "lost" data or whatever).

I mean they dont go round sentencing people who have committed "manslaughter" to "murderer" length sentences cause they suspect but cant prove they actually did it deliberaltey.

Anyways discuss away.

[Dace]

Incase the link doesnt work for you:



Court battle on software that destroys cases against paedophiles
By Sean O’Neill



INTERNET paedophiles who use software to destroy evidence of child pornography on their computers could face tougher sentences following a test case being brought today.
Criminals’ use of software with names such as Evidence Eliminator and CyberScrub is causing concern among ministers and law enforcement agencies. Such programmes are sold as “privacy software” and marketed as a way of erasing material and avoiding detection.



The Appeal Court will decide today whether a 12-month jail term imposed on Timothy Pickup, 45, for possessing and distributing indecent images of children was unduly lenient.

Pickup, from Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, was arrested in 2003 during an investigation into an international internet paedophile ring called the Shadows Brotherhood. In interview, he admitted to being an administrator of a bulletin board used by members to distribute indecent images of children.

Computer equipment including three hard drives and 161 compact disks were seized from his home, but only a small amount of illegal material was recoverable. The material was of a nature that — under current sentencing guidelines, which will also be challenged in court — attracts comparatively light sentences.

But Pickup was found to have been using a software programme capable of erasing evidence. Investigators suspected that he had wiped a large amount of incriminating material from his computer hard drives. Lawyers told Bradford Crown Court in June that Pickup was a “cleaner” on the bulletin board, with the role of removing old files and other material from the site.

He was placed on the sex offenders register for ten years, but if the appeal to increase his jail term fails he will be freed next week having served just half his sentence. If the appeal succeeds, Pickup will stay in prison and other offenders who use software to destroy evidence of criminality could face lengthier sentences in future.

The website for Evidence Eliminator, the British-made market leader, boasts that it can “defeat . . . the forensic software used by the US Secret Service, Los Angeles Police Department and UK Metropolitan Police Scotland Yard”.

There are no plans to make privacy software programmes illegal as they also have legitimate business and personal uses, such as erasing confidential business information or bank account details when a computer is being sold. But law-enforcement agencies are alarmed at the use of the software not just by online pornographers but other internet criminals such as fraudsters.

Tony Dearsley, computer investigations manager with Vogon International, said that the marketing of some erasure programmes was “morally reprehensible”. He added: “There is a difference between the right to privacy and condoning breaking the law. In child pornography cases this kind of software is destructive of evidence.”

Robin Hood Software Ltd, the Nottinghamshire-based company that manufactures and markets Evidence Elminator, failed to respond to attempts by The Times to make contact.

[mist]

i must confess a preference for the traditional way of doing things, which included actually finding evidence

-mist

[G.K Zhukov]

There should be a Norwegian company who can handle it, even when its been erased. Just cant remember the name now.

[Dreadnought FTW]

and the love profusion......

[mist]

Originally Posted by G.K Zhukov

There should be a Norwegian company who can handle it, even when its been erased. Just cant remember the name now.

if it's actually erased, rather than just deleting the file info, you can't really get it back... it takes a while to remove all traces of something from a disk, but it is possible

-mist

[KraKto$is8]

Depends... you can still recover data from a drive after a low-level format. It's hard though.

[Ninja_spammer]

Krak, this software is designed to be much more thorough than a simple formating.....

Iirc its deletes the files.....overwrites the sectors with (pseudo)random gibberish...deletes the gibberish....overwrites...a dozen or so times plus a few other things that I dont know much about.

Which renders it nearly impossible to read the residual magnetic traces on the disk surface (I believe that is how they generally recover the data)

[Stew]

I use windows washer, and lots of 'bleach'.
It's not for paedophile uses though.

[JammyJim]

ive got a program that does that called 'eraser'

it deletes the info. then runs over it with random charachters and combinations. then deletes. then runs over it again. then deletes. and repeats about 5 times. then it runs over it with something that the NSA use and deletes a couple of times.


then it goes 'done'


i use it to remove things like bank details when im done storing them temporarily.
not child porn as most of you will no doubt jump to the conclusion of.

[JammyJim]

actually its 39 passes for the guttman method (google for it)
and then it does a 2 or 3 using a DoD method...

[Dante Hicks]

Originally Posted by JammyJim

i use it to remove things like bank details when im done storing them temporarily.

Is it just me who thinks that's a bit overkill for bank details?

[bl0ke]

it seems like another attack on privacy really. I don think that level of information should be available to anyone.
Giving the government this level of access to peoples private lives really compromises they’re right to privacy.