Alternative Browsers Impede Investigations 720
rbochan writes "Allegations in an article over at CNET propose that alternate browsers such as Firefox and Opera impede law enforcement and investigation efforts because they "use different structures, files and naming conventions for the data that investigators are after", which can "cause trouble for examiners.""
Quick People! (Score:2, Funny)
While the summary sounds like a "problem", the article clearly indicated that someone has already figured how to deal with these alternative browsers and is sharing with the law enforcement agents.
They have it backwards (Score:1, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
If you use Firefox... (Score:4, Funny)
In other news... secret hideouts (Score:5, Funny)
TOR (Score:4, Funny)
Profit! (Score:3, Funny)
Help me out, /.!!!
1. Submit patent.
2. ???
3. Profit!
This explains everything! (Score:3, Funny)
I laughed (Score:5, Funny)
Now I weep for them.
Re:Quick People! (Score:3, Funny)
I can see it now:
"When you use Firefox, you are supporting terrorism!"
It's the kind of funny that makes you want to laugh and cry simultaneously.
-- n
Wait a second! (Score:4, Funny)
Totally hose 'em up... (Score:5, Funny)
Guilt by association... (Score:3, Funny)
I say, if these "citizens" don't want to be "spied" on, they are SUSPICIOUS! SEND THEM TO GUANTANAMO!
Meanwhile, in Soviet Russa...
Re:In other news... secret hideouts (Score:1, Funny)
In other news - a home was found today without a second story bedroom. Police could not find any sign of the perp, as they were in a downstairs basement instead.
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:3, Funny)
On the BeOS version of Firefox it's ALT+H, not CTRL+H!
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:5, Funny)
Good job. Now you've flagged yourself and the FBI is undoubtedly on its way. Giving away what is most likely a National Secrect! Please don't let them look here [mozilla.org].
About time. (Score:2, Funny)
This is a great idea! (Score:3, Funny)
What are people thinking, that businesses and products might exist to serve the needs of the people paying for and using them? What nonsense! Only law enforcement matters!
Seriously, even if this were a serious question, don't investigators get MORE useful data in the variations of people's setup? The more unique your suspect's setup, the easier it may be to track them.
And of course it's perfectly simple to find the Firefox cache -- can someone just drop them an email? They can print it out, tack it to the wall, and quit with the whinging.
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:1, Funny)
Of course it's hard to crack, who would ever think to use *backspace* to view a browser's history? These idi^H^H^HFEDS know what they're doing.
In other news.... (Score:5, Funny)
Police, baffled by the lack of a blue "e" can't figure out how they used the Internet.
"And there's no START button! How are we supposed to find anything?"
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:5, Funny)
"It's an outrage! Why do people insist on impeding our efforts to be an all-seeing eye?"
So what's your solution? (Score:5, Funny)
Cnet is MS Shill (Score:3, Funny)
Dramatization (Score:2, Funny)
Tech Support: Now, click on the icon that looks like a blue, lower-case E.
Investigator: Um.. I'm not finding anything, chief.
Tech Support: That's okay, take your time.
Investigator: No, really. There are no blue E's. Just something that looks like.. an exploding basketball? Or an orange fetus, maybe?
Tech Support: Wait, wait. No E?
Investigator: No E.
Tech Support: I'm sorry, sir, but you'll need to create a customer service ticket. In the meantime, try running Windows Update.
Investigator: Christ, we're dealing with a professional!
Re:New Firefox Ad: even the popo can't touch this (Score:5, Funny)
Goody for me (Score:2, Funny)
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:3, Funny)
Not that I do that. Er, it works.
Re:If you use Firefox... (Score:4, Funny)
The poor bastards in law enforcement are powerless against it, and I am evil, evil, evil for not living my life with an eye toward making it pathetically easy for any traffic cop to fully investigate me for anything, as any good PATRIOT should.
Muuuuuuuhahahahaha!
KFG
And In Other News (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:3, Funny)
Hopefully she not attentative enough to read your /. postings...
In a related story ... (Score:5, Funny)
Said an officer who wished to remain anonymous: "We're not even sure there was a murder without some trace of lead at the scene. A bullet
priceless (Score:2, Funny)
This is, just by the way, not true. IE puts some hidden stuff in that Content.IE5 folder which seems to not exist on your hard drive (it's not hidden or operating system protected) but pops up if you type it into the address bar after your temporary files. OOOOOh, that's fucking straightforward.
So AAAnyway, let's "suppose" that this is all backwards and that somehow Firefox hides data. Think about that for a moment? What are they proposing? That everyone switch to IE so that it's easier for the FUCKING GOVERNMENT TO SEARCH THROUGH OUR SHIT? LOLOLOLOLROTFLMAO. Moreover, lets suppose that all reason and rationality has just jumped out of a 10 story building, if everyone does switch to IE to enable the government to better monitor us, are the terrorists and people with shit to hide going to do the same thing? NO MAN, HOLY FREAKING GOD, NO. THAT'S THE WHOLE FUCKING POINT OF BEING A THIEF AND A PIRATE AND A FUCKING TERRORIST.
Article summary: terrorists are uncooperative with authorities because they use a file structure which is non standard and harder to search.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I almost pissed my pants. Dude, the fucking government should be worried about how to recover files from hard disks that have been literally blown up in explosions to cover up data. Jesus christ. CNET is like, really dumb.
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:3, Funny)
Luckily it also popped-up everything I had open with a restart.
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:And In Other News (Score:1, Funny)
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:5, Funny)
Lt.Jones: "You you know Smith, I sometimes wonder if we just were competant with computers if we could well, you know, understand basic computer forensics instead of relying on software to do it for us?"
Sgt.Smith: "Shutup Jones, theres a way we do things here, it's the microsoft way, all other ways are abhorant and methods of the terrorists."
Lt.Jones: "Good call Smith!"
*sigh* It's only sad because it could be true. Police forces need to hire security professionals and train them to be computer forensics. Not hire police officers and rely on them to learn the ins and outs of computer security.
CS degrees? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe their forensic tools can extract the browser history from the file and the software isn't aware a bookmarks file doesn't have to be named "favorites".
At least I hope that's the issue.
Tip for Kiddie Porn addicts: Keep your vids in someplace besides the "My Videos" folder. The authorities will never be able to find them if they're "hidden" in some other folder.
Re:New Firefox Ad: even the popo can't touch this (Score:2, Funny)
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:3, Funny)
They'd give the computer back to its owner out of compassion for him being such a geek that he needed to look at pr0n all day in lieu of getting laid.
At least, that's what happened to me...
Re:New Firefox Ad: even the popo can't touch this (Score:5, Funny)
What about Lynx (Score:2, Funny)
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:5, Funny)
I found this out really quick after the SO moved in. Right after she went to check the website of her university which starts with a 'C' and the first link that pops into the autocomplete bar is Cumfiesta.
I just bought her a computer of her own.
No, it doesn't. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What about Lynx (Score:3, Funny)
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:3, Funny)
The Spooks are confused as hell. In fact, the last time I was investigated, one of the Detectives said "Fuck this!", whipped out his own high powered magnet, and aced my computer.
Firefox (Score:2, Funny)
Forget about locking doors... (Score:3, Funny)
If you wear pants, that means that you've got something to hide.
Re:Mod Parent Up (Score:2, Funny)
cat history.dat | grep '=http://'
Hard work! Yes there is a lot of data other than strict URLs in there, and some of them span lines, so a simple grep isn't perfect, but it's not hard to get a basic list, and like other people have said, Firefox is open source it would be easy to write a program to pull all of this data.
Re:What about Lynx (Score:2, Funny)
Standardizing Bank Robbery (Score:4, Funny)
Allegations in an article over at Police Magazine propose that alternate vehicles such as motorcycles and buses impede bank robbery law enforcement and investigation efforts because they "use different shapes, different numbers of seats, and different logos for the manufacturers that investigators are after", which can "cause trouble for get-away car examiners".
Obviously, only Dodge Chargers, like the "General Lee" should be allowed to criminals, to make them easier to catch.
Re:New Firefox Ad: even the popo can't touch this (Score:1, Funny)
Re:What about Lynx (Score:1, Funny)
Re:New Firefox Ad: even the popo can't touch this (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Any aspiring 8th grade journalists out there? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:3, Funny)
Not so sure about the kiddie porn side of things, but when I used to do Mac repairs, I used to make a point of leaving the 'hidden' directory of porn visible on the desktop after a data recovery. Normally hidden by making the directory 'invisible' in the finder, easily located by simply looking at folder sizes and drilling down until you reach a folder which contains both 5Gb of data but only 500Mb visible data. :)
Bwahaha. If your a sex offender you HAVE to use M$ (Score:5, Funny)
Male voiceover
"Microsoft, used by 100% of all sex offenders. Its not only the law, it their punishment."
Oh! I just fell off my chair.
Re:Ummm - it's not offline (Score:1, Funny)
Re:It's *not* rocket science, guys... (Score:5, Funny)
Now THIS is funny - from the File::Monk man page:
THE UGLY TRUTH LAID BARE ^
Extracted from mork.pl
In Netscape Navigator 1.0 through 4.0, the history.db file was just a Berkeley DBM file. You could trivially bind to it from Perl, and pull out the URLs and last-access time. In Mozilla, this has been replaced with a "Mork" database for which no tools exist.
Let me make it clear that McCusker is a complete barking lunatic. This is just about the stupidest file format I've ever seen.
http://www.mozilla.org/mailnews/arch/mork/primer.
http://jwz.livejournal.com/312657.html [livejournal.com]
http://www.jwz.org/doc/mailsum.html [jwz.org]
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=24143
In brief, let's count its sins:
* Two different numerical namespaces that overlap.
* It can't decide what kind of character-quoting syntax to use: Backslash? Hex encoding with dollar-sign?
* C++ line comments are allowed sometimes, but sometimes
* It goes to all this serious compression effort (two different string-interning hash tables) and then writes out Unicode strings without using UTF-8: writes out the unpacked wchar_t characters!
* Worse, it hex-encodes each wchar_t with a 3-byte encoding, meaning the file size will be 3x or 6x (depending on whether whchar_t is 2 bytes or 4 bytes.)
* It masquerades as a "textual" file format when in fact it's just another binary-blob file, except that it represents all its magic numbers in ASCII. It's not human-readable, it's not hand-editable, so the only benefit there is to the fact that it uses short lines and doesn't use binary characters is that it makes the file bigger. Oh wait, my mistake, that isn't actually a benefit at all.
Pure comedy.