Police get points for catching motorists N!rmpbcBiyXn8GRV.z60~gpz0J#a0P_LaB.sV

I was at yet aother security-forensic conference recently. One speaker ranting on about the "great strides in forensic examination of hard disks" made by his company was quizzed over what crimes their software was actually used to detect. Not too surprisingly the overwhelming use made is to detect the sigs of WAREZ and PRON on the seized HDD. Err and that's it.

After a bit of pushing he did admit that the only use made of his software was "the soft underbelly of crime". It's easy to lock up perverts and fine the parents of middle-clbutt teenagers, the effort involved in detecting serious crime is such that law enforcement agencies can't be arsed to do it.

FWIW, Dom tracked down a phishing scam not long ago, with sufficient evidence to lead to a conviction. He forwarded it to all the appropriate people, not one police force in the UK could be arsed to follow it up. Their "High Tech" crime investigators are all too busy pretending to be 14 year old school girls on IRC, offerign to swap WAREZ with teenage boys and offering to exchange love with dirty old men to be bothered with that sort of crime. -- "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

-- Benjamin Franklin, 1759