If any file is shredded using the Gutman method, it means that here has been 35 passes with miscellaneous data used to overwrite the file.

That file will not show up as a CP file. It is gone. It has been written over.

rewdiazepam

I have watched this thread a while and being a retired IT guy I have a different angle.We all know that downloading music you didn't buy is illegal and thus the untrusted sites. Most if not all of these sites do other illegal things as well such as CP. Piggy-Backing files is easy!

1st clue that you shouldn't trust the site is if it requires a "Down loader" to control the downloading process. (nothing is ever free!) You have no idea what's inside of the "Down Loader" and it can download anything it wants. Most of these down loaders download (in Windows) to a TEMP location with a *.TMP extension so windows does not know what kind of file it is. Only the down loader program knows. This is also a favorite way viruses are downloaded.The down loader shows you the desired file you expected while leaving behind the CP in the TMP location unknown to you. These down loaders also install servers so they can operate without your knowledge (You are now infected!) and can continue to move these files to any multitude of other infected PCs

Programs like Limewire open multiple ports allowing many more infections and it snow balls from there.

To protect yourself use a reputable anti-virus/firewall. (Windows essential and firewall is probably the worse choice because it's attacked the most. I use Comodo Security (http://tinyurl.com/o3l8sms) the free version works well and will alert you of any unauthorized programs or ports.

Check your router configuration at www.grc.com. (Port scan called Shields-Up - free)

Another program I use is "Eraser" at http://eraser.heidi.ie/ (free) It integrated into windows file explorer as well as Windows recycle bin and also incorporates DOD erasure standards. Erase a file at a time or erase all free space.

Anyone who has further question please feel free sending me a PM and I'll be happy to provide more details....

Easter Eggs aren't unique to computer programs. They also occur in movies, music, art, books and other creations - but it's in computer software that they have achieved their greatest notoriety. An Easter Egg may be as simple as a message hidden in the object code of a program as a joke, meant to be discovered by people disassembling or browsing the code. More often, it's a graphic or sound effect produced by a program that's intended either as a joke or to display program credits.

It would appear that many programmers' desire for professional recognition - or even cultlike immortality of a sort - isn't being adequately satisfied by their employers, because most of the Easter Eggs that have been documented are in some way tied to a hidden list of credits. These usually present the names and occasionally pictures of the program's developers, often with animatio

Sorry.. I forgot the link to that info:

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2597221/app-development/easter-eggs.html

By Russell Kay

FWIW: I paid for 2 sets of forensics which proved the couple my son saw, and the 1 he never opened were accidentally downloaded.
When they first trashed my son's home they said forensics never lie and it's all about forensics, but at sentencing the prosecutor said that forensics are nice but we have to put that aside and show that they're tough on this crime. And the judge agreed.

But I am glad I have those forensics reports because I'm hoping we can use them someday, some how.

Here is what bothers me in these CP cases.

Many times we have a young man, who, for whatever reason is found to have only a handful of illegal images on his hard drive. They could have been downloaded when he did a mass download of many files and he did not pay attention to exactly what he was downloading---and a few of the files were underage kids. Or the files could have been misnamed but had the same hash value as a known CP image. Remember, the government identifies CP by hash values, not names.

They raid the house, act like thugs, scare the hell out of everyone, draw their weapons, tear the house up, and take all the digital devices. This John Wayne approach is appalling at best.

The forensic examination by the computer specialist yields only few images on the drive.

Now common sense would tell anyone that this person is not a serious collector or is not involved in the CP scene. If he was he would have many more images and/or videos, they would probably be arranged in some kind of organized fashion in folders, and they would have been opened and re-opened several times as he watches the videos or looks at the images.

Yet, knowing he is not a hardened CP addict, they throw the book at him and show no mercy. It does not matter to them how the CP got there; the fact that they are there makes him a monster in their eyes.

In most cases, he will have to serve time in prison.

Wouldn't it be much easier---and more beneficial to society---to charge him with a misdemeanor and order him to go to counseling or therapy for a year or so instead of sending him to prison where he will get no help at all? Sure it would. The cost of housing an inmate is anywhere between $30,000 to $40,000, so there is a substantial cost to the taxpayers.

Now that this country is proud that they have made him a sex offender and he has to register, he cannot find a job. Not only is the country losing him as a source for tax revenue----sales tax, state taxes, and federal income taxes---- he also has to ask for public assistance for him and his family, if he has one. Food stamps, welfare assistance, housing, and many other expenses have to be incurred by the government just so they could extract their last pound of flesh on a young man who is not a collector and not a threat to anyone.

To make matters even worse, when they do a forensic exam of a hard drive, they may find images that have been deleted. Has anyone ever stopped to think that if the images were deleted, then the person is no longer looking at them? A collector or a downloader with sick fantasies would not delete the same files he was using for sexual gratification!!!!!!!!! No, he would cherish those images and look at them time and time again.

So the government ruins the life of a young man and his family. In Nak's case she has spent $200,000 to try to prove his innocence, but they won't allow anyone to ever prove their innocence. Nak is not rich, but they don't mind draining a devoted mother dry just so they can get their conviction and satisfy their unhealthy lusts.

Now before someone reads this and thinks that I am advocating not doing anything if they find CP on a computer, you are wrong. I am perplexed at the harshness of the sentence and the lengths the government will to go get a conviction.

These radical sentences with prison time just take my breath away at times.

Does this make any sense? No, but the American criminal justice system makes no sense.

The American criminal justice system has nothing to do with guilt or innocence. Common sense would tell it does, but it doesn't. It is merely an adversarial system in which two players---the state or government and the defense----see who can get their story across the best to a jury or a judge.

I doubt if the prosecutor even cares who does or does not look at CP from a moral standpoint; he just wants a conviction to make it look good for him at the next election.

By the same token, most defense attorney don't even care----and some don't want to know---if their client is guilty. Their goal is just to hold the state's feet to the fire and make the government prove his client is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. They will not knowingly put a guilty man on the witness stand as they would be suborning perjury, which is illegal, but other than that, most don't care.

And the defendant's family is the one that gets chew up in all this.

God Bless America,

rewdiazepzam

They didn't even get to their forensics to find that there were only 3 cp among 2300+ videos. When they had my son handcuffed, and brought to their squad car as the neighbors watched. When they asked my son how many cp he had he said 2 or 3. They told my son that they had a list of 2000+ and then the audio went silent. I could hear the conflict in the Feds voices and then after aminute of small grunts they pushed on.
They knew then and could have stopped. But they couldn't
At this point they spend $$$ survailence of my son's home in the past 2 or 3 weeks plus the 11 ICE agents fully geared. There was no way they were going to uncuff him and walk away.

good one Rew, truthful and straight to the point!!!

Free, the friend that i had repair and clean my old laptop works on computers. he repairs, rebuilds and whatever else.... he knew/knows of the situation and has assured me that "if" anything questionable was on my old laptop that it's not clean. that there's no way that for any reason anyone can pull up or read anything that 'was' on it.

i don't have the money to totally replace the hard drive on that laptop. even if i'm not using it? at least i have it if this one dies on me.

i am using a malware program and comodo, both are the paid for versions. there have been a number of times that one or the other has alerted/stopped a program or a download i was doing. have no idea what either of them alerted on but i sure the heck didn't try any kind of an over-ride!!!!

Echo.... Think of a hard drive like a chalkboard. Write something on it then erase it. You can still see something of what you wrote. Now take the chalk sideways and run it all over the entire board. Now it's very difficult to see what you originally wrote.

Using "Eraser" it over writes free space with random characters. The more times the harder it is to see what was there.

When you delete something from a hard drive all it does if tell the hard drive that the space that was used is available for use (the data is still there!) When you format a hard drive all your doing is telling the hard drive that the total space is available (the data is still there!) Over writing the data several times makes that data unreadable and thus gone.-

Rew, your perspective about how minor offenses should be charged with a lesser crime is correct. Serious collectors do so much to hide what they are doing, not only in how they download it, but how they store the information, based on the cases I have read.

Nak - you are correct, they had so much invested they had no choice but to go forward. Of course, because they found evidence of a felony, no matter how minimal, they had to arrest your son. I remember reading about your son's case when it happened.

Echo - if you ever need a hard drive, PM me.

i'll do that Brain. but like i said he assured me that if there had been anything there that it was totally gone, unfindable/unreadable when he was done.

Technically, the federal statutes give someone a valid defense whenever they accidentally download CP:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1466A

(e) Affirmative Defense.— It shall be an affirmative defense to a charge of violating subsection (b) that the defendant—
(1) possessed less than 3 such visual depictions; and
(2) promptly and in good faith, and without retaining or allowing any person, other than a law enforcement agency, to access any such visual depiction—
(A) took reasonable steps to destroy each such visual depiction; or
(B) reported the matter to a law enforcement agency and afforded that agency access to each such visual depiction.

By the way, it is not uncommon for websites to do a "redirect" when you click on a link. You are on page A and want to go to page B, but you click the link to page B and the site instead redirects you to page C. Lots of legitimate sites do that-- for example, you go to a news site and you click a link but instead of going directly to the next article, you get an notice you will go to the ad in 30 seconds but first look at this ad from our sponsors.

I think that is how people legitimately and accidentally download CP without their knowledge.

There are lots of other ways too, but that's just one example.

And yes, there are people willing to set people up online for the "lulz" (a laugh at your expense).

unfortunately for people trying to use the Affirmative Defense, they count 1 video=25 images. And most people who spend time looking at internet porn download way more than 3 images at a time.