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There must be a good reason

10:51 / 18.02.04

When the police parade out of somone's house having confiscated their computer (to analyse it for evidence of noncery), why is there always some chump taking the monitor?

What do they expect to find in there?
Part of me would love to think that this is emblematic of institutionalised e-tardedness, but I'm hoping someone can reassure me that there is a good reason.

10:57 / 18.02.04

Budget cuts? The police don't have monitors of their own? Or perhaps all the passwords are taped to the monitor!

11:08 / 18.02.04

The guy in the background is headin to find a manual that will help him discover how to turn the computer on...

Apparently e-tardidness is so widespread within the FBI that any Macs they impound have to be sent to the RCMP facilities in Canada to be examined due to a lack of domestic expertese...

11:25 / 18.02.04

Maybe those particular policemen are also Male Models. "You mean the files are in the computer? It's so...simple"

12:35 / 18.02.04

You're not even joking are you sleaze?

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

12:49 / 18.02.04

The third guy at the back is saying 'I'll just get the mouse...'

12:51 / 18.02.04

well, they need the monitor because that's where the desktop files are, right? right?

also curious: the one carrying the box requires latex gloves, but the one carrying the monitor is bare-handed. I think he's just going to take it home.

13:29 / 18.02.04

yeah, i was gonna say for fingerprinting, but then why doesn't the guy have gloves on?

Cheap. Easy. Cruel.

13:31 / 18.02.04

I have noticed this quite often. However, when my ex-roomate got into some trouble, they merely took the boxes and all of the electronic media in the house. They took the mice for the Macs, but not the PC. So we had monitors aplenty, with nothing to hook 'em to.

13:41 / 18.02.04

This from the Internet section of last weekend's Sunday Times...

And no need for us to come up with comedy caption for this one. It says:

Dawn raid: seizing a suspected paedophile's computer triggers a time-consuming investigation

Hmmmm.

14:23 / 18.02.04

Smoothly - yep the story appeaer on the mac user website
Canadian Mounties rescue FBI from Apple Mac ignorance
[MacUser] 10:10
If you're a bad guy, use a Mac. At least that's the case if you live in America.

Dave Thomas, former chief of computer intrusion investigations at FBI headquarters and current Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the St. Louis Division of the FBI, revealed in an interview with Security Focus' Scott Granneman that US law enforcement agencies aren't geared up to dealing with Macs.

'Basically, police and government agencies know what to do with seized Windows machines,' writes Granneman. 'They can recover whatever information they want, with tools that they've used countless times. The same holds true, but to a lesser degree, for Unix-based machines. But Macs evidently stymie most law enforcement personnel. They just don't know how to recover data on them.

'So what do they do?,' you might ask, and indeed Granneman does. 'By and large, law enforcement personnel in American end up sending impounded Macs needing data recovery to the acknowledged North American Mac experts: the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Evidently the Mounties have built up a knowledge and technique for Mac forensics that is second to none.'

However some members of the FBI are clued up: 'many of the computer security folks back at FBI HQ use Macs running OS X, since those machines can do just about anything: run software for Mac, Unix, or Windows, using either a GUI or the command line. And they're secure out of the box.'
Simon Aughton

A

14:46 / 18.02.04

It's called "looting", when you or I do it.

15:10 / 18.02.04

It's actually so that they can seize the desktop icons aswell as the hard drive and programs..........

15:27 / 18.02.04

I get it help them monitor the situation.

15:34 / 18.02.04

*Tft!*

15:47 / 18.02.04

I think sleazenation has answered the confusion rather neatly with the Canadian Mounties rescue FBI from Apple Mac ignorance story. The FBI, having seen Macs before but knowing nothing of their arcane ways, are under the impression that maybe all computers are built into a single monitor unit. Clearly the first photograph - posted by smoothly - shows the police removing what they think is the computer, together with some strange box-like device. Take a close look at the guy in front, he has no clue what he's holding. Obviously the computer is being brought up behind him by chap in uniform.

Morlock - groupie for hire

16:04 / 18.02.04

How hard would it be to rig some code to zap your hard drive when windows detects new hardware?

That's right, I do know very little about PCs, how did you guess?

17:09 / 18.02.04

Take a close look at the guy in front, he has no clue what he's holding. Obviously the computer is being brought up behind him by chap in uniform.

Ohhh, right, that explains the glove situation. Who knows what the box might be, a brick of anthrax? Better wear protective latex gloves.

ONLY NICE THINGS

22:08 / 18.02.04

I've got two words for you, Jub.....Zip Disk!

01:10 / 19.02.04

"yeah, i was gonna say for fingerprinting, but then why doesn't the guy have gloves on?"

....uhh are you sure that "fella" with the moniotr is a guy?

01:14 / 19.02.04

moniotr?? make that monitor.

01:28 / 19.02.04

You'd be suprised at how many people do not know the difference between their monitor and their computer. I did help desk for a credit union, (about 125 staff), and I would say that at least half the people I instructed during a help call, to turn off their computer would sit there turning the monitor on and off,and getting frustrated with me because I was not helping them in a quick manner. I would state, " no, not the monitor, the computer, the box down by your feet". "Oh, you mean the floppy disk"? These are people that have used PCs at their jobs for several years.

10:08 / 19.02.04

Are all PC-to-monitor connections and cables the same? I'm pretty sure they're not, so maybe this saves them the hassle of keeping a big cupboard full of monitors, or having to rummage through a big draw full of cables and adaptors and plastic bags and those round cone shaped things that go on the end of icing bags, and half-used batteries and bottle openers and so on. And those plastic covered wire strips you use to keep freezer bags closed. And elastic bands.

10:11 / 19.02.04

And a bit for the vacuum cleaner. By the way, that bloke isn't wearing latex gloves, he's just got very cold hands. The one behind has warmer hands, but he/she is behind him which means she hasn't been outside as long. I should be a detective, me.

12:36 / 19.02.04

Actually Saveloy makes a good point, not all monitor connections are the same, so yeah...the mystery could be solved. This picture reminds me of a type of picture puzzle that is usually in kids books. "How many things can you find wrong with this picture? Turn to page 23 for the answer."

13:06 / 19.02.04

Well, the vast majority of PCs have the same VGA output, but it would be annoying to discover that the one you just grabbed didn't, so probably best to get the monitor too. But I think the real motivation is that monitors absorb traces of sin and depravity, which can then be forensically extracted and used as evidence in court. Yes, that means your monitor too. Put your pants back on. The big glass eye can see you.

13:27 / 19.02.04

Exactly. I imagine the first time they did this some smartypants said: "Of course, no need to take the monitor with us," to which the bloke who was halfway out the door with it said: "Guh! Of course not! Look at us, how silly. Ho ho ho etc" and while they were driving back to the office they would have agreed that they came very close to looking like a couple of complete amateurs in front of the team back at HQ, phew, eh? Only to find, once they got back, that there was nothing to plug the thing into cos they got all their PCs and monitors in bulk from the same supplier just a week ago and they all had some new fangled sockets that didn't match the suspect nonce's machine. So they went back to the suspect nonce's house, only he wasn't in, and so they had to go down PC world with the box and everything and ask the assistant for "the right sort of cable or monitor or something to fit this hole", and the assistant said "excuse me while I go and have a look in the stock room", but once there he called the police because this dodgy pair had obviously nicked it. And the whole story ended up on the web and people on message boards everywhere chuckled and shook their heads and said "When will they ever learn, eh? Why didn't they just confiscate the monitor as well?"

Thinking about it, the "traces of sin" bit - I suppose even that is possible. Images can be burnt into the monitor screen if left for long enough, hence screensavers. Unlikely, though.

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

16:40 / 19.02.04

OK, Caption Competition:

Officer Maris Piper and hir erstwhile colleaugue Agent 'King' Edwards were caught on camera abusing their authority, having been woefully defeated on the first level of 'Duke Nuke'Em!'

15:27 / 22.02.04

you don`t get it back if your convicted and at a police auction they need the whole thing

16:09 / 22.02.04

Hmmm is there a roaring trade in the computers of convicted computer criminals and paedophiles? Do the police keep records on who is buying this stuff?

17:08 / 22.02.04

Hmmm is there a roaring trade in the computers of convicted computer criminals and paedophiles? Do the police keep records on who is buying this stuff?

you know what would be funny, and sad, and yet completely plausible?

the cops bust someone for kiddie porn. they take hsi computer as evidence. trial's over, they sell the seized computer at auction, but forget to erase the kiddie porn from the hard drive first.