Insider-Trading Suspects Smash Hard Drive Evidence 364
An anonymous reader writes "We all know Slashdotters love debating the best way to wipe a hard drive clean. Looks like tech-savvy Wall Street Hedge Fund managers also know the best way to do it. From the WSJ article: 'Mr. Longueuil's version of that night's events was recorded later, during a December meeting with former colleague Mr. Freeman, who by then was cooperating with the government and recording conversations, according to the U.S. complaint. "F—in' pulled the external drives apart," Mr. Longueuil told Mr. Freeman during their meeting, according to the criminal complaint. "Put 'em into four separate little baggies, and then at 2 a.m. 2 a.m. on a Friday night, I put this stuff inside my black North Face jacket, and leave the apartment and I go on like a twenty block walk around the city and try to find a, a garbage truck and threw the s—t in the back of like random garbage trucks, different garbage trucks four different garbage trucks."'"
Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Informative)
He probably did. They nuked things like their Crackberry messaging traffic amongst other things at his insistence.
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Depends on whether they actually cracked the drives open and pulled the platters. The article is unfortunately ambiguous on this point; it just refers to them "tearing apart external drives" which may well be them simply pulling the drive from its enclosure.
Re:Hmm... (Score:4, Informative)
Depends on whether they actually cracked the drives open and pulled the platters. The article is unfortunately ambiguous on this point; it just refers to them "tearing apart external drives" which may well be them simply pulling the drive from its enclosure.
The article is not ambiguous. Skip to the bottom to see a section of the US attorney's complaint.
Freeman then remarked, "I don't see how you get rid of this shit," to which LONGUEIL explained, "Oh, it's easy. You take two pairs of pliers, and then you rip it open . . . and then, it's just a piece of NAND."
More...
"Fuckin' pulled the external drives apart. Destroyed the platter..."
That's pretty unambiguous.
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That way, you can try to feel if they are wearing a wire or not...
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He ripped the drive apart. He then divided up the parts into 4 bags. Then he tossed them into 4 differnet places on the assumption that different wast companies would take them to different places.
He also talks about opening usb drives and smashing the NAND chips, destoying e-mail on his blackbery, shredding documents, etc.
While not the smartest, he is not the dumbest either.
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously? With 32,600 (http://www.observer.com/2008/wasted-new-york-citys-giant-garbage-problem) tons of garbage being generated per day, even if we assume 8 pounds of garbage sorted each man hour, that makes it 8.15 million man hours *per day*. That means with 1 million people you might be able to get to those drives in what, a couple of years? Maybe?
Simple, we get a big-ass magnet, like one of those they use to pick up cars, spread the garbage out and run the magnet over it. The drives will be picked up by the magnet (along with other metal objects) where they should be much easier to pick out. As a bonus, we can recycle the extra metals.
(Yes, this is a joke. Please don't bother replying telling me the giant hole in my plan)
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Your plan has a hole: is it really that easy to tell the difference between compressed hard drive and other metal scraps?
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Awww, why'd you do that? Reading the serious responses to posts like yours is half the fun of /.!
A hole in the plan (Score:2)
When I destroy a drive, I usually have a hole in the plan. I drill right through the platters, then drop the drive down a garbage chute.
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Not quite correct...
First they'd know roughly what dump trucks were in the area when the said he dismantled the drives.
All the trucks have a specific area of the dump (changes daily) to unload.
So you've narrowed down that 32.6k tons down to a few tens of square yards of rubbish to sift through.
taking your "couple of years" down to a few days or weeks...
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That is a bit worse than that. If the police already suspected them, they could simply follow the suspect, wait for him to dump the driver at the truk, stop the truck, get the disks without any trouble on getting search arrants or any such thing.
People think hard about how to destroy data on a disk for a reason.
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His really big mistake was admitting to the destruction in a message that was recordable.
The proper response is "what drives, I can't find the drives you are talking about." and said no more. There would then be nobody tailing garbage trucks. A useless search for the missing evidence can proceed with little chance of success. Later you can in private on a secure location pass the info of the job is done.
Destruction of evidence (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Destruction of evidence (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep. To quote the article: "When people frantically begin shredding sensitive documents and deleting computer files and smashing flash drives and chasing garbage trucks at 2 a.m. ... it is not because they have been operating legitimately," said Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.
Ahhh the old "if you are innocent, then you shouldn't have a right to privacy" argument.
Obviously I disagree.
I'd destroy my hard drive too if I got word the government was coming. They don't need to know that I donated to wikileaks and other projects.
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I'd destroy my hard drive too if I got word the government was coming. They don't need to know that I donated to wikileaks and other projects.
Truly sir your tinfoil is 20 mil [amazon.com].
I don't think the feds care much either about donation to Wikileaks or your desire to use your kitteh to login to your computer [kickstarter.com].
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We had Concentration camps during WWII, but I'd be interested in seeing the sources for Extermination camps during that period.
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Never mind. It wouldn't make any difference, because some people refuse to believe the US is guilty of human rights violations (including extermination camps during the 1940s). No point wasting my breath.
Wow! Just wow! They were called Internment Camps, not Extermination Camps. And while it was bad that we forced Japanese Americans into these camps, please do not try to compare them to what Nazi Germany was doing during that same time period. These families were given homes, allowed to move about freely within the camp, they were fed well, their kids went to school, they had activities and entertainment, and were released when it was all said and done.
Again, I'm not saying it was a good thing, but let's
Re:Destruction of evidence (Score:4, Insightful)
You can't really expect a short-bus-riding window licker to use a five syllable word correctly.
Re:Destruction of evidence (Score:5, Interesting)
Having spoken to some survivors of those camps, I think you paint an overly civilized picture of them.
The children were sent to what could properly be called "retraining schools" to encourage them into politically correct beliefs. Their property was stolen, and never repaid. Etc.
OTOH, you are correct. They were "internment camps", and most people survived them. They might have become impoverished and be forced to work as farm laborers, but they did live through the experience. Most of them.
Saying they were given homes is painting a very pretty picture on the actuality, but it's not totally false. Quite. Similarly for the rest of your statements.
But you are right, they weren't extermination camps. They were essentially POW camps for citizens of the US. And as far as I have been able to figure out the entire purpose of them was to allow the wealth of those so interred to be confiscated by others with powerful political connections. (You might notice that Hawaii, which had a larger proportion of Japanese citizens than did California didn't need or use any such camps. Nor were the German citizens on the east cost treated so. It appears to have been legalized racial discrimination for the purpose of confiscating wealth.)
Come on, not libertarian... (Score:2)
We like listening to your paranoid libertarian-esque prattle.
As a libertarian, I take offense - we are individualistic but reasonable and realistic.
The kind of derangement on display comes only from those on the hardest right and hardest left, the intersection of Birthers and Truthers smelted into a big pot of crazy.
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If they can reasonably believe that an investigation is coming, it is still considered destruction of evidence.
On the other hand, if the warrant is for information about insider trading, your wikileaks project info has a small amount of protection. ... until prosecutors find an excuse to hang a second warrant on.
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I'd destroy my hard drive too if I got word the government was coming.They don't need to know that I donated to wikileaks and other projects.
Unfortunately, if you do that you've switched from having done something politically unpopular to committing a clear crime which they can easily convict you. Destroying evidence is very rarely a good move.
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no no. destroying his hard drive is one thing.
Talking about it. at all. with anyone.
That's the stupid bit.
never confess to anything. ever. to anyone.
Without that all they have is lack of information.
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Re:Destruction of evidence (Score:4, Funny)
There are a number of things that have happened during my lifetime, which I've not told ANYONE.
Could you provide examples?
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Destroying evidence is very rarely a good move.
unless the evidence would be used to convict you of a far greater crime, in which case destroying evidence seems like a rather great idea.
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Yep. To quote the article: "When people frantically begin shredding sensitive documents and deleting computer files and smashing flash drives and chasing garbage trucks at 2 a.m. ... it is not because they have been operating legitimately," said Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.
Ahhh the old "if you are innocent, then you shouldn't have a right to privacy" argument.
Obviously I disagree.
I'd destroy my hard drive too if I got word the government was coming. They don't need to know that I donated to wikileaks and other projects.
Well, they would probably be REALLY suspicious of what we do out at my place. My shooting range is littered with hard drives that have been blown to bits by various firearms. Laptop drives, 3.5" desktop drives, old 5" RLL & MFM drives. I even have some old 12" disk packs out there from a previous employer that told me to "get rid of" the old things.
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Obviously. Obstruction of justice, or whatever, can lead to jail time. But jail time is a far better alternative to having the millions you stole taken back. If they can't prove he stole it, he gets to keep it.
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So he stash them in some fund, and then retires to some sunny place once the jail time is over...
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Non-violent, non-repeat criminals typically won't end up in that sort of prison (maximum security federal penitentiary).
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Yeah but that's because they didn't steal enough (or anything at all) to cover the lawyer costs.
Re:Destruction of evidence (Score:5, Insightful)
True, but, were I in their shoes, I'd have to ask myself:
1. Does acting strangely (i.e., throwing my hard drives in random garbage trucks) prove my guilt in the case?
2. If there is evidence on those hard drives that probably would prove my guilt, which is the lesser sentence: obstruction or whatever I'll get charged with if they find smokinggun.jpg on those drives?
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Exactly. If you've got evidence that you've committed murder on a drive, and you destroy the drive, the penalty for obstruction is orders of magnitude less than the penalty for a successful murder conviction.
Re:Destruction of evidence (Score:4, Informative)
True, but, were I in their shoes, I'd have to ask myself:
1. Does acting strangely (i.e., throwing my hard drives in random garbage trucks) prove my guilt in the case?
I worked in electronic discovery for a time which deals with ferreting out electronic information during trials. Doing something in the manner you're pondering would likely get you into a lot more trouble than you're counting on.
During your trial the judge the judge would likely find efforts to destroy to be in bad faith and give the jury an instruction to make an adverse inference [wikipedia.org] about the evidence you destroyed. Basically this means that whatever bad facts the prosecutor claims were on the hard drive (with a modicum of fact and or educated guessing backing it up), the jury would assume those bad things were found to be true during trial. there is a small chance that the judge might invoke a default ruling (i.e. you're guilty).
2. If there is evidence on those hard drives that probably would prove my guilt, which is the lesser sentence: obstruction or whatever I'll get charged with if they find smokinggun.jpg on those drives?
You would likely be found guilty of both the original charges (whatever they were) and destruction of evidence and whatever else the prosecutor can come up with (which is likely to be lengthy). In general it is a bad idea to try to outsmart the court or play fast and loose with evidence. Very few things will tick off a judge faster or more violently than the destruction of evidence in bad faith (i.e. you meant to destroy or hide evidence to avoid getting caught).
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I have heard of people getting hit with destruction of evidence charges for engaging in this sort of behavior...
You mean you've heard of people being charged with destruction of evidence for destroying evidence? spooky...
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>>>used to help commit a crime
Prove a crime was committed. (Note that you can't because there's no evidence to review.)
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>>>used to help commit a crime
Prove a crime was committed. (Note that you can't because there's no evidence to review.)
You are assuming he destroyed all evidence, that might not be the case. Then there's the testimony of the informant and whatever incriminating things he said while being taped.
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If you don't know about the investigation, and always destroy hard drives after use, proving the necessary intent would likely be pretty tricky, even if the HDDs sometimes contained evidence of some crime or other. They might well tack it on, just to see if it would stick; but the other evidence would have to be really compelling.
If t
Encryption (Score:5, Interesting)
Encryption seems a bit more foolproof. It's also a bit more believable that one might "forget" a lengthy passphrase, while physical destruction looks a bit suspicious.
That said, encryption and physical destruction is also useful, as it means that even if someone gets some of the physical components of the disk, it will be even more difficult to get any data off of them.
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http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?000+cod+18.2-152.15 [state.va.us]
Re:Encryption (Score:4, Insightful)
So? I'd gladly take a misdemeanor if it meant they had no evidence that a crime was committed.
Another poorly thought-out law written by stupid assholes that don't understand the first fucking thing about computers.
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Think big (Score:2)
If you're not using encryption to protect evidence more incriminating that the mere use of encryption itself, you need to up your game.
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But how does one go about and PROVE that the encryption was used to willfully hide evidence? If they can't see the data, how do they know it is evidence of a crime?
Also, what kind of moron would go around talking about how he destroyed evidence to ANYONE? Considering the only way they could secure a good case against you is either video of you destroying the evidence or audio of you talking about it, you shouldn't be talking openly about it.
"Loose lips sink ships"
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This is very much what I want to know. Destroy your drives, shred your papers, I'm with you this far-- but then ADMITTING to having done it? This isn't like the situation of a thug bragging about a store he robbed for ego points; nobody's going to praise you for operating a shredder, so where's the value in yammering about it?
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Oh, well, in that case, I'm sure the criminals will just forgo using encryption. After all, you know how much they respect the law.
White collar criminals ARE smarter (Score:4, Interesting)
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Don't hate the player, hate the game.
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So it's not the rapist's fault, it's... Mother Nature's? God's?
Re:White collar criminals ARE smarter (Score:5, Insightful)
at the risk of suffering 5000 degree flamewar posts...
There *IS* some (small) evidence that being a rapist is at least partially genetically based. (rather, a predisposition to being a rapist that is.)
In such cases, I would say the impulse is mother nature's fault. The decision to act, is the purpetrator's.
(Much like mother nature is at fault for our desire to eat sweet things, but our reaching into the cookie jar when we know better is OUR fault.)
Now, that aside-- White collar criminals who destroy thousands of people's lives so they can live in obscene luxury deserve not only to be devested of said luxuries, but to be treated like the criminals they are. That does not mean I advocate prison rape or the like-- even serial killers shouldnt be subjected to cruel and unusual punishments or conditions in the penal system-- it just means that they should be put away and prevented from doing any further harm.
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Please add more detail to that remark (so I can point out your mistake).
Re:White collar criminals ARE smarter (Score:4, Informative)
Re:White collar criminals ARE smarter (Score:5, Insightful)
Guess what? 5 seconds per spam * 10 spams which get past the filters * 100 million recipients works out to 158 man-years of time lost. The sum total of the injury caused by this spammer is actually greater than killing a person. It's just that the injury is distributed instead of concentrated on one place. The average lost productivity to society is the same.
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When I think white collar crimes, I think of those which deprive you of savings, home, identity, etc., ultimately damaging your and your family's health, safety and prospects. The emotional impact is obvious and visible.
But the amount of money white collar criminals have to put a positive PR spin on what they do exceeds that available to rapists. If a few powerful people decided to take up public serial rape, I'm sure ten years of media tweaking would get a chunk of the unwashed mass to start supporting the
White dress criminals ARE smarter (Score:2)
So they should continue to receive the lighter sentences. Right?
Lindsay Lohan seems to get off with no jail time at all.
White collar... (Score:5, Insightful)
Red sleeves.
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What an excellent phrase. I'm going to have to use that from now on.
admission of guilt? (Score:2)
if they prove deliberate destruction of evidence, doesn't that constitute admission of guilt? or some other loss-by-default?
Re:admission of guilt? (Score:5, Informative)
If they have a recording of you describing how you ripped apart and surreptitiously disposed of your HDD after you heard that the feds were on your trail, those charges are going to be very hard to dodge...
Merely destroying your hard drive, out of caution or paranoia, and then learning later that the feds would really have liked to have a look through it, is one thing; but if you are caught on tape describing why you destroyed it, game over, man.
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If they prove destruction of evidence, they prove obstruction of justice. A hard drive can be disposed of in incredibly suspicious circumstances out of the want of thoroughness just as easily as the want of a conspiratorial cover-up.
Re:admission of guilt? (Score:5, Informative)
if they prove deliberate destruction of evidence, doesn't that constitute admission of guilt? or some other loss-by-default?
No, but it does allow the prosecutor to give the jury instructions that they may make a adverse inference[1] as to the contents of the destroyed relevant evidence from the fact that the defendant knowingly (sometimes even negligently) destroyed it. Essentially, they are telling the jury that they can infer that the evidence would weaken the defendant's case from the fact that he willfully destroyed it.[2] The jury is not required to make such an inference but it may -- as contrasted from the fact that prosecutors are forbidden from trying to make adverse inferences from a refusal to testify based on 5A grounds, such jury instructions would be illegal and the whole conviction overturned.
This is a very onerous instruction and so is reserved for cases in which it was shown that the destruction was knowing or negligent but it's necessary in order for the discovery system to work. In the absence of a adverse inference rule, litigants would have a very strong incentive to preemptively destroy any incriminating evidence as soon as they became aware of an investigation or a lawsuit. In cases against corporations in which internal emails/documents play a pivotal role in proving that the behavior was part of a pattern/policy of the company (and not merely a rogue employee) this would be fatal to the plaintiff/State. The same logic applies in cases against the State[3] where they refuse to disclose evidence that might be favorable to the defendant.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_inference [wikipedia.org]
[2] http://vegaslitigator.com/blog/?cat=50 [vegaslitigator.com] (discussing the Nevada statute, not the Federal one, but many parallels and the same basic concepts exist).
[3] http://legalholds.typepad.com/legalholds/2009/04/negligent-destruction-of-evidence-is-sufficient-to-support-an-adverse-inference-instruction-although.html [typepad.com] An interesting case in which police destruction of evidence helps to get defendants off the hook because they allege that the destroyed evidence would undermine the State's case. IOW, the adverse-inference doctrine cuts both for and against the State. The defendants did eventually convince the court that the radio communications were relevant.
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That'd definitely not fly in the US. "You destroyed the drive, so it obviously contains evidence of insider trading. And tax evasion. And pictures of you buggering a horse..."
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No? Mainly because donating to wikileaks is not a crime, and most certainly not a crime worth jail time? As opposed to insider trading?
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So they suspect an actual crime.
They know you destroyed *something*.
The mere fact that you wanted to cover *something* up does not mean you wanted to cover up what they suspect you did.
You could have been covering up something merely socially damaging but not illegal like a conservative republican senator destroying a drive when he fears that it will come out that he's having lots of gay sex and the pictures to prove it were on the drive.
Moral of the Story (Score:5, Informative)
At the small town bars I used to hang out in we had a saying, "Loose lips get hit."
It would appear that the hammer of justice follows a similar rule of thumb.
Re:Moral of the Story (Score:5, Interesting)
So what do we learn kids? Don't talk about the skeezy shit you do to anyone: friend, family, coworker, or other. If you do bad shit, keep it to yourself.
You've never worked in trading (IT end), have you? These guys are immune from normal laws. At the CBOT in Chicago, there were drug dealers selling coke right outside the front doors. The police were NEVER to be found. And there was a lot of buying, piles of coke spilled on the bathroom floors, etc. Most of the traders were college football players/econ majors. I kid you not. They need to be large and imposing to get seen/push their way around on the trading floor. The company I worked for would burn them out at a rapid pace.
Anyway, this kind of talk was quite common. When you are above the law, who cares, you know? When the worse prison sentence you can get is a 3 month vacation at golf course, who cares?
Trading culture (Score:3)
I was there in the mid-90s when this behavior was beginning to wind down, but still going on. We saw coke-sniffing in the bathrooms (I don't recall seeing the drug dealers anywhere). Our company favored wrestlers (if I recall correctly one fellow had an Olympic bronze in Greco-Roman), and nobody sought the cerebral types. I would say the drinking culture was still very heavy.
The whole thing has calmed down a lot since electronic trading took over almost everything -- no longer do you need to physically p
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The floor traders couldn't be idiots, and actually had to be pretty fast and accurate with simple mental arithmetic, but calculus was pretty tough for most of them. And yes, physical jostling was part of the job. It's not a push like an NFL block...more like one notch below NBA jostling under the basket for rebounds (and less intense at that because they have to keep it up for 7 hours, while trying to trade). The idea is that when a favorable trade is called out, you want to be the guy in front whose han
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Fantasy. (Score:2)
Why didn't he wait for a full moon? (Score:2)
Destruction of Evidence not reciprocal (Score:3)
Great so he destroyed everything he had, if he's the trader, then someone at the companies he traded in will know the information given to him.
Not only did he not get his own mailservers, he didn't get their mailservers, his accomplices hard drives, the coorperation of his colleague Mr. Freeman or anyone else that is going to turn evidence on him to get their own sentences commuted.
The Prisoners Dilemma in the 21st century: Everyone Encrypts (phones, emails, hard drives) and Nobody Talks. Otherwise somebody is going to have evidence pinned on them, then its just a race to be the first in line to rat the others out.
Why 2 versions of this story? (Score:3)
Why are there 2 seemingly identical versions of this story on the main page? This isn't the time-honored Slashdot tradtion of dupes from different editors who didn't check with each other, this is more clone than dupe, and it's been happening a lot every since this horrible new design was rolled out.
criminal mastermind (Score:5, Insightful)
After thoroughly eradicating all trace of evidence, he then told someone else what he had done. Brilliant.
That doesn't sound real (Score:5, Insightful)
Does anyone else think that the quote sounds like one of those fake quotes you see in mail hoaxes? For instance, why would he say "I put this stuff inside my black North Face jacket", which adds nothing to the story but is something a hoaxer would put in if he saw photos of Longueuil wearing North Face products. Besides, maybe the guy wasn't a Rhodes Scholar, but I have a hard time believing the managing director of a capital management firm speaks like a valley girl.
I'm not saying he's innocent, just that this news item doesn't look right.
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I've met people in similar positions. They get these impressive-sounding titles and an income to match. It's not that they don't work hard, but speaking to them you wouldn't think they do anything particularly special. The guy's only 34-years-old and living in NYC; he probably spends the entire weekend club-hopping like most other young people in the city. He's not some old-fashioned snob spending the weekends in the Hamptons.
That transcript looks totally convincing to me.
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Does anyone else think that the quote sounds like one of those fake quotes you see in mail hoaxes? For instance, why would he say "I put this stuff inside my black North Face jacket", which adds nothing to the story but is something a hoaxer would put in if he saw photos of Longueuil wearing North Face products. Besides, maybe the guy wasn't a Rhodes Scholar, but I have a hard time believing the managing director of a capital management firm speaks like a valley girl.
I'm not saying he's innocent, just that this news item doesn't look right.
People in Manhattan, especially investment banker types, place a lot more value on things like the brands of their clothes than most people elsewhere. Seriously, I know a lot of people who call their jackets/sweaters/etc. "my Patagonia" or "my Northface." The actual nature of the object is less important than the designer.
Why not use Mafia methods? (Score:3)
It's a Sicilian Message: your hard drive sleeps with the fishes. Toss the hard drives into the Atlantic from your yacht. Let the salt water take care of the rest. Or encase them into cement at a construction site. The old, time-tested methods are the best.
Re:Why not use Mafia methods? (Score:4, Funny)
"4 different garbage trucks.." (Score:2)
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Wall St Hedge Funds? (Score:3)
"We all know Slashdotters love debating the best way to wipe a hard drive clean. Looks like tech-savvy Wall Street Hedge Fund managers also know the best way to do it. From the WSJ article: 'Mr. Longueuil's version of that night's events was recorded later, during a December meeting with former colleague Mr. Freeman, who by then was cooperating with the government and recording conversations, according to the U.S. complaint. "F—in' pulled the external drives apart," Mr. Longueuil told Mr. Freeman during their meeting, according to the criminal complaint. "Put 'em into four separate little baggies, and then at 2 a.m. 2 a.m. on a Friday night, I put this stuff inside my black North Face jacket, and leave the apartment and I go on like a twenty block walk around the city and try to find a, a garbage truck and threw the s—t in the back of like random garbage trucks, different garbage trucks four different garbage trucks."'"
We usually mean banks or the exchange when we speak about Wall Street. If you need a location-based idiom for Hedge Funds, Greenwich CT works. Or Mayfair if you're in London. And yes, banks are different from Hedge Funds. Don't mix up your villains please.
End mill (Score:2)
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Overkill. Back in the olden days when ones and zeros were literally written as up and down flips of magnetic domains, you could look at the "edges" of each track and make an educated guess at what had been written last. Since hard drives use a far more complicated encoding scheme similar to QAM as used for digital TV, you've got no idea what the bit was. If you imagine that a bit was an analogue value from 0 to 7, you can't tell if it was a 4 last time or a slightly faint 6, or a strong 2. It's gone, pr
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"Bob, I'm glad SCC investigators didn't find anything nasty or incriminating on your computer. However, it turns out you haven't even turned the damn thing on for two years, so it looks like you've been jacking off in your office for quite some time, so we're letting you go."
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I'll take "getting fired" versus "going to jail" any day of the week.
Unfortunately, it's never quite that simple...
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On a modern OS/system software setup of any complexity, generating convincing fake timestamps and system activity is a bit on the nontrivial side
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Don't talk to the feds or police, ever. It can only hurt you. Let them think what they want.
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My workstation at work allows USB bootable media.
A knoppix installation on a USB flash disk would allow clandestine activity at work, without leaving any traces. As long as the use was intermittent, then my workstation would appear to have both been used in that time, AND be clean.
the flash drive is also much easier to destroy secretly, even though it would not have any evidence on it either. (knoppix is read only by default.)
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What value are these individuals creating?
-Rick
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I suppose one could feed the troll with something along this line:
Insider traders know what's going on in a company, and thus have a better idea of where the stock price should be. The right stock price would signal to society which enterprises are worthwhile investments, which stops wastage on the wrong investments, and encourages investment in the right ones. This clearly has value.
Anyway, I don't really want to go into why it's bad for some people to trade on insider information. Seems a bit trite.
Re: (Score:3)
It didn't have to be incrimninating. It was still evidence.
In fact, did they receive a discovery notice, or have reason to believe they would?