Unwise — Search History of Murder Methods 532
nonprofiteer writes "Mark Jensen's home computer revealed Internet searches for botulism, poisoning, pipe bombs and mercury fulminate. A website was visited that explained how to reverse the polarity of a swimming pool — the Jensens had a pool — by switching the wires around, likening the result to the 4th of July. The State pointed out the absence of Internet searches on topics like separation, divorce, child custody or marital property. Julie Jensen died as a result of ethylene glycol in her system, an ingredient found in antifreeze. On the morning of her death, someone attempted to 'double-delete' (apparently unsuccessfully) the computer's browsing history, which included a search for 'ethylene glycol poisoning.'" What if searches for devious, undetectable methods of murder were in everyone's history?
timothy... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I wish I could Like you post.
Re:timothy... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:timothy... (Score:5, Interesting)
You know, I'd hate to think what the police would think if they dug into my browsing history. As somebody who is currently writing a trilogy of sci-fi novels that involve the military (the Earth military), in the past couple of months, I've searched for:
In short, my searches would make me look like the sort of person who you'd expect to find holed up in a compound in flyover country, which is downright hilarious since I've never even owned a gun.
The point is that the evidence described in this story, although it sounds bad, is circumstantial, and could possibly occur innocently. More imprtantly, the Slashdot summary doesn't tell the whole story. There was other evidence in addition to this. Although the browser history might have contributed to a conviction, it was not the sole reason for the conviction.
Re:timothy... (Score:5, Interesting)
Similar problem, I write murder mystery roleplaying games, and as a result frequently search for information on how various methods of murder could be detected or concealed.
Re:timothy... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Didn't Stephen King mention this as a way to learn murder techniques?
"Hey, I'm writing a novel, and I'm curious about how you'd most easily completely conceal and bury a ... spaceship. A spaceship the exact shape and size of a Ford Explorer."
Re:timothy... (Score:4, Interesting)
What exactly is the reason for indicating you've never owned a firearm? And what exactly does living in "flyover" country have to do with anything? Do you have this impression that everyone not living on the coasts is some radical gun touting redneck? Because that is how your statement reads to me and that indicates to me that you are one ignorant asshole. Not exactly a ringing endorsement to read your books, but I guess you really aren't targeting those millions that live in "flyover" country eh?
Re:timothy... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:timothy... (Score:5, Funny)
As a guy in a compound in a flyover country, only about half of those things are in my search history. I already know how to do the other half :0)
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I've never even owned a gun.
What are you, Canadian?
LK
Re:timothy... (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. Nobody will get a murder-conviction from search-history.
But combine a dead wife with a motive, no alibi, access to the poision used to kill her, search-history indicating interest in the same poision from which she died and other clues, and the sum total, may add up to a conviction.
Or, if there was enough evidence for a conviction already, search-history such as this, could help prove that the murder was pre-planned and not a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing.
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Guys, lean to leave no trace. Use a live Ubuntu CD for those searches. Use a public hotspot at the public library or coffee shop. There is no recorded history on the PC. The hotspot may have an untracable record of the search.
Re:timothy... (Score:5, Funny)
1) Setup a second home WiFi router (that has no internet connection). Turn logging on, and leave it "open"
2) Harvest MAC addresses of your neighbors as they try to connect
3) Use the public hotspot with a Live CD like you said, but set your MAC address to one harvested from your neighbor.
4) If your neighbor gets arrested, it serves him right for trying to mooch off of your internet connection.
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Not to mention that it's trivial to harvest MAC addresses from clients of ANY access point, without having to set one up of your own. Or that you could spoof your MAC address to some arbitrary, meaningless value and do more or less the same thing but without associating that MAC with anyone in your general location. And of course there's the fact that framing your neighbor makes you a huge asshole.
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"So what you are saying is that possession of this... Ubun2? CD is positive proof of an attempt to research how to kill people?"
Re:timothy... (Score:5, Funny)
Your idea of using solar powered chickens as a fuel for spaceships intrigues me and I wish to subscribe to your magazine.
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Your idea of using solar powered chickens as a fuel for spaceships intrigues me and I wish to subscribe to your magazine.
No, silly, he's planning to undetectably murder his own grandfather with a chicken on a train.
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timothy, you're an asshole.
Hardly. He even resisted to make this a prefetch link.
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No no no, we all need to threaten to kill him. That way, when someone finally does it, there are so many suspects that it will take any investigation a couple of decades just to narrow it down for a couple of hundred particularly agitated slashdotters with serious cases of submitter rage.
Re:timothy... (Score:5, Insightful)
May not matter if you click it or not, depending on how much pre-fetching your browser does.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:timothy... (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is why I think URL shortening should be banned. ... So as long as we have shortening of URLs and allow the cops to use browser cache as "evidence" then trolls are gonna be a hell of a lot worse threat than ever before.
I think you may be shooting the wrong messenger, or something like that. The problem is not URL shorteners, it is that courts are allowed to use what you have been reading as evidence against you. This causes a chilling effect on research. While I think "what he read" in this case is outstanding evidence of his guilt, we must consider the greater societal cost of creating an inhibition to studying unsavory topics.
Freedom of speech and freedom of the press are sullied when the right to hear and read such free expressions is harmed. To take a more prosaic case; suppose a person were fired from his job, asserted that it was without cause, and in the eventual court proceedings to follow the corporation used the person's cached searches for "WikiLeaks" to support an assertion that they believed the person posed a threat to the corporation's information security. Or simply got a subpoena for the person's browser history to go fishing for cause. Suddenly any unsavory search puts you at risk of being terminated without cause (which may not be a big deal for all people, but there are many jobs where with-cause versus without-cause is a substantive issue).
Chilling effects [wikipedia.org] are not limited to speech and press. They can inhibit the practical value of free speech and free press by inhibiting the consumption of such free expression. Ultimately we must choose whether it is more important to make it easier to convict criminals, or to have the ability to study and discuss our society -- even the ugly bits -- without fear of reprisal. That may not be an easy question to answer, but it is the rational context in which the full weight of the dichotomy must be considered.
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Re:timothy... (Score:5, Funny)
Police Doing Actual Police Work? (Score:5, Funny)
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Arrrrrrrrgggghhhh!!! He be right! This indeed be an invasion of piracy! Give us all yer booty! Arrrrrrrgh!
Re:Police Doing Actual Police Work? (Score:5, Insightful)
How awful is it that detectives were able to discover that her husband searched for information on the exact thing that killed her shortly before her death, along with other methods of killing someone. On top of that he attempted to delete traces of it. This is an invasion of piracy.
Normally in murder cases the significant other of the victim is the primary suspect. As such I would assume (Didn't RTFA so not sure if there is more detail) that it was pretty easy to get a warrant for his house, computer, bank statements, etc. etc.
Re:Police Doing Actual Police Work? (Score:5, Interesting)
They live in the same house... do they have access to the same computer? Could this be suicide and she was hiding the method she would use? Or was the attempted deletion after the fact?
Of interest is - how is a deleted history available or if it was "attempted" - how would they know? The facts of the murder vs suicide are a bit spacious but I would like to know more about how they uncovered the history.
Re:Police Doing Actual Police Work? (Score:5, Informative)
That's an amazing post. Except for "And destroying evidence is illegal, every sentence in that post is wrong (assuming you're referring to the USA, at least).
And so is that one, destroying evidence can be perfectly legal, ask any document destruction company. It's destroying evidence that is currently being sought that is illegal.
works the other way, too (Score:4, Interesting)
When I wanted to kill someone, I researched methods to do it. Then I realized that I couldn't do it, because the footprints were all over the internet. Time passed, I got over it. Asshole's still alive, but I'm doing better than him now.
Re:works the other way, too (Score:5, Funny)
Naah, I took care of him. I covered my tracks made it look like an accident, but I figured even if they did realize it was murder, you'll be the one they come looking for.
Re:works the other way, too (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, yeah... I know you're technically not "dead" till the air in your coffin runs out.
Huh? (Score:2, Insightful)
What if searches for devious, undetectable methods of murder were in everyone's history?
If I'm not mistaken, you're condoning the murder of his wife?
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What if searches for devious, undetectable methods of murder were in everyone's history?
If I'm not mistaken, you're condoning the murder of his wife?
To be fair to Timothy, he's an idiot.
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If I'm not mistaken, you're condoning the murder of his wife?
To be fair to Timothy, he's an idiot.
This made me laugh so hard :D
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Sure, but it's no joke.
timothy, like most self-described "nerds", is probably a tremendous asshole who reckons his own intelligence to be superior to that of those around him based solely on his good taste in video games.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
What if searches for devious, undetectable methods of murder were in everyone's history?
If I'm not mistaken, you're condoning the murder of his wife?
Wow, talk about missing the point...
How was what he said in any way condoning murder? Pointing out that there are any number of reasons someone might have rather incriminating things in their search/browser history doesn't translate to condoning murder. Nor does it suggest that it was unusual, unfair, or an invasion of privacy to look at the suspect's search history in this context. It merely points out that going the other direction - finding something "suspicious" in someone's search history does not mean they are up to no good (also shows how easy it might be to poison someone's results if you were trying to frame them).
Really; you somehow read into his comment that he somehow condones murder? Utterly bizarre.
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I took a very similar inference from the Slashdot post. My thought pattern was basically this: The article describes what sounds like a safe conviction; the wife had been concerned about her husband and had put her fear into writing, she was later murdered and her husband was convicted on the basis of a range of evidence including the fact that he had, apparently, been researching ways to kill her. There was no procedural impropriety in how the police obtained this, and he advanced no alternative explanatio
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DIY railguns, anthrax, C-4 manufacturing, drug reasearch, including how to extract cannaboids, hydrocodone and other substances from their mixed or natural state, radiant gas heaters, naval bases, and porn are all subjects I have searched for and looked at articles related, in the last 48 hours.
Please do be careful not to mix anything up. Things could go very bad for you.
There are all sorts of lines to cross ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Okay, I don't follow this... (Score:5, Insightful)
After Mark Jensen’s wife died mysteriously in 1998, he consented to police searching his home for causes.
In October 1998, the Jensens’ home computer revealed that searches for various means of death coincided with e-mails between Jensen and his then-paramour, Kelly, discussing how they planned to deal with their respective spouses and begin “cleaning up [their] lives” so they could be together and take a cruise the next year.
So it sounds like a dumb criminal got caught by police doing their job. Is Slashdot so far toward the anarchist fringe that this is being spun...
from the unless-everybody-joins-in dept.
What if searches for devious, undetectable methods of murder were in everyone's history?
as some sort of The People vs. Big Brother thing?
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Indeed. Of all the cases out there of police crossing the line and prosecutors going way too far and all the convictions based on truly terrible evidence, this is not any of those things.
It seems the guy gave WRITTEN permission for the search and that the cache history was a small part of a web of corroborating facts that lead to his prosecution.
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The woman told people she thought her husband was trying to kill her. Then stayed with him. Then, while she was still alive, someone used a shared computer to search for ways to kill (all of which could be used to kill one's self) and incompletely deleted the searches.
The defense maintains she was suicidal and laid out a revenge-from-the-grave scenario where he'd get convicted because of her actions. He's either a smart criminal (r
Polarity? (Score:5, Funny)
How the fuck does a swimming pool have a polarity?
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How the fuck does a swimming pool have a polarity?
Perhaps it has a neutron flow.
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Woah, Doc. This is heavy.
Re:Polarity? (Score:5, Funny)
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Obviously it's a holodeck swimming pool. Fool.
Re:Polarity? (Score:5, Informative)
The housing of a pool light is normally grounded. If it is connected to an active circuit the pool becomes a death trap if someone in the water grounds themselves through another conductor.
Re:Polarity? (Score:5, Informative)
It would take significantly more than that. You'd have to bypass the ground fault protection and then see to it that the resulting short to ground didn't actually draw enough current to trip the branch circuit breaker on overcurrent.
Its pretty difficult to electrocute someone by messing around with the pool electrical equipment.
Just saying.
Re:Polarity? (Score:5, Informative)
Don't know if it was a polarity problem.
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Our house is 19 years old, I think we have called an electrician once to install a safety switch (mains RCD). This was voluntary. If we had
Re:Polarity? (Score:4, Interesting)
Or, more likely, if there is sufficient conductivity from the light housing to the water, some other fixture in the pool will provide a ground path. Household voltages are dangerous, but not nearly as much as people like to think, especially the 110 volt stuff.
Great example: some idiot wired a lamp installed in my bathroom backwards. The lamp had a metal housing that the installer had intended to ground to neutral. Unfortunately, the installer mistook the black wire as neutral, and connected it to the ground post and neutral post on the lamp. The neutral wire was connected to hot on the lamp. The lamp worked fine of course - AC current isn't really directional, and wiring something backwards usually just results in serious safety issues... But it did produce the result of providing an electrically hot conductor that was easy to reach while standing in the bathroom, or even worse - turning the facet on in the sink. Damn thing was wired up like this for a couple of years, occasionally zapping someone before I finally pulled it apart to fix it.
In my teens I spent a lot of time playing with electricity, and was shocked more times than I can count. Never caused any issues.
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In my teens I spent a lot of time playing with electricity, and was shocked more times than I can count. Never caused any issues.
The rule of thumb I was taught was that if your fingernails didn't turn black, then you're fine, if they do, then go ahead and mosey on down to the ER.
Always served me well.
Though I suppose there should be a proviso that if it causes an arrhythmia, then again you should see a doc, but that only happened to me once, so it's a low probability outcome.
Re:Polarity? (Score:5, Informative)
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Careful: EU mains voltage is much more dangerous (Score:3)
It amazed me how casually an American friend was poking around inside some live kit. A polite reminder that EU mains voltage is 230v (rather than the 110v he was used to), and kills very easily, made him much more careful. And yes, circuit breakers are fitted by law, but you wouldn't want to trust your life to a machine not failing would you
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And, of course, any of this is easy to bypass for someone who's up to no good.
Or just incompetent. When I bought my house the inspector was good enough to check the GFCI in the basement that the previous owner finished himself. Everything went thru a GFCI outlet right above the wetbar. Only he had gotten 'line' and 'load' backwards. The one outlet that needed it most was on the wrong side of the interrupt.
Also had the doorbell transformer exposed. Silly mechanical engineers thinking they are elect
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I'd guess that a saltwater/ionizing filter has a polarity. And that reversing it would probably produce Brown's gas, which would eventually ignite.
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How the fuck does a swimming pool have a polarity?
Exactly my thoughts.. I'll google it!
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It's easy, you just couple the plasma relay through the auxiliary photon subcircuits. Any Vulcan child could do it.
Number 1 (Score:2)
Aww, those silly globalists and their induced heart attacks...
Couldn't help laughing at that one.
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Say what? (Score:5, Insightful)
"reverse the polarity of a swimming pool"
"likening the result to the 4th of July"
"someone attempted to 'double-delete' the computer's browsing history"
I guess if I knew who the hell "Mark Jensen" was it might make more sense. Better run out and read some tabloids.
Re:Say what? (Score:5, Insightful)
We all know that small miracles can be accomplished by reversing the polarity. Sometimes you can even propel your ship into an alternate dimension that way! However, IIRC it was a virus rather than reversing the polarity that won the day in Independence Day.
As for deletion, double deleting is for hacks, the pros prefer to triple dog delete.
consent (Score:5, Informative)
Once you give permission to a search, you don't get to retroactively revoke permission once they find evidence against you. It would be a completely different matter if they just barged in without his permission or a warrant. That would be unconstitutional; this however, is just stupidity on his part.
For how long? (Score:4, Interesting)
What I'm more curious about, is what is the statute of limitations, so to speak, of the police having consent. I was the victim of an (attempted) armed robbery a few years ago in the apartment I currently live in (he didn't think anybody was around, and ran out after threatening me.. it sucks waking up from a nap to an intruder with a gun standing over you), and I sure as hell didn't mind the police searching my apartment then.. but when is that consent removed? All they found was the guy's jacket, the case is still open.. could they still come back and search without a warrant, even if they were interested in a different case? Or do they have to re-establish consent after the first search?
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They would have to obtain consent (or have a warrant) each time they came to your house.
Re:For how long? (Score:4, Insightful)
"I give you consent to search my apartment for the purpose of catching a thief" is not the same as "I give you the eternal right to search my premises for any and all reasons." Once their investigation concludes, the permission you gave them goes away. At least that's what would be sane; we could, of course, have a few idiot judges that failed history class give huge power to the state...
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Which is exactly why you never, ever, ever, consent to a search from the police even if you have done nothing wrong. They can't plant fake evidence in your house if they don't have a reason to search it. They can't find things unrelated to the case they are investigating, but which may still be illegal, which you may not even know is illegal, if they don't search. No search can corroborate your innocence, because you can't prove a negative. The absence of evidence just means they haven't looked hard eno
Don't open the door, even if they have a warrant (Score:3)
Don't open the door for the police, even if you believe that they have a valid search warrant. Slowly approach a window with your empty hands in the air and say, "I'm not armed. If you have a warrant, you'll have to kick the door in. I'll just stand here in the window with my hands visible."
The point being, if the cops were in your home, the first thing your decent lawyer is going to ask you for is your broken doorjamb. If the cops kicked your door in, it's clear to all parties that consent was not given, a
Bravo, timothy (Score:4, Insightful)
Let the grumpy-pants anarchy-baiters grumble. The system can always use more disorder, whatever its present condition.
Another Article (Score:4, Informative)
I was curious about this...particularly what it means to "reverse the polarity of a swimming pool"... um, I didn't know they had poles :) (clearly something to do with the wiring...)
Anyway: http://volokh.com/2011/01/04/interesting-example-of-the-use-of-computer-search-evidence [volokh.com]
Apparently its an interesting case. I haven't read much yet, about to dive in, but, it does quickly raise the question of... who did the searching? Looks like the defense claim is suicide. I know that if I planed to kill myself by a posion, I would want to know quite a bit about how it worked and what to expect.
Though, I am not sure thats the one I would choose.... nicotine maybe.... or nitrous oxide... glycol tastes sweet if I remember, its why dogs sometimes die from drinking antifreeze, so seems like a good choice to slip in food or drink... so... hard to say. Have to read...
-Steve
Search evidence fails standard of reasonable doubt (Score:4, Insightful)
If you looked back into my search history far enough, you could probably find places where I searched for all those different things in the past.
I wouldn't need to search for any website to tell me how to reverse polarity of a swimming pool motor, because it's basic electronics..
And yet, I have not murdered and will not murder anyone using those or any other methods.
Is it reasonable to suspect people of murder just because they have in the past searched for, found, or viewed material, that might relate to methods used by the murderer?
How is it even proven that the searches are born of some intent, and not merely idle curiosity, or FEAR for ones own safety?
Would police have made such a deal of simple searches, if they were done by looking up books on the subject at the library? Would a list of books checked out seriously be used to convict an alleged suspect?
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Would police have made such a deal of simple searches, if they were done by looking up books on the subject at the library? Would a list of books checked out seriously be used to convict an alleged suspect?
Yes.
Your library records are hardly protected from the fuzz either.
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When it is a method by which your wife was killed after you researched this, then yes, yes it is reasonable to suspect you of murder. Are you seriously saying that it's unreasonable? I mean I can't even fathom how your thought processes work here.
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Evidence does not have a reasonable doubt test, the entire case that the prosecution presents has a reasonable doubt test. Is browser history alone enough to convict someone of murder? No. But when you add in the husband having an affair, emails to his lover that he would get out of his marriage, the wife telling multiple people (including the police) that she was afraid her husband was trying to kill her, etc AND the fact that multiple ways of killing someone (including the way that ultimately caused her
NOT Google (Score:5, Interesting)
NaNoWriMo is your friend (Score:4, Interesting)
It's the perfect excuse: "I was doing research for the novel I'm writing". Just be sure you've got enough of a first draft of that novel on your drive to be convincing.
(I am a writer. I have all kinds of weird stuff in my browsing history. Which gives me an idea for a crime thriller series, about a hit-man (or perhaps serial killer?) who writes mysteries. Or perhaps its been done. Anyone remember this [imdb.com] movie?)
Apart from the moral issues, timothy.. (Score:3)
What on earth is "reverse the polarity of a swimming pool" supposed to mean? That can't be explained by sloppy editing or a less than tenuous grasp on physics anymore.
There was other evidence (Score:3, Informative)
How to Research your Evil Deed 101 (Score:3)
This kind of highlights why governments and corporates are increasingly running roughshod over our privacy online, trying to push through legislation that's something out of 1984, because it's incredibly tantalizing to be able to track parts of our lives that we're previously very private on such a massive scale.
The internet is wonderful for the deluge of information you can have on demand. Only problem is it flows both ways.
More to the point... (Score:3)
This isn't an issue of reckless browser use. Mr. J obviously thought there was something on his computer worth trying to delete, or he wouldn't have tried twice to delete it. If he was the least bit concerned (and he should have been), go to favorite Geek Store and get a new hard drive for $80, reinstall your OS, put a few programs on to look good, copy enough files from your thumb-drive to make it looked used, and do a few hours of fun browsing for puppy dogs and tickle me Elmos. Then take offending "Old Drive" and give it to and art metal sculpter to be welded and slagged into a work of art.
Instead, just like everything else in his life. He cut corners, got sloppy, and handled his life without either personal integrity or a clear comprehension of the relationship between actions and consequences. Get married, make babies, and hook up with some young hoochie, you have a limited set of next choices.
A) Honor your word, clean up the mess you made and rebuild you relationship with your wife and family, and spend the rest of life not being a senseless dick... I'd call this the optimal choice under most circumstances!
B) Get responsible, decide to make your new partner Mrs. Hoochie... divorce your wife, clean up the mess you make, give her half your stuff plus child support, and suck it up, you chose to follow the little head... but at least you're being a mench.
C) Or go total cheese-head, murder your wife, give all your money to the lawyer trying to keep the needle out of your arm, have your kids end up in foster homes, and get a letter from the hoochie telling you she's leaving you for a bagger at Wallmart who hasn't murdered anyone recently.
We need to start adding criminal enhancements for stupidity. For everyone's benefit.
Uh oh (Score:2)
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Re:Rule number one for breaking any law (Score:5, Interesting)
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May God have mercy on any poor son of a bitch who has to review two years my web history.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Rule number one for breaking any law (Score:5, Informative)
It would have automatically died yesterday along with everything else that didn't pass before the ending of the 111th Congress.
Re:Rule number one for breaking any law (Score:5, Informative)
Drill press? Do you know how easy it is to encrypt a drive?
Not that I would trust that alone but, if you do a reinstall of the OS over an encrypted drive, nobody is recovering what was there previously. Why bother with the theatrics, and expense. Not to mention, that the holes in the drives may not prove much, but they tell them you are hiding something.
Besides, its hard to get to work in the morning without breaking ANY law. How would you even know? You could be violating the law RIGHT NOW just by reading this. In fact, you probably are in some jurisdiction. Who is to say that jurisdictions law doesn't apply to you right now? Try explaining why it doesn't apply after they have picked you up while you are there on vacation.
Ridiculous? Absolutely, but the point is, the world is a big and complicated place full of lots of laws. Luckily, you can get away with ignoring the vast majority of them, most of the time. However, those few that they really have sticks up their ass about, like murder, honestly, its pretty wrong anyway so start with not doing it.
Anything that is not so wrong, but, still illegal, and they still have sticks up their ass about... well... chances are you have time to plan more and encrypted drives should just make sense. I mean shit, the Ubuntu installer had it as an option, last I looked. Also, he can delete all he wants, as long as they can find the right cookies they can probably recreate much of your search history. Really just best not to rely on clearing the cache.
-Steve
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A drill press seems extreme?
Actually, for some IT operations subjecting the individual platters of a hard drive after they're off the spindle to a blowtorch or welder's magnet isn't that far off base.
Lots of office supply companies sell paper shredders that are advertised to also shred CDs and DVDs. Even more list the feature right on the box.
I've seen companies that operate incinerators put their retired magnetic backup tapes into them to keep the data from being lifted. I've also seen the tapes pulled fro
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