

You Can Be Prosecuted for Clearing Your Browser History - denzil_correa
http://www.thenation.com/article/208593/you-can-be-prosecuted-clearing-your-browser-history#

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scintill76
Time to disable browser history altogether? Is storing things like that on a
ramdisk considered destroying evidence when you power down?

Part of David Kernell's charge was defragmenting his hard drive! Seems a
stretch since it's a legitimate maintenance task, or was more commonly useful
in 2008. Hopefully they gave a decent argument that it was done with intent,
and didn't just bamboozle the jury.

Considering that every second a computer is on, it's potentially losing
forensic data, I guess they just want you to call the police immediately after
doing anything on your computer that may have been illegal. But it's not self-
incrimination!

It's also interesting that in that case, they caught a break in the form of
malware that happened to log Kernell's activity.[1] It was "designed to
collect a lot of different data (including) banking and finance data" \-- but
somehow I have a feeling they didn't lift a finger to prosecute that crime.
Maybe they would if it embarrassed a Presidential candidate.

[1] [http://www.knoxnews.com/news/local-news/fbi-kernell-tried-
to...](http://www.knoxnews.com/news/local-news/fbi-kernell-tried-to-destroy-
proof-of-e-mail)

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xyzzy123
So the thing is that when people do computer forensics, anti-forensics actions
stand out clear as day on the machine and it does come up in a lot of cases.
If you have some activity on a windows machine you want to hide, your best
course of action is really to destroy the drive.

I think the feds essentially want to be able to "use" evidence of anti-
forensics in court. This is actually reasonable, but the legal theory they're
trying to do that with doesn't seem very suitable.

While genuine signs of anti-forensics should be admissible as evidence, it's
hard to see how "destroying records" on a private computer (not for business
use / at work) should be an actual _crime_ , in and of itself. Also, "clearing
browser history" as anti-forensics is seriously a reach. I do wonder if there
were other actions taken (over and above clearing browser history) that
weren't mentioned in the article.

