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If the cops actually had anything real on him, they could get the warrant over the phone while stalling you at the door, or even storm your place and get it later.
And even if they don't get it, no cop can get in trouble for the raid if they "suspect" you might destroy evidence, and anything they find can still be used in court.
It completely invalidates your 4th amendment rights, but congress felt this was needed to protect you against "terrorists" 25 years ago.
Plus if police "believe" they are following the law, they are allowed to use the fruit from the poison tree, for decades now, ever since The Fear of the Others in the crime wave in the 80's and 90's gave them license to cancel the Bill of Rights.
Would it be possible to wipe some files off the PC without leaving any traces?
burn the ssd/hard drives
And here's where we introduce you to this magical term called full disk encryption!
And if you use BitLocker, do NOT backup your recovery key to the cloud!
https://gizmodo.com/microsoft-reportedly-turned-over-bitlocker-encryption-keys-to-the-fbi-2000713550
Print out out, give it to a friend, don't mention it via electronic means (email, text, Snapchat, YouTube, and so on...)
I think I've heard if you have a Microsoft account it automatically gets backed up
This person should also turn off their computer and remove the RAM so it's zeroed out if it gets siezed.
Full disk encryption doesn't help much if the pc is running anyway since the key will be in memory
This is where I think NFC may finally be useful. If cops show up, I slide my phone by a hidden NFC tag, and an http request is sent to my desktop machine. Everything incriminating is wiped and the computer is turned off, before the cops can walk to the room.
Unless you have tied the NFC to an arc wielding torch how would proper data disposal process runs its course fast enough? You live in a manor with very long hallways?
Most of really nasty data is text or a few questionable apps, and should take very little time. Video and audio present a problem, but I think they can be speedily wiped by nuking the metadata parts, making recovery and identification difficult. Not sure how resilient modern formats are to data loss, but afaik e.g. AVI is quite reliant on the description of the stream (which iirc is inconveniently placed at the end of the file).
Nha my dude you’re lying to yourself if you think that it is nearly enough to survive the level of forensics that will happen in case of a motivated investigation. You need the whole multipass erasure and overwriting or you’re toast. It takes hours…
First of all, it doesn't take hours to overwrite several text files and a few binaries. Second of all, I think I know better what my local cops would do. It's not NSA or Interpol. Lastly, this hypothetical obviously excludes stuff after which 'motivated investigation' might come. That kind of data lives in encrypted files tucked in odd places, and even that can probably be wiped from the directory entry like it was never there.
The boys and I have a racist group chat and my hard drive is full of kiddie porn and audio recordings of women peeing in public restrooms.
lmfao you're going to need a more robust destruction plan
You seem to be confused about which side in my scenario is the cops.
So if there is anything on your computer, deleting it just destroys the file directory to it, they can find it still, you have to delete everything, then rewrite over it with new information.
Drills, big magnets, hammers etc… work too
Big magnets will only pull the arm off the plates and leave the data intact. Also why waste good hardware when all it needs is a couple of writes with all zeroes and ones?
Maybe your don’t have time
tbh I completely forgot about the context of this post. Yeah shredding takes longer than getting a warrant from a corrupt judge
Mircrowave.
Just take out anything LiON prior to nuking, and as much pure metal housing as you can.
And also plan on getting a new microwave.
And have a fire extinguisher on hand.
and do it outside and throw the microwave away so you don't die from NO2 poisoning...
Short answer, do NOT destroy the computer or flee. That is textbook obstruction and will turn a sketchy visit into a criminal case overnight. You were right to refuse a search without a warrant, keep doing that, but destroying evidence or running wiping tools is a dumb panic move.
Get a lawyer immediately, even a public defender if money is tight. Record everything from the visit now, names, badge numbers, what they said, time stamps, take photos of any paperwork or footprints. Do not log into accounts, do not run cleanup software, and if possible disconnect the machine from the internet and power it down until your lawyer tells you what to do. Turning it off is different from erasing stuff.
If the cops come back with a warrant, comply on your lawyer's advice. If you're honestly worried the allegation involves really serious crimes, get counsel fast, because those carry mandatory procedures and you need someone who knows how to handle evidence and interviews. And for the future, yes encrypt your drives and keep recovery keys offline, but that's after you sort this with legal help.
I like how much lemmy hates AI yet this AI bot has 37 updoots
Oh the pain of it all :(
It is very arguable it would be a crime to wipe a computer with only the police asking to warrantless search it. It's a crime to destroy any evidence of a crime so I guess there is that.
They have no evidence there was a crime though. I don't doubt they would charge it, but a jury wouldn't likely convict because it's a bullshit charge. You are under no obligation to incriminate yourself with your own evidence no matter what the police and prosecutors say.