Big Brother is Searching your Hard Drive

[MagnetoHydroDynamics]

I would like to see anyone make a program to search a harddrive that doesn't get disassembled and countered within a week.

I would also like to see anyone manually searching a harddrive...

 

[Altorin]

I would like to see anyone make a program to search a harddrive that doesn't get disassembled and countered within a week.

I would also like to see anyone manually searching a harddrive...

well

noone's stupid enough to manually search a hard drive.. but if there's something they want to find, it's not that difficult to ctrl-s some keywords and come up with something

 

[sirdanrhodes]

Now Obama, THAT is change. Keep this up, you are not getting in next term!

 

[Altorin]

Now Obama, THAT is change. Keep this up, you are not getting in next term!

you forget

the largest portion of the voting majority don't give a shit about what you want to hide on your computer.

the electoral college certainly doesn't care.

 

[MrGFunk]

I doubt that it'll go through. It really is a major breach of privacy and would leave the population feel violated.

I feel violated every month through tax.

Am I naive to think there's nothing of interest on my hard drive anyway? My computer is in a coma anyway at the moment. If they could get set it up again for me they could have a look around. Wait, don't open that...

 

[Sixties Spidey]

can you imagine how much it would suck if they found someone's porn collection?

 

[Xvito]

Something like that is already happening where I'm from.

Where are you from ?

Sweden, although they're not checking our Hard Drives, only everything we do on the internet...

 

[Chinchama]

I don't care, I have nothing to hide. All the government will learn from searching my HDD is that I have a lot of stuff related to video games.

Everyone has something to hide.

If you're smart you'll hide it in your head and not you're computer

Or on an external HDD. Never said they could search those. If they tried, slap a ***** up, it's like someone going through a diary, or as the one lady said, ' you're underwear drawer '


With the internet populated by who it is, *cough 4 Chan cough cough*, I feel pretty comfortable knowing that something would be organized against that bill from passing.

 

[Wicky_42]

I don't care, I have nothing to hide. All the government will learn from searching my HDD is that I have a lot of stuff related to video games.

Everyone has something to hide.

Anything you have on your HDD, they will most likely be able to see. Even stuff you thought wasn't there..

while it's true that "deleting" things off a Hard Drive doesn't immediately remove them, they only remain on the drive until they space they occupied is filled with something else, at which time they are gone forever, never to be recovered.

In fact, there are several applications that do just that.. Fill the space vacated by deleting files with meaningless jibberish. Likewise, powerful magnets can have a similar effect of destroying data irreparably (Although it's not 100% certain, as magnets are tricky things).

The people of whom any piracy bill would be attempting to target know this.

Actually it takes more than one over-write to reliably erase data - with equipment that I believe is available to British police it is possible to recover data that has been over-written perhaps about 7 times, and possibly more sensitive hardware can do even better than that (and that is just what I remember from a few years back). When the hard disk laser over-writes the sectors, it doesn't always hit exactly the same spot, and so it can become possible to reconstruct data from the edges of the sectors of the drive using more sensitive equipment. I think.

Of course, it's probably not that hard to find a program that would over-write each sector of the hard-drive as many times as you feel necessary, with all the different symbols possible, in order to make as little data retrievable as possible. Then again, if the government was given the power to examine your hard-drive at will you might not have enough time to wipe it, and wiping it might make you appear to be more guilty that you otherwise might have been.

It's a blatant infringement of privacy - if the info on your hard-drive is likely to pertain to a court case, then get a damn court order to have a look on it. I certainly dont want some cop confiscating my PC on some bull-shit charge, just to keep tabs on me. Not saying that there's much here I would want to hide, I just don't think it's any of their business.

 

[Datalord]

Wow, the obama administration is off to a terrible start, Fetal stem cells are inferior to adult stem cells, but he diverts government funds anyway, the economic spending bills were sh*t, and now he wants an extension on the Patriot act involving computers

 

[Frizzle]

While this news is extremely disturbing, and gives me more reason than I really need to move to a different country; does anyone listen to this and think "well, they could do that, OR they could be working on all of the REAL problems that face our society today. Like creating more jobs, helping to curb poverty, bettering our education system..."

If I lived in California, the next time this guys reelection came around, I would go on a rampage of advertising that said he wants to go through your "underwear dwawer" so he couldn't get reelected. People that bring stuff up like this need to be stopped.

 

[BardSeed]

http://www.i-am-bored.com/bored_link.cfm?link_id=39128

Well the Obama legislation is trying to push forward new laws that will give the government right's to search your HDD on any device with one, for no reason and with no evidence for them to need to. What strikes me is that this may be being pushed by the media companies wanting to crack down on pirated movies and games, still is this a breach in privacy? Or should we all be safe in the knowledge that we've got nothing to hide?

Just hope to hell that this doesn't work it's way to the UK...

We're getting there, our facebook and myspace conversations are being monitored by the government.

Don't forget out emails, phone calls and browsing history. They've just released some "anti-terrorist" posters that encourage us to spy on each other, too.

Spoiler: image

Wow, the obama administration is off to a terrible start, Fetal stem cells are inferior to adult stem cells, but he diverts government funds anyway, the economic spending bills were sh*t, and now he wants an extension on the Patriot act involving computers

I think you have that the wrong way around. Why would scientists bother looking for ways to change adults stem cells into embryonic, if they are less useful? Link. [http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19426073.800-stem-cells-from-adult-to-embryo.html]

 

[Madshaw]

if big brother must like porn

 

[Erana]

Won't happen. It's a breach of privacy.

Privacy + Patriot act (that you fuckers actually voted for) = No privacy.

Wait, when did we actually vote for this? Have I missed something?
Oh, yeah... I'm still a minor...

But really, they couldn't come to my house and start sifting through my physical files without a warrant, right?

The problem is that people think that they should treat the internet differently from tangiable reality, in terms of people's rights.

 

[luckshot]

this would run into the fourth amendment -protection from unreasonable searches-

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution

so unless they plan on trying to pass another amendment to undo one of the original 10...

 

[ChaoticLegion]

God bless living in the UK.... it's not exactly heaven, but atleast the law's not as fucked up as it is in America xD

 

[CIA]

Ugg, second source anyone? Really, I can't find any confirmation of this and I don't think I trust i-am-bored.com

 

[Zersy]

Something like that is already happening where I'm from.

Where are you from ?

Sweden, although they're not checking our Hard Drives, only everything we do on the internet...

That totally sucks and is a complete invasion of privacy

i can only think of 2 reasons why they would want to do that

1. Protection of public from dangerous individuals (which is has become more rare)
2. they are paranoid