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DEA Gets Lawsuit Dismissed Because It Couldn't Cope With Two Terabytes Of Evidence
from the the-cost-of-storage-these-days dept
Catching up on some older stories, Aaron DeOliveira points us to the bizarre news that the DEA sought (and got) dismissal of a case against someone involved in a online pharmacy prescription drug scam (basically prescribing the drugs without ever seeing the patients) because the DEA was sick of storing all of the evidence, both electronic and paper. How much evidence?
As Scott Greenfield noted in the link above:
More than 400,000 documents and two terabytes of electronic data that federal authorities say is expensive to maintain....None of this makes much sense. You can pick up a two-terabyte drive for a little over $100 (I was just looking to pick up a couple for a backup system). The fact that it can store 2 million novels is meaningless. The idea that it's expensive to store that much seems silly -- as does the claim that 2 terabytes represents 5% of the DEA's "worldwide electronic storage." I recognize that government procurement is a ridiculous process, but if there's any truth to this, then the DEA is even more dysfunctional than originally believed.
[....] "Continued storage of these materials is difficult and expensive," wrote Stephanie Rose, the U.S. attorney for northern Iowa. She called the task "an economic and practical hardship" for the Drug Enforcement Administration....
[....] The evidence took up 5 percent of the DEA's worldwide electronic storage. Agents had also kept several hundred boxes of paper containing 440,000 documents, plus dozens of computers, servers and other bulky items.
Two terabytes is enough to store the text of 2 million novels, or roughly 625,000 copies of "War and Peace."
As Scott Greenfield noted in the link above:
The revelations from this motion, if true, are amazing and appalling. Given the scope of electronic data involves in investigations, the claim that two terabytes constitutes five percent of the DEA's storage capacity is laughable. It suggests that they're screwing with us, and have no ability to do 90% of the things they claim or we fear they're up to.
Indeed, while we worry about their creating mirror images of hard drives of thousands of computers, or obtaining digital evidence from hundreds of thousands of cellphones, this isn't conceivably possible if the total storage capacity of the DEA is 40 terabytes. It just can't be.
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Though, I doubt we'll hear any complaints from them.
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Huh?
Not sure what to make of that lie except to think that they just got bored with the case. Maybe it is just not as sexy or fun as sending guns to Mexico.
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Apparently the Library of Congress is far more capable than the DEA.
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OJ's lawyers were right!
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That is great news...
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A two-terabyte drive might cost private consumers a little over $100 but by my calculations it would cost the tax payers roughly $3.8 billion.
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That is, IIRC (if I recall correctly).
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Given it's the DoJ, who knows what truth there is anymore.
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If this show has taught us anything, it's that the DEA is utterly incompetent.
Walt and crew are as irresponsible and careless as drug kingpins could be, and the DEA don't even a clue.
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Re:
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Chain of custody
Think this through a little before making it an economic argument. The economics is a cost of preserving a chain of custody and a level of auditing.
-C
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It has much to do with how they store it
Still not necessarily into serious money, assuming they had the capacity to begin with. Now, one other consideration would be if they had the forensic tool and storage capacity at all, and there are third-parties that have forensic capabilities that can be made available via outsourcing, which is paid for by the seat, and sometimes even by the minute of use.
So I can't go into tremendous detail but the technologies necessary to make large amounts of stored information available for forensic analysis is not easily scaled and usually expensive given the laws, policies, and procedures involved.
Remember too that they also have to make the information/tools available to the defense as well.
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Re: Chain of custody
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Legacy systems at DEA
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Your right, they probably get a GSA discount!
You dont need a RAID array to store 2TB, you may want the RAID array for backup / redundant purposes (see Lord Blinky's post above), Also "Off Site Data Centers" would seem to pose chain of custody problems with the evidence. I don't remember police being able to trust random 3rd parties with evidence.
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Re: Chain of custody
It doesn't take only 2 TB of storage to preserve the info. B/c it's critical evidence for an investigation, it needs to be backed up (probably multiple times), and chain of custody maintained, and other administrative hurdles that normal data storage isn't concerned with.
The physical storage costs of 400k documents is also high.
It's even worse when you consider the suspect has left the country and knows he's under investigation. You're not likely to ever be able to prosecute him, so why bother? Why spend the money for an investigation/case that is basically dead?
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And yet the NSA is spending billions on a data collection and storage center in Utah.
Perhaps the DEA should outsource?
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Ask Google
So that's 100TB of space for free. Well sorta, Google is willing to foot the bill.
Oh and they could all get hotmail accounts too, for another 100TB or so of storage.
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Bottom line...
They apparently told the Court, under oath, that 40TB was their maximum worldwide storage capacity. That represents either a massive lie, or unmitigated incompetence, or both.
(Or, perhaps the 40TB just represents what's left when not accounting all the downloaded porn on DEA servers.)
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Re: Ask Google
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Still, that's really disturbing behaviour on the part of DoJ.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120406/12172918409/megaupload-points-out-that-feds-want-to- destroy-relevant-evidence-its-case.shtml
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But, if the alternative is to dismiss the case entirely, surely it would be reasonable to expect them to spend $200 (OK, let's call it $1,000 once you factor in overhead & labor) on a readily available consumer rig as an emergency temporary measure instead.
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Re: Chain of custody
Simple: you don't leave it sitting unsecured on someone's desk. You lock the drives up in the evidence locker with the rest of the physical evidence.
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Re: It has much to do with how they store it
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Re: Chain of custody
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Re: Re: Chain of custody
Encrypt the data, and you can even safely store the encrypted data with a 3rd party.
Who cares about where the data's been or when it may have been copied if no one can read it?
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Off Site Datacenters are for things like power failures, hardware outages, or disaster protection from things like fires or floods. If you lose your server room, do you lose all your evidence? The alternative is an off site tape storage center, but in the end, its the same thing only slower.
You really do need these things.
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Questions and more
My governemnet spends US$800 Billion in an "economic stimulus" package to bail out banks and failing companies who just spent said money on more CEO bonuses (General Motors being the exception), and yet we cannot even remotely spend that same amount appropriating those funds towards any of our normal agencies that actually have a job to do?
I don't think the DEA is entirely to blame here....
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Re: It has much to do with how they store it
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"The Internet Archive contains about 5.8 petabytes of data as of December 2010. It was growing at the rate of about 100 terabytes per month in March 2009."
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Doesn't mean it isn't doable but the jobs are different...
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Re: Re: Ask Google
"I realize you're joking, but that storage and the management of that storage would have to be certified against forensics standards, which they have not been."
How I think you could have put it if you didn't mean data:
**I realize you're joking, but that storage, and the management/maintenance thereof, would have to be certified against forensics standards, which they have not been.**
How I think you may have meant but not sure:
**I realize you're joking, but the storage and management of the data would have to be certified against forensics standards, which they have not been.**
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Re: Re: Re: Chain of custody
Could you locate hard disk if someone stole it physically?
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Re: Re: Ask Google
ICE gets millions to enforce IP laws, so why is the DEA having problems storing a few TB of evidence. Personally I would rather the DEA get more funding for data storage than ICE for IP enforcement.
Maybe the DEA should ask the NSA for some extra storage space.
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Re: Re: Ask Google
ICE gets millions to enforce IP laws, so why is the DEA having problems storing a few TB of evidence. Personally I would rather the DEA get more funding for data storage than ICE for IP enforcement.
Maybe the DEA should ask the NSA for some extra storage space.
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Re: Legacy systems at DEA
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Re: Bottom line...
Harsh, but it got my funny vote ^_^
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Re: Bottom line...
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At least not everything was dismissed
Given this, I'll forgive them for dropping the charges in one particular case. Why even bother spending the extra $100 to hold the evidence if you have better things to go after him for if he ever DOES return to the US?
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Re: Bottom line...
In which case, it's a perfectly valid statement and an unsurprising one.
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Re: At least not everything was dismissed
So what are they going to do? Pay for and sit on a ton of evidence that will never be used?
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Re: Huh?
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If the DEA can't cough up for 4 times that... honestly, I can't think of anything. The cognitive dissonance has exceeded the capacity of my brain's paradox-absorbing crumple zones.
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no, let me educate you.
The hammer was going to be used around loaded oxygen tanks, and sparking was not an option, so it had to be a custom hammer that no one made.
The toilet seat works in space.
Also government property regulations require the inclusion of the total cost, including the time of the purchasing agent, receiving, et cetera. It's really not that hard to get to those numbers when you consider those factors.
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The Cost IS Prohibative
I guess that amount does make the case not worth going all the way.
Makes sense to me.
Its funny how people not in the know, can take things way out of context.
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They already have 2TB, I bet
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http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1499&dat=19860213&id=6DcdAAAAIBAJ&sjid= YSoEAAAAIBAJ&pg=1941,5356425
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I think I'll apply Occam's Razor here
A) A large, supposedly very heavily funded* government agency has drastically less storage capacity than even a moderately tech savvy civilian.
OR
B) After looking through what evidence they had, they realized that they didn't actually have enough to go after the people/persons in question, and just dropped the case, citing technical reason instead of lack of evidence so they didn't look stupid.
And a small side possibility:
B1) They looked at the evidence they had, saw they didn't have enough to make a case, then looked at the laws currently in place and realized it didn't matter, and dropped the case to try and trick the person/people into range where they could nab them anyway.
*Actually, thinking about it, their budget could indeed have been brutalized that much, as these days going after actual criminals seems to be prioritized much less than going after those committing imaginary property crimes.
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Re: The Cost IS Prohibative
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Lets just say that (presses broadcast button)
"The case will require" (puts pinky on mouth) "TWO TERABYTES!!!!!"
Response: "HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!! Even your average Joe Blow these days has much more than that."
Rep: "TWO BILLION TERRABYTES!!!!!"
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Re: Re: Re: Ask Google
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Re: Re: It has much to do with how they store it
Even then, there is still significant overhead to meet forensic standards, but it would not be orders of magnitude greater.
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I CALL BULLSHIT!
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