[Enchante]

Nothing more nefarious than that? They could have changed/inserted any kind of “evidence” to affect ongoing legal proceedings.

[Gene Eric]

I’m only speaking to the different serial #s.

[Axenolith]

That would be encrypted/compressed and hidden with some type of Trojan to unencrypt it and decompress it X months later as a hidden directory of kiddie porn or the account info to a couple hundred thousand in “untaxed income” to destroy the owners life.

Seriously, government officials who are clearly caught doing this should get the death penalty. It would behoove even the most innocent and unobtrusive citizen to record the serials of all major hardware components in computers they own as a defense to this type of subversion.

[Garth Tater]

There must have been something damned incriminating on that drive for the feds to take the risk of swapping it out.

If Sharyl's forensic team recorded the drive's serial number before they originally turned it over I wonder if they made a complete bitwise copy of the drive's internals also.

I bet the feds are wondering the exact same thing now that their evidence tampering has been exposed.