THIS is why Utah will probably not spend much money on additional dogs for this purpose. The ability to find a never-ending supply of haystacks won’t do a damn thing when you’re looking for a needle.
While URL might be genuinely useful for executing an existing warrant, a general search in pursuit of evidence to justify a warrant would be horrible. At this point most households could justifiably claim that they probably have memory cards in several locations but have no knowledge as to the precise number.
At first I thought the writer doesn’t understand technology, now I’m wondering if the writer doesn’t understand writing.
"URL has the ability to find evidence hidden on basically any electronic memory device,”
So he can tell the difference between a thumb drive without hidden porn, and a thumbdrive with hidden porn?
Did they train him to find hidden folders and look in folders with misleading names?
And what is the word “basically” doing in there?
Maybe they trained the dog to be able to sniff for certain media headers in the bytes of the device, and then parse the file(s) depending on the format(s). It can then detect certain key words, written in text, spoken aloud, and depicted in a picture, or identify key images that fall into the NSFW category. The dogs are then trained in identifying which of these would fall under free speech vs. which is unprotected speech via a weekend canine legal course. It can then alert the police to illegal content.
And don’t even try to use DRM to hide it. If you have DRMed content on a thumb drive, you’re already a criminal.
This is one of those news stories where you open it up, figuring the headline is a bit sensationalized and it won’t actually be that dumb, and then it turns out to be even dumber than it sounds.
oh wait, that isn’t the same thing at all. um, @frauenfelder you do know those things can ALSO be used as non porn devices, right? They have secondary uses for other types of data.
Well unless your porn is pretty messed up, neither porn nor electronic devices are illegal, so I kinda question the legality and moral implications of a dog with such training.
Sure that can happen. But I think the more likely scenario is that they are going to have the dog sniff around a house for hidden hard drives. Much like the story is proposing.
Saw a neighbor get arrested one day, walked him and his PC tower(cords hanging out everywhere lol!) out of the house and right into a cop car. My first thought was how easy it would be to hide a thumbdrive.
I don’t get why everyone keeps jumping to search justification. You can’t search someone because a dog thinks they may have a usb drive on them. They’ve already got that covered with drug sniffing dogs anyway.
i think people are leery based on the past misuse of almost everything police state and the dark trends that search and seizure are taking in the states.
Given the increasing expansion of 4th amendment exceptions, you probably can, though you might need to set it up. For instance a cop could ask someone if they’re carrying a USB drive, and if they say no but the dog alerts then that person is suspicious. And suspicious people can be searched - for the officer’s “safety” looking for “weapons,” if need be.
The difference in size of a list of things that cops shouldn’t be able to do and a list of things that actually aren’t able to do is huge. Cops shouldn’t be able to just seize cash whenever they find it and say you’ll have to hire a lawyer forore money Thant it’s worth to sue us if you want it back, but they do. Even taking amounts as small as $20. And they shouldn’t be able to simply strip your money out of a prepaid debit card at a traffic stop, but they’re teaming up with the company to allow them to do just that as asset forfeiture.
Their next dog might be named Forfeit, and be able to search for cash, valuables and prepaid debit cards. And then a dog called Resisting Arrest, who attacks people who are “resisting arrest.”
It seems rather far fetched in the “let’s speculate on all the bad things that could go wrong” vein. I’m not saying there aren’t numerous examples of police abusing power. Thinking that this dog is going to be used to conduct random searches is a stretch.
Dunno, but given that this is Utah, the dog can probably also sniff out caffeine and gay people - both of which, like computer memory devices, have perfectly legal uses but can also be used to commit crimes, so,like, it is totally justified to have a dog that can sniff them out, just in case…
Actually, the more surprising thing about that sentence is that the writer apparently believes the dog is able to find the hidden evidence on the devices.
I’m picturing the dog sitting behind the tech at the computer, saying “Listen, just boot from an external drive, fire up ntfsundelete, scan the hard drive and… look, just let me do it.”
They have secondary uses for other types of data.
