Photo Credit: Kathy Borchers/The Providence Journal
Posted on 07/11/2014 12:38:01 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Rhode Island has become the second state in the nation to have a police dog trained to sniff out hard drives, thumb drives and other technological gadgets. Why? Police are looking for storage devices that could contain child pornography. The dog, Thoreau, already appears to be up for the task as he assisted in his first search warrant search in June 2014 and found a USB thumb drive containing child pornography hidden four layers deep in a tin box inside a metal cabinet. Police will be able to use the storage drive finding dog on tough child porn cases where the criminals are trading images face to face instead of online.
Connecticut State Police say they began the program that trained Thoreau a few years ago in an effort to aid their increasingly busy Computer Crimes Investigative Unit. Thoreau reportedly attended 22 weeks of training in Connecticut to learn to detect computer devices. It appears that the highly trained pooch can sniff out the scent of metal and components commonly used in storage devices.
Move aside arson dogs, bomb dogs, narcotics dogs, cadaver dogs as there is a new dog in town and this one catches pedophiles!
Photo Credit: Kathy Borchers/The Providence Journal
Now if I could only train my dog to find my keys and glasses.
Boy do we have a job for this dog..
Send the dogs in to the IRS.
Yeah..at the IRS HQ.
fyi
Send some of those dogs over to Lerner’s basement!
Wow! Impressive. Wonder if they have to fight the urge to shoot since it's THEIR dog.
It's.....Data Dog!
So pervs just need to hide an empty USB drive or flash card for misdirection?
“It appears that the highly trained pooch can sniff out the scent of metal and components commonly used in storage devices.”
Bull. He still would not be able to discriminate between the thousands of things made of the same combo of materials.
Better still, buy a few dozen (or hundred) small obsolete used flash drives, hard drives, etc., on eBay or Craig's List, fill them with innocuous data, and salt them around your house.
What a stupid idea.
Ernie, one can imagine what was on that thumb drive shell when it was removed from the computer and placed in a case within a case within a case. Doggies do have a great sense of smell. I suspect it’s a scent they have picked-up on many times from bedsheets, bedclothes, bodies, and etc. Don’t want to be too specific.
No, the dog is specially trained only to detect just the one child porn containing flash drive the police officer carries with him and "drops" at the scene, for the dog to "find"...
Don't even think about putting catz to work.
BS...
Some bacon, maybe? Or hide a USB stick full of stuff downloaded from WhiteHouse.gov and the DNC website. Now THERE’S some offensive digital material.
Not quite empty —
Helen Thomas and Nancy Pelosi
“So pervs just need to hide an empty USB drive or flash card for misdirection?”
A recent SCOTUS decision stated that an “alert” from a dog is probable cause. So a dog trained to alert on some action of his handler gives the cops probable cause to search you. I doubt that there is a significant signature from a thumb drive that would stand out in an auto, given that most of the car interior is made of the same materials.
This means that if the dog is there they can search your car and take any and all digital media, since Fido sniffed your car.
Remember the courts just decided that the cops need probable cause and a warrant before they can search the information (like the memory card) in your phone. The dog is probable cause.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.