[Cadaver]

From C-Net...
http://news.com.com/2100-7348-5845409.html?tag=tb

Sounds like most law enforcement agencies have a bunch of dumbasses working for them. Not that I'm doing anything illegal, but it makes me happy that I use MacOS X, that I use FileVault, and that I have a strong password.

[Link]

Running safari in private browsing mode pretty much eliminates those trails lol.

[ghporter]

This is just a glitch in the cyberinvestigation world. Someone will soon write a nice little tool that lets the good guys figure out if "I'm innocent" actually did just click on a link or entered the kiddie-porn link manually.

This should NOT be about "hiding my surfing from The Man" at all. It should be about being able to track terrorists, drug movers, kiddie pornographers, and other criminals. Who cares if you're looking for naked pictures of Natalie Portman? On the other hand if you're using a computer to coordinate where and when to attack someone or some place, I sure as hell want the cops to be able to backtrack your emails and web chats so they can stop you.

Why do so many people think the only thing law enforcement is for is hassling innocent people?

[PacHead]

Originally Posted by Link

Running safari in private browsing mode pretty much eliminates those trails lol.

What's private browsing mode in safari ? Care to elaborate ?

[Oneota]

Originally Posted by PacHead

What's private browsing mode in safari ? Care to elaborate ?

Click the Safari menu, choose "Private Browsing." Now Safari makes no record at all of any of your site visits or anything else. No cache files, no history, nothing.

[PacHead]

Originally Posted by Oneota

Click the Safari menu, choose "Private Browsing." Now Safari makes no record at all of any of your site visits or anything else. No cache files, no history, nothing.

Thanks, I must be blind as a goat though because I can't see it.

Under which menu do you mean ? Safari - File - Edit - View - History - Bookmarks - Window - Help

[Cadaver]

Originally Posted by ghporter

Why do so many people think the only thing law enforcement is for is hassling innocent people?

I don't think that. But I do think that private citizens have a right to keep private things private - and thanks to the (controversial) Patriot Act, the FBI could decide to root through your life without a warrant.

But the point of my post was to make fun of people who are confused by something that isn't Windows.

[Cadaver]

Originally Posted by PacHead

Thanks, I must be blind as a goat though because I can't see it.

Under which menu do you mean ? Safari - File - Edit - View - History - Bookmarks - Window - Help

Safari -> Private Browsing

Might be 10.4 only, however.

[PacHead]

Originally Posted by Cadaver

Safari -> Private Browsing

Might be 10.4 only, however.

Ah ok, I'm on Panther right now. I do have 10.4 on another machine so I'll check it out later on.

[Eriamjh]

Everbody knows the good guys use Macs and the bad guys use Windows!

[Millennium]

Originally Posted by Link

Running safari in private browsing mode pretty much eliminates those trails lol.

Not really. It just makes the trails harder to follow, because you have to look on different machines and sift through the logs. The only real way to keep the trail cold would be to have some kind of server several hope upstream from you which kept no logs (and in fact never wrote them to disk), was booted from some non-writable media like a CD, and occasionally had its RAM completely replaced and the old chips melted down.

Building a machine like this isn't actually very hard; with a cheap PC and off-the-shelf parts you could probably do it for under $300. The tricky part is getting it far enough away from you to be hard to trace back by other means, while still being able to get at the boot media and destroy it if needed.

[Millennium]

Originally Posted by ghporter

Why do so many people think the only thing law enforcement is for is hassling innocent people?

Quite the opposite; that is one of the things law enforcement is not for, which is why it should be as difficult as possible for them to do so. Givernments are invariably and inevitably corrupted by power; this has not been proven on a mathematical level, but the data provided by every government in the known history of humanity doesn't lie. This is why the first priority when structuring a government needs to be limiting its power, and therefore the damage it can do when corruption sets in. Given law enforcement's power over people's lives, ensuring that they cannot harrass the innocent can and should take even greater priority than catching criminals. The Founding Fathers put it best: "It is better to let ten guilty men go free than to punish a single innocent man."

[tooki]

Yup.

tooki

[ghporter]

Mil, I completely agree. But not having the technology to do fully appropriate investigations, or people not wanting them to have that technology is wrong-headed. And ribbing people who are trained in law enforcement, not computers for not being computer people is pretty weak too. You CAN be both well versed in law enforcement and computers (a friend is the computer forensics guy for a local university), but sometimes there's no time to get both subjects covered.

The courts are supposed to be the arbiters of when certain investigative techniques are appropriate. And the FBI is not, even under USA PATRIOT, cannot simply go out and investigate someone without good cause. I'm completely with the Founding Fathers, but I'm NOT with the idea that breaking the law is "getting by the Man." Wrong is wrong, and people who do wrong SHOULD be pursued. The system is supposed to make it hard to investigate someone without really good cause-compelling evidence, not simply suspicion.

</rant>Ok, I'm better now.

[olePigeon]

Someone should write some software to do that, then have the state government pay you $20,000 a license. I think it's a prime opportunity!

[ghporter]

Actually most law enforcement software is both quite expensive and pretty carefully controlled in its distribution. A $20k license for just web tracking would be pretty steep, but a product that did more, such as reviewing cache contents, determining keyed in URLs versus followed links and so on, and then added other tools would be a good start.

[Millennium]

Originally Posted by ghporter

The courts are supposed to be the arbiters of when certain investigative techniques are appropriate. And the FBI is not, even under USA PATRIOT, cannot simply go out and investigate someone without good cause.

Sure they can. They may have to justify it after the fact, but coming up with some kind of excuse is seldom difficult once you've gone through a person's life. Warrants exist to ensure that they must be able to show good cause before the investigation starts.

[Oneota]

Originally Posted by PacHead

Thanks, I must be blind as a goat though because I can't see it.

Under which menu do you mean ? Safari - File - Edit - View - History - Bookmarks - Window - Help

I mean the "Safari" menu, which is why I called it the...uh...Safari menu in my first post.

But yeah, it's a 10.4-only thing, which is where the confusion came from, I suspect.

[LilWolfChokingOnCigs68]

Originally Posted by ghporter

This is just a glitch in the cyberinvestigation world. Someone will soon write a nice little tool that lets the good guys figure out if "I'm innocent" actually did just click on a link or entered the kiddie-porn link manually.

This should NOT be about "hiding my surfing from The Man" at all. It should be about being able to track terrorists, drug movers, kiddie pornographers, and other criminals. Who cares if you're looking for naked pictures of Natalie Portman? On the other hand if you're using a computer to coordinate where and when to attack someone or some place, I sure as hell want the cops to be able to backtrack your emails and web chats so they can stop you.

Why do so many people think the only thing law enforcement is for is hassling innocent people?

Benjamin Franklin said "The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either." But it's okay because you're smarter than him.