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In 2009, a National Academy of Sciences committee embarked on a long-overdue quest to study typical forensics analyses with an appropriate level of scientific scrutiny--and the results were deeply chilling. Aside from DNA analysis, not a single forensic practice held up to rigorous inspection.
Far from an infallible science, forensics is a decades-long experiment in which undertrained lab workers jettison the scientific method in favor of speedy results that fit prosecutors' hunches. No one knows exactly how many people have been wrongly imprisoned--or executed--due to flawed forensics. But the number, most experts agree, is horrifyingly high. A complete overhaul of our evidence analysis is desperately needed.
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Forensic "Science" is Anything But
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You will live a long, healthy, happy life and make bags of money.
(Score: 1) by linuxrocks123 on Saturday June 14 2014, @07:56AM
I hate it when posts like this are by AC. I'm not blaming you particularly, it's just really hard to know what to believe with posts like this. A competent examiner wouldn't have dismissed all that. An incompetent one I wouldn't expect to have even noticed. So I guess we're dealing with a malicious one? I don't know what to think.
Why didn't you find a buddy who changed his buddy icon after the drive was seized? That would have proven tampering if the new buddy icon was on the drive.
Of course, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out the solution here, as elsewhere, is full disk encryption. Only wholesale reformatting and planting of evidence could get around that. Of course, wholesale reformatting and planting of evidence could get around that, so I don't know. There's supposed to be a chain of custody, and everything I've heard before is the drive is imaged before being examined, to prevent tampering. It's difficult to know what to think when anonymous people on the Internet challenge what I've heard from other sources.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 14 2014, @01:53PM
I'm a sex offender and the last thing I want to do is perma-post "This Guy's Full Name is a felony sex offender!" all over the Internet, especially since I will eventually be eligible for removal from this useless paranoia-fueling government shit list.
Regarding the buddy icon thing, it doesn't matter; AOL IM back in the early 2000s would only download a buddy icon from a buddy if there was a "conversation," as in someone sends one or more messages, the other buddy sends one or more messages, and the same someone sends yet another message. That triggers the "buddy icon download from the buddy" process *even if the buddy icon was already cached.* The fact that it happened about five months after the hard drive was taken away indicates someone booted my drive, used my saved password to get on my account, and talked to that particular buddy and said buddy talked back.
The buddy's word isn't needed to prove this because that's just how the software does it. It ALWAYS downloads the icon. That's all the evidence one needs to challenge the forensics. There were a whole lot of other supremely fucked up things, one of which was the SBI agent flipping through the alleged child porn in front of me in a room in a big bound book they had made for the case...and I didn't see a single "child porn" image go by my eyes.
I've learned a lot in the 14 or so years since all this and when I found out about the Kelly Hoose case I realized that a lot of kiddie porn possession cases could easily be bullshit. Kelly Hoose was charged with kiddie porn possession by the Feds for having company-watermarked pictures of "Melissa Ashley" from ALS Scan on his machine. ALS Scan had 18 USC 2257 records for her. She was something like 22 years old when she was photographed. It took him four years and having the actress flown in to testify herself to get the case dismissed. The same thing has happened with other young-looking porn stars such as "Little Lupe." Legal, watermarked, 2257-compliant images can be used to throw you in prison with a federal felony.
I took a "sweet plea" and later learned that I made the best decision where there were no good decisions. Fuck me, right?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 14 2014, @02:19PM
As for the forensic examiner thing, an episode of Penn & Teller: Bullshit! covered the tainting of examiners by prosecutors (and the whole episode is really worth watching): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmW3HzAyEB0 [youtube.com]