Also, lol @ how nobody sees any issue with a shop owner allegedly browsing & opening their customers' files.

I said early on I'm curious what the laws are here
His excuse is that he claims a legal right of forfeiture after the owner failed to claim or pay for the services after months of neglect
I still don't see how even if that could plausibly give ownership of the physical medium, it could allow for invasion of the private information.
Nonetheless, the FBI seized the laptop via subpoena anyway, so its largely a moot issue- he is at worst just doing the same leaking of private materials that has been the basis for virtually all F5-o-clock stories by the NYT and WaPo over the past few years

From what I understand, the FBI seized the laptop because of what the store owner brought to light. This means that the whole investigation stems from a breach of privacy.
These procedures exist for good reasons. Theoretically, this store owner (who has no affiliation with the FBI) could have meddled with the data before reporting it. This possibility alone makes the evidence entirely invalid.

Which would have been detectable. I mean, they're digitally signed emails from the gmail server, no?
As per the previous posts- digital manipulation, or at least the addition of hoax materials, is actually really hard to pull off without being detected. Fabricating emails or pictures or videos is an extremely difficult task
Although the selective deletion of materials is easier

This post was edited by Goomshill on Oct 16 2020 04:26am

Nobody cares about privacy here anymore than they would on Trump's tax returns, Clinton's emails, or scandalous news about any politician. What matters to us is what the information alleges. The crime / non-crime of an irrelevant shop owner is completely beneath public notice.

If we learned that Trump was secretly selling out the country to the Chinese, we'd be calling for his head, whether or not the recording was obtained illegally. And for good reason, how we come by information doesn't matter to us when evaluating matters of public concern.

Democrats would be calling for his head, and Republicans would be denying or downplaying the allegations. Let's not pretend that what you're saying is hypothetical.



Whoosh.

This is the weakest excuse.

Why is the Vice President’s son committing illegal activity and leaving the evidence on a laptop?

when i was setting up D2 bots in like 2012 i stopped at a computer store to ask if i could buy any old hard drives, my desktop had a shit load of ports and i just collected old drives, installed nothing but d2, and ran the bots. the guy looked at me like i was insane, said no way could he sell and old customer hard drive even if he wiped it.

so instead i started installing them on 8gb flash drives all plugged into a multi port. could bot literally anywhere i went.

I fully agree in principle, I just think that the execution would be tricky. As long as these companies are publicly listed, there would be a big danger of them being taken over by gigantic Chinese or Arab funds. Essentially, the way stock markets work right now, size is the only effective protection against hostile takeovers.

And then there's also the problem that social media has a strong inherent tendency toward monopolies.

Thank you for admitting your hypocrisy.

For my part, no, I don't care where the information comes from. What's important is what happened.