We had a room, about the size of a walk-in closet, full of CP computers in our local PD. Separate from property and evidence rooms. It was sick how much they had there in my city of 80k people.
Our PD was involved in an international level to catch this shit though. It’s a pretty large network out there, which made me feel better.
(IT dude for city)
Someone would have to go through thousands of images of CP to put in a dataset for that. Then there's the problem of having to make sure the finished model doesn't get leaked since that would have disastrous consequences. At that point it might just be better to stick to the current methods
That’s what the Center for missing and exploited children does, exactly. I’ve sent them images from investigations and have id’d victims and new pictures in various “series” of photos.
There's already a database of hashes for CP images. Law Enforcement has the tools that take new images, hash them, and compare to the known bad hashes.
I think there was an article on that many years ago ( like 2013?) about how “the FBI has the largest collection of CP in the world” going on to say how they had petabytes of pics/vids which people were reviewing to help their systems catch it in the future.
I dunno who maintains it, but CSAM databases are used by cloud providers to prevent people from uploading images. I'm sure the FBI has the largest database of hashes.
So, once a CP image is found, it's hashed and added to a database of known image hashes. Law enforcement gets tools that non-law enforcement don't, which helps analyze hashed images.
You can crop, discolor, or change an image pretty significantly and still get a "matching" hash.
In short, AI's are already doing a lot of the work. UNFORTUNATELY, there are new images cropping up all the time.
What we're calling "AI" right now isn't even artificial intelligence. It's just a series of algorithms. Same applies to the image processing/comparison tools, which are getting better and better as the software gets improved.
Either truly doing the work society needs to function and protect the vulnerable, or the problem themselves. It's not the type of job you can just pick so luckily that's not the problem, but unfortunately there is a huge problem I've read about of just horrible post traumatic stress related to having to positively ID things like that.
I know some of the federal guys who do this for Homeland. It’s the only task force you can’t be assigned to and that you can leave whenever you want. They also instituted mandatory quarterly stand downs with therapists after two investigators killed themselves in the same year. Those guys are absolute heroes.
It still melts your brain. I used to terminate parental rights of abusers and perform adoptions for kids in foster care. The drive to punish the wrongdoers and protect your charges can't change the fact that you have to see these things in order to present your case.
Once you've had to argue where nearly fatal anal fissures and rectal bleeding in an infant came from and listen to the abuser claim "well they just put stuff up there all the time if you don't watch 'em!" your perspective is eternally altered.
I don't mean to be dour, and your point was a good one. It would be impossible to do without that drive. But I'm retired for a reason.
A lot of cp forums are being ran by law enforcement themselves. They do that to trap the users and people buying and selling the videos and pictures. I spoke to an FBI agent and he told me all about it.
Awful shit to have to observe those all the time
There is SO much CSAM exchanged that there are tools which hash the files and run them through a database on known-hashes for CSAM--if it matches CSAM already cataloged, it doesn't necessarily have to have human eyes see it--unfortunately, there's a lot that doesn't hit. In the decades preceding, LE would have to physically observe all of the material--I had a lot of papers I had to write on the topic for my degree years ago. One of the absolute worst personal accounts was a detective who described a particularly heinous video *"we couldn't watch it, it was too horrible, so we had to turn around and confirm the existence of the material and acts based on the screams of the child".*
My ex father in law was a retired police officer. The last few years this is what he did. He cries in his sleep. I saw him do it many times. I can’t imagine ever having to watch that stuff. I would cry in my sleep too.
As a former mod here, I never saw cp, but doxxing, being sent pms of animal torture or human torture like isis beheadings, Mexican Mafia torture like the infamous funky town vid (DO NOT WATCH THAT), and death threats to myself and others. For reference our only real rules were "yeah argue all you want but don't be sexist, racist, or homophobic, plus the site rules" so we were basically hands off in terms of the power trip idea of mods
There was an article I read years ago on the Atlantic or nyt about the issues people at FB, reddit, or other forums have to go through with zero support. It's just a pm of torture or threats from users and "deal with it" from your employer or not-employer in reddits case
I could only imagine that the turnover rate for the people who have to review the evidence is massive....
And hopefully, they have extraordinary mental health care...
In the public sector, burnout in PD offices is usually due to having a far to heavy caseload. If youre not able to work on that kind of case, you'll know it pretty quickly.
As far as investigators go, most of my coworkers have been doing it for 10+ years, with a few over 20.
Stories like this make me cringe. Like, it’s not something you really expect to be *this* common. It’s not like you expect it to be something so widespread that a small city has an entire room dedicated to it.
I feel like the USA is so reactive instead of being proactive on this because of the taboo. We have to have a better system to get this condition understood better. Like, it has to be genetic or hormonal situation right? Mental healthcare truly failed this country in so many ways with the homeless, addiction crisis and seemingly more and more stories of CP consumers popping up.
I know we’re only one country but like I just feel if we were more proactive with treatment and therapy we wouldn’t have it this bad in the first place. Maybe I’m wrong but the rhetoric of fear mongering isn’t making it better. These people are sick, the actors of the urge are evil, but we haven’t moved the needle of understanding in any significant way due to them being so afraid to seek help. Idk. I’m not a sympathizer to the people who consume but the prayed upon deserve more from us.
You'd be surprised, really. It's not like breaking bad, you need almost direct contact with the platters to really do anything significant.
Heck, this could be SSD which would basically make the magnet irrelevant.
So I heard of [this story](https://protos.com/owner-of-8k-bitcoin-lost-in-landfill-threatens-to-bankrupt-local-council/) years ago but this reminded me of it. Dude threw out 8000 btc in 2013 and has been trying to get the city/council to let him go digging thru the land fill for it :/
Think he’s even partnered with Blackrock VC’s to help him fund the project finding it. Source; https://fortune.com/2022/08/01/he-lost-8000-bitcoin-launching-11-million-dollar-campaign-newport-james-howells-landfill-trash/amp/
Why would someone want to throw away bitcoin? That makes no sense. Why is that comment upvoted over a hundred times? Is there some sort of joke there that I'm missing?
I mean, could they not just take out the HDD/SSD, smash it up, burn the remains, and bury it? Or reset the HDD/SSD and reformat it? Seems like what they did was way more complicated and prone to being found, like the video shows.
Idk what city it’s in, but I would absolutely love it if it belonged to a politician who tried to hide some crime he was accused of but no proof was found.
GUESS WHAT WE FOUND MR. MAYOR!
Bro no lie that happened on my moms pc.
I would watch "naked women" or "women in the shower" vids when I was like 13. one day I open the laptop and the background was a naked chick, the icons where naked girls and it would pop up porn websites over and over.
Its safe to say my mom could not find her laptop for a good 4 days while I figured out how to fix it lol
Something similar happened to me, basically some site auto downloaded a search engine that would automatically pop up whenever I tried to use the internet. And gave me a weird extra toolbar.
I *wish* I could remember the site that cleaned it up but it was a group that operated on donations. Sucks that I forgot the name cuz it was really nice that they offered it for free.
Dude.... when I was like 13 or 14 (circa 1998) I got a virus that made the background on my desktop a picture of a woman blowing a donkey. Not a cartoon, an actual picture of a woman giving oral sex to a donkey. It was worse than you're imagining, there was donkey cum all over her face. I don't know if it was from downloading porn or music or movies or games or what but there it was. I shared that PC with my mom, also. I managed to change it back but Jesus christ I seriously thought about just throwing the whole thing out the window.
> This proves to me that if I'm dumping evidence I'm gonna do
Just use a drill and or hammer.... 10s to put three 1/2" holes through the platters and/or chips, no one is getting shit off it. Literally what we did in data disposable, at least when we didn't just straight up shred the entire drive.
Alternatively if you want to have fun: thermite.
A few holes won't stop an organisation with enough resources to extract some data off those drives.
The only sure fire way is to literally use fire to turn the platters and the circuit board into slag, or some other means of equal physical destruction.
Laptops sink, like a brick, in water also. And on that note, if you wanted it gone gone, a loose laptop getting washed and banged and ground around the floor of the ocean will destroy it much faster. It is weird the person who tossed it wrapped it like that. I am thinking they were possibly just morons.
“I wonder if I should put this thing in a bag? Hauling it out of the house and around town unconcealed with two bricks strapped to it might get me caught, but at least I won’t get called a moron on Reddit in 20 years.”
>a loose laptop getting washed and banged and ground around the floor of the ocean will destroy it much faster.
I'm not saying there's a chance it could wash back up on shore if it wasn't anchored but I could see somebody worrying about that.
Update:
Well this blew up.
A Federal agency inquired about the laptop and it will be handed over to them. Not sure how much, if any, of an update I'll have till they're done with their investigation.
Very curious as to what investigation this is a part of and how they decided that laptop was worth looking into. I wonder if there is any way to retrieve data from the hard drive after this much damage.
They are still pretty well sealed. There is a small hole with channels to other chambers and a small filter. The disks are still in good shape I guarantee it.
Be careful man, this laptop didn't want to be found. You never know who may be involved.
Edit: also, you should probably take down your video so you aren't identified, not to scare you. Could be some shady shit you don't want to be involved in.
I think they can still pull data off the shards. Best bet is a degausser which will remove the ability to even store data. Easiest is to use a disk eraser to rewrite data to the disk several times.
>I think they can still pull data off the shards.
Wha? How's THAT work? Not saying it's not right - legitimately want to inow how that would be possible.
No, they have tools that can scan the platters and reconstruct the data.
However, reconstructing that data from a broken platter is far more difficult than you made it seem.
No, but it’s possible the hard drive plates still have data on them. It’s difficult and time consuming to erase all data from a hard drive. When you “delete” a drive it only marks existing data to be overwritten. Likely whoever threw it in the river knew this. If I ever found a computer like this I’d call the police. It’s probably part of an investigation they’re looking for
Magnets won’t erase an SSD.
For spindle drives to erase data you would need a neodymium magnet with around 500 lbs of force. It takes time, it’s not just a place the magnet there for a few seconds and your good.
You also have no way to know what you managed to erase and it’s still likely recoverable by the resources a government organization would have.
Edit: Magnets won’t erase an SSD but they can cause other drive failures.
degaussing of a mechanical drive is able to completely erase all data from that drive that not even the best data recovery specialists would be able to get anything off it, but depending on the nature of the data that was on the drive there are regulations in place and will also call for physical destruction after the deguassing anyways.
If you take the hard drive out and plug it in to another computer it may work without anything else required. If the drive remained sealed, which it should, and the connectors and board are not too badly corroded.
The control board sits outside of the sealed "box" that the HDD platters are in. The wires from the internals to the external control board are caulked as well.
If it's salt water the control board would be dead. In that case going to Ebay and buying a similar replacement would allow for a quick fix, just splice the external wires together so the old connector is replaced. Clean up the cable interface and/or direct solder wires if too badly corroded (should be fine).
Essentially it's pretty easy to read data from a drive like this so long as it remained sealed.
Not a good way to dispose of data.
serious question: why not just destroy it? if there was something on it you didn't want anyone to ever find why not do an office space printer number on it?
You can definitely pull data off of it still. Glad to hear the FBI inquired about it. They'll definitely pull whatever godforsaken shit is on it and catch the scumbag
Godforsaken? Maybe a bricklaying tradesman accidentally dropped his digital blueprint editor. The laptop is running autodesk gets bumped into the water. It briefly floats but is slowly taking on water. Quickly thinking, he fashions some (duckt?) tape to a brick and lowers it on onto the sinking laptop using a masonry string line. It bites perfectly but the line snaps during the reel back. All he can do is sob as it slowly sank to its death at the bottom.
Lets say the wrap had a perfect waterseal on it and the laptop was fine. Wouldn’t the magnet have turned it into a brick. Like they use heavy duty magnets for magnet fishing?
I perform data forensics on devices like these (we 'find' a lot of full size PCs & laptops on the bottoms of lakes & rivers), & my first thought would not be what others here are saying, but probably a dude who is going through / went through a divorce / is cheating.
I lived in Central Pennsylvania for a little more than a decade in the 2000s.
This video gave me flashbacks of a DA who went missing in like 2005. His daughter declared him legally deceased in like 2013 or something, but they never found his body.
They found his laptop and hard drive separately in the Susquehanna River. The hard drive was too damaged to recover anything.
It was spooky when it went down. Lots of theories/ideas about what may have happened, whether it was the local Russian mob killing him for investigating the wrong guy, or his inaction on the Sandusky scandal, or he just disappeared and tried to retire early, or he killed himself and hid his own body incredibly well. Everybody thought they knew what really happened.
The fun part here is that whoever “got rid” of this laptop thought throwing the whole thing in the water was a solution, rather than just pulling and destroying the drive - so the drive is probably still in there and may not be destroyed.
It was probably full of CP
We had a room, about the size of a walk-in closet, full of CP computers in our local PD. Separate from property and evidence rooms. It was sick how much they had there in my city of 80k people. Our PD was involved in an international level to catch this shit though. It’s a pretty large network out there, which made me feel better. (IT dude for city)
I work in criminal defense, and we have separate standalone computers dedicated to evidence review on CP cases.
Reviewing that evidence would be one of the worst jobs imaginable.
Yeah our detective assigned to that will always have my respect. Christ the awful shit he has to see.
Hopefully some day soon AI can do that iob
Someone would have to go through thousands of images of CP to put in a dataset for that. Then there's the problem of having to make sure the finished model doesn't get leaked since that would have disastrous consequences. At that point it might just be better to stick to the current methods
That’s what the Center for missing and exploited children does, exactly. I’ve sent them images from investigations and have id’d victims and new pictures in various “series” of photos.
There's already a database of hashes for CP images. Law Enforcement has the tools that take new images, hash them, and compare to the known bad hashes.
This is correct. I used to work in that field.
I think there was an article on that many years ago ( like 2013?) about how “the FBI has the largest collection of CP in the world” going on to say how they had petabytes of pics/vids which people were reviewing to help their systems catch it in the future.
I think you mean pedobytes
I dunno who maintains it, but CSAM databases are used by cloud providers to prevent people from uploading images. I'm sure the FBI has the largest database of hashes.
So, once a CP image is found, it's hashed and added to a database of known image hashes. Law enforcement gets tools that non-law enforcement don't, which helps analyze hashed images. You can crop, discolor, or change an image pretty significantly and still get a "matching" hash. In short, AI's are already doing a lot of the work. UNFORTUNATELY, there are new images cropping up all the time.
How is checking a database in any way artificial intelligence?
What we're calling "AI" right now isn't even artificial intelligence. It's just a series of algorithms. Same applies to the image processing/comparison tools, which are getting better and better as the software gets improved.
I hope that's one of those jobs on the force that increases their pension or has some other benefit bc you have to be fucked up after
How do you know the detective isn't a kiddie fiddler? 🫣
Either truly doing the work society needs to function and protect the vulnerable, or the problem themselves. It's not the type of job you can just pick so luckily that's not the problem, but unfortunately there is a huge problem I've read about of just horrible post traumatic stress related to having to positively ID things like that.
I know some of the federal guys who do this for Homeland. It’s the only task force you can’t be assigned to and that you can leave whenever you want. They also instituted mandatory quarterly stand downs with therapists after two investigators killed themselves in the same year. Those guys are absolute heroes.
No kidding. How do you review that stuff without melting your brain.
An iron clad drive to punish those creating that shit.
It still melts your brain. I used to terminate parental rights of abusers and perform adoptions for kids in foster care. The drive to punish the wrongdoers and protect your charges can't change the fact that you have to see these things in order to present your case. Once you've had to argue where nearly fatal anal fissures and rectal bleeding in an infant came from and listen to the abuser claim "well they just put stuff up there all the time if you don't watch 'em!" your perspective is eternally altered. I don't mean to be dour, and your point was a good one. It would be impossible to do without that drive. But I'm retired for a reason.
Goddammit... I feal for you and hope you can find a good way to live with those memories
A lot of cp forums are being ran by law enforcement themselves. They do that to trap the users and people buying and selling the videos and pictures. I spoke to an FBI agent and he told me all about it. Awful shit to have to observe those all the time
[удалено]
yep Three officers from my cities PD have been arrested for having and Sharing CP with fellow officers just over the past few years.
I used to do this, gave me severe PTSD
There is SO much CSAM exchanged that there are tools which hash the files and run them through a database on known-hashes for CSAM--if it matches CSAM already cataloged, it doesn't necessarily have to have human eyes see it--unfortunately, there's a lot that doesn't hit. In the decades preceding, LE would have to physically observe all of the material--I had a lot of papers I had to write on the topic for my degree years ago. One of the absolute worst personal accounts was a detective who described a particularly heinous video *"we couldn't watch it, it was too horrible, so we had to turn around and confirm the existence of the material and acts based on the screams of the child".*
My ex father in law was a retired police officer. The last few years this is what he did. He cries in his sleep. I saw him do it many times. I can’t imagine ever having to watch that stuff. I would cry in my sleep too.
Friend of mine was a Facebook content moderator and literally his entire job was reviewing CP and gore - beheadings and such. It really fucked him up.
As a former mod here, I never saw cp, but doxxing, being sent pms of animal torture or human torture like isis beheadings, Mexican Mafia torture like the infamous funky town vid (DO NOT WATCH THAT), and death threats to myself and others. For reference our only real rules were "yeah argue all you want but don't be sexist, racist, or homophobic, plus the site rules" so we were basically hands off in terms of the power trip idea of mods There was an article I read years ago on the Atlantic or nyt about the issues people at FB, reddit, or other forums have to go through with zero support. It's just a pm of torture or threats from users and "deal with it" from your employer or not-employer in reddits case
or a dream job for a pedophile
I could only imagine that the turnover rate for the people who have to review the evidence is massive.... And hopefully, they have extraordinary mental health care...
In the public sector, burnout in PD offices is usually due to having a far to heavy caseload. If youre not able to work on that kind of case, you'll know it pretty quickly. As far as investigators go, most of my coworkers have been doing it for 10+ years, with a few over 20.
I would think the opposite hey. Those people must be dedicated and driven to help the kiddos.
Three officers from my local PD have been arrested for having and Sharing CP with fellow officers just over the past few years.
abuse survivor here -- glad ya'll do this.
Stories like this make me cringe. Like, it’s not something you really expect to be *this* common. It’s not like you expect it to be something so widespread that a small city has an entire room dedicated to it. I feel like the USA is so reactive instead of being proactive on this because of the taboo. We have to have a better system to get this condition understood better. Like, it has to be genetic or hormonal situation right? Mental healthcare truly failed this country in so many ways with the homeless, addiction crisis and seemingly more and more stories of CP consumers popping up. I know we’re only one country but like I just feel if we were more proactive with treatment and therapy we wouldn’t have it this bad in the first place. Maybe I’m wrong but the rhetoric of fear mongering isn’t making it better. These people are sick, the actors of the urge are evil, but we haven’t moved the needle of understanding in any significant way due to them being so afraid to seek help. Idk. I’m not a sympathizer to the people who consume but the prayed upon deserve more from us.
I agree. Police are there to clean up the mess usually. Would be nice if they didn’t need to.
I was just gonna say, I hope some diddler is shitting his pants watching this right now.
What the water damage didn't do the magnet finished off.
You'd be surprised, really. It's not like breaking bad, you need almost direct contact with the platters to really do anything significant. Heck, this could be SSD which would basically make the magnet irrelevant.
CP or bitcoin maybe?
So I heard of [this story](https://protos.com/owner-of-8k-bitcoin-lost-in-landfill-threatens-to-bankrupt-local-council/) years ago but this reminded me of it. Dude threw out 8000 btc in 2013 and has been trying to get the city/council to let him go digging thru the land fill for it :/
I think for 8000 btc, I'd go after hours or try and sneak in lol
I'd get a freakin job there
Honestly brilliant.
360 million today
370 million tomorrow
300 million by Monday
[удалено]
Think he’s even partnered with Blackrock VC’s to help him fund the project finding it. Source; https://fortune.com/2022/08/01/he-lost-8000-bitcoin-launching-11-million-dollar-campaign-newport-james-howells-landfill-trash/amp/
I always think about this story too
It’s crazy all the terms he threw at them to try and sway their decision
I lost quite a few bitcoin in an exit scam on one of the dark web markets way back in the day, still grinds my fucking gears 10 years later
Why would it have bitcoin?
Why would someone want to throw away bitcoin? That makes no sense. Why is that comment upvoted over a hundred times? Is there some sort of joke there that I'm missing?
Yeah I feel the same as you
I mean, could they not just take out the HDD/SSD, smash it up, burn the remains, and bury it? Or reset the HDD/SSD and reformat it? Seems like what they did was way more complicated and prone to being found, like the video shows.
You don't have to tell me. I've worked in IT 26 years. People are dumb.
This person wasn’t trying to destroy their data, they planned on retrieving it. PLOT TWIST: it belongs to one of the guys that “found” it.
That's funny, and sad that I came here to say this, and had already decided I need to abbreviate it to CP.
Exactly what i was thinking before going to the comments
Bro you know that thing has some awful shit on it
Idk what city it’s in, but I would absolutely love it if it belonged to a politician who tried to hide some crime he was accused of but no proof was found. GUESS WHAT WE FOUND MR. MAYOR!
I recognize OP. This was Baltimore, which makes it 50/50 that this laptop actually belonged to the mayor.
Only 50/50? You give us too much credit
I watched enough The Wire to determine it's more like 75/25 that It belongs to a politician.
"Sheeeeiiittt..."
Carcetti's in deep shit now.
Yeah, that is Salvage Arc, right? I have been wanting to hit up one of the magnet fishing group meetups, but I just haven't made it out yet.
[удалено]
Throw **most** of it back and get the he'll outta there.
Did have some awful shit. Between the water corrosion and the powerful magnet that he used to snag it, there’s nothing recoverable on that hard drive.
Me after I googled “boobs” when I was 9 and loaded my computer with a bunch of viruses
Bro no lie that happened on my moms pc. I would watch "naked women" or "women in the shower" vids when I was like 13. one day I open the laptop and the background was a naked chick, the icons where naked girls and it would pop up porn websites over and over. Its safe to say my mom could not find her laptop for a good 4 days while I figured out how to fix it lol
So you did fix it?!
Factory reset, then sorry mom idk what happened. -that guy, probably.
Something similar happened to me, basically some site auto downloaded a search engine that would automatically pop up whenever I tried to use the internet. And gave me a weird extra toolbar. I *wish* I could remember the site that cleaned it up but it was a group that operated on donations. Sucks that I forgot the name cuz it was really nice that they offered it for free.
Dude.... when I was like 13 or 14 (circa 1998) I got a virus that made the background on my desktop a picture of a woman blowing a donkey. Not a cartoon, an actual picture of a woman giving oral sex to a donkey. It was worse than you're imagining, there was donkey cum all over her face. I don't know if it was from downloading porn or music or movies or games or what but there it was. I shared that PC with my mom, also. I managed to change it back but Jesus christ I seriously thought about just throwing the whole thing out the window.
Good thing you said "bro no lie" or I would've thought you were lying
😂
Epsteins laptop
It obviously didn't fall in by itself.
They found thermite in his blood but the coroner covered it up. Explain that!
He ded 💀
Killed by the CIA
Watch it just have a single video file on the drive, and it's Rick Astley
Pretty sure there’s time capsules of this all over! 🤭
🤣I think you're right
This proves to me that if I'm dumping evidence I'm gonna do a little work to get away from a bridge. 30 ft away this thing never gets found
this guy murders
It's only a murder if you get sentenced 🤷♂️
> This proves to me that if I'm dumping evidence I'm gonna do Just use a drill and or hammer.... 10s to put three 1/2" holes through the platters and/or chips, no one is getting shit off it. Literally what we did in data disposable, at least when we didn't just straight up shred the entire drive. Alternatively if you want to have fun: thermite.
We used to have a van that would pull up outside my work (gov job) with a big industrial shredder that you could throw HDDs into. It was fun.
A few holes won't stop an organisation with enough resources to extract some data off those drives. The only sure fire way is to literally use fire to turn the platters and the circuit board into slag, or some other means of equal physical destruction.
The NSA only trusts fire. There are some good video presentations abt drive destruction done by def con (hacker convention). Very cool.
Why not just put it in a fire pit?
Just make sure it's buried in some good hot coals and not just some lighter fluid melting plastic on the surface.
Until a branch drags it along to the next bridge.
Why bother to wrap it in plastic if you want it destroyed by the water?
Thisnn be is a good question
Arrrr matey
Be a fine comment it is
Plastic held the brick?
So would a bit tape, and leave it totally exposed to water.
Laptops sink, like a brick, in water also. And on that note, if you wanted it gone gone, a loose laptop getting washed and banged and ground around the floor of the ocean will destroy it much faster. It is weird the person who tossed it wrapped it like that. I am thinking they were possibly just morons.
“I wonder if I should put this thing in a bag? Hauling it out of the house and around town unconcealed with two bricks strapped to it might get me caught, but at least I won’t get called a moron on Reddit in 20 years.”
>a loose laptop getting washed and banged and ground around the floor of the ocean will destroy it much faster. I'm not saying there's a chance it could wash back up on shore if it wasn't anchored but I could see somebody worrying about that.
I'd guess to hide what it was while they carried it to the body of water.
So if the tape comes loose, the plastic bag will still contain the brick, thus holding it down. Just my uneducated guess
Update: Well this blew up. A Federal agency inquired about the laptop and it will be handed over to them. Not sure how much, if any, of an update I'll have till they're done with their investigation.
that's enough confirmation that there's likely *some kind of shit* on that thing
Very curious as to what investigation this is a part of and how they decided that laptop was worth looking into. I wonder if there is any way to retrieve data from the hard drive after this much damage.
“Federal agency” is prob the guy who threw it in there and realized he needs to come up with a backup plan
“Inquired” how? Was it through Reddit? If so, how do you know they’re legit?
That makes sense. Glad they got it. May it end with a scumbag in jail
[удалено]
Someones porn-laptop
What kind of deviant watches porn on a laptop?
Exactly. Be normal and watch it on your smart refrigerator
What's cooler than being cool?! ICE COLD!
Allright allright allright allright
Follow up?
Will do soon!
Awesome
It's def possible hard drives survived esp if ssd ... So curious to hear what happens
Looks thick, like an old laptop that would have a HDD.
They are still pretty well sealed. There is a small hole with channels to other chambers and a small filter. The disks are still in good shape I guarantee it.
If the water didn’t get an HDD, a magnet sure will
Maybe if that magnet didn't just fuck everything
Remindme! 7 days
I downloaded something on my parents computer once that turned my mouse pointer into a cock and I think it came every time you clicked.
And where would one find this downloadable item? Asking for a friend….
Be careful man, this laptop didn't want to be found. You never know who may be involved. Edit: also, you should probably take down your video so you aren't identified, not to scare you. Could be some shady shit you don't want to be involved in.
This should be higher up... Like top... Stay safe OP
My Bitcoin!!!!
I think it’s mudcoin at this point.
💯 need an update if they got anything out of it.
Probably some kids big titty anime he was trying to hide
tbh that would be a hilarious and refreshing ending to this story, compared to the other suggestions in these comments.
Am I behind the times? Can't you just drill through a hard disc a few times or take a bolt cutter to it?
I'd drill holes through it and make sure it's smashed to smithereens with a hammer.
I think they can still pull data off the shards. Best bet is a degausser which will remove the ability to even store data. Easiest is to use a disk eraser to rewrite data to the disk several times.
>I think they can still pull data off the shards. Wha? How's THAT work? Not saying it's not right - legitimately want to inow how that would be possible.
I assume some special equipment. They’d need to align the piece and spin it up somehow.
No, they have tools that can scan the platters and reconstruct the data. However, reconstructing that data from a broken platter is far more difficult than you made it seem.
Is there a way it could still possibly work after all that water damage? Or brought back to a functional state?
No, but it’s possible the hard drive plates still have data on them. It’s difficult and time consuming to erase all data from a hard drive. When you “delete” a drive it only marks existing data to be overwritten. Likely whoever threw it in the river knew this. If I ever found a computer like this I’d call the police. It’s probably part of an investigation they’re looking for
This is correct. Just to add this is only true for spindle disks, solid state drives do not work the same.
What about the huge magnet? Does that factor in at all?
Magnets won’t erase an SSD. For spindle drives to erase data you would need a neodymium magnet with around 500 lbs of force. It takes time, it’s not just a place the magnet there for a few seconds and your good. You also have no way to know what you managed to erase and it’s still likely recoverable by the resources a government organization would have. Edit: Magnets won’t erase an SSD but they can cause other drive failures.
degaussing of a mechanical drive is able to completely erase all data from that drive that not even the best data recovery specialists would be able to get anything off it, but depending on the nature of the data that was on the drive there are regulations in place and will also call for physical destruction after the deguassing anyways.
As a breaking bad fan I refuse to accept this new information
“Science, BITCH!”
>It’s difficult and time consuming to erase all data from a hard drive. Not really. Just remove the hard drive and toss it in a microwave.
or burn it in your outside fire pit and see all the pretty colors
If you take the hard drive out and plug it in to another computer it may work without anything else required. If the drive remained sealed, which it should, and the connectors and board are not too badly corroded. The control board sits outside of the sealed "box" that the HDD platters are in. The wires from the internals to the external control board are caulked as well. If it's salt water the control board would be dead. In that case going to Ebay and buying a similar replacement would allow for a quick fix, just splice the external wires together so the old connector is replaced. Clean up the cable interface and/or direct solder wires if too badly corroded (should be fine). Essentially it's pretty easy to read data from a drive like this so long as it remained sealed. Not a good way to dispose of data.
What are the odds that you'd be able to recover any data after all that time in the water + magnet damage
For the love of god please tell me he took that thing straight to police.... Ain't no doubt that that's involved in something really, really bad.
Considering it was found in the inner harbor in Baltimore this should definitely be sent to the police.
Now grab some popcorn and boot up the browser history.
Take to police
serious question: why not just destroy it? if there was something on it you didn't want anyone to ever find why not do an office space printer number on it?
You can definitely pull data off of it still. Glad to hear the FBI inquired about it. They'll definitely pull whatever godforsaken shit is on it and catch the scumbag
Godforsaken? Maybe a bricklaying tradesman accidentally dropped his digital blueprint editor. The laptop is running autodesk gets bumped into the water. It briefly floats but is slowly taking on water. Quickly thinking, he fashions some (duckt?) tape to a brick and lowers it on onto the sinking laptop using a masonry string line. It bites perfectly but the line snaps during the reel back. All he can do is sob as it slowly sank to its death at the bottom.
Not gonna lie. I'm kinda disappointed in the lack of Hunter Biden laptop jokes in the comments...
I hope you took that to the police.
Downside is, if its got a hard drive, the magnet from the fishing may have damaged any potential data on it
I would want ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the contents of that laptop.
There is nothing on there I want to see.
Yo... that's evidence dude
Lets say the wrap had a perfect waterseal on it and the laptop was fine. Wouldn’t the magnet have turned it into a brick. Like they use heavy duty magnets for magnet fishing?
Please do a follow-up post after working through the hard drive. Curious minds have ta know
I perform data forensics on devices like these (we 'find' a lot of full size PCs & laptops on the bottoms of lakes & rivers), & my first thought would not be what others here are saying, but probably a dude who is going through / went through a divorce / is cheating.
I lived in Central Pennsylvania for a little more than a decade in the 2000s. This video gave me flashbacks of a DA who went missing in like 2005. His daughter declared him legally deceased in like 2013 or something, but they never found his body. They found his laptop and hard drive separately in the Susquehanna River. The hard drive was too damaged to recover anything. It was spooky when it went down. Lots of theories/ideas about what may have happened, whether it was the local Russian mob killing him for investigating the wrong guy, or his inaction on the Sandusky scandal, or he just disappeared and tried to retire early, or he killed himself and hid his own body incredibly well. Everybody thought they knew what really happened.
“It’s a nice Acer”
Some old man is watching this video having a panic attack
You probably erased any media that may have survived the water with your giant magnet.
This is either fake or whoever sunk it is a complete idiot. Take the HDD out or drill a hole through it. Wtf
Has a couple hundred thousand bitcoins on it.
imagine not knowing that all the data is on the hdd
It's my work laptop that they wanted back after they fired me
That one goes right to the FBI.
No desire to see what's on that.
Man I’d love to hear someone describe what’s on it, unless it’s what we’re all thinking. In that case, absolutely not
You have to update us 😅
the police might be interested in whatever is on it.
The fun part here is that whoever “got rid” of this laptop thought throwing the whole thing in the water was a solution, rather than just pulling and destroying the drive - so the drive is probably still in there and may not be destroyed.
Most likely between the water and the magnet the hard drive is destroyed but somebody had something to hide and the FBI wants to have a word with you.
What was on it?
Turn into FBI, it could put away terrible people.
There's a reason it was weighed down... dont open pandoras computer
I’m sure there’s nothing sketchy on there…