Hack My Son’s Computer, Please

If you lived with your folks and were involved with illegal activities, should the police have the right to bypass your computers password in order to find evidence? In this particular case, the investigators took it upon themselves to do just that.

The suspect was not at home. However, his 91-year-old father answered the door in his pajamas, invited the agents in, and eventually gave them permission to enter his son’s bedroom and search the hard drive on his son’s password-protected computer. The agents used EnCase to perform the search, a common forensic tool programmed to ignore Windows logon passwords. Agents found child pornography on the computer.

First off, this son in question should be thrown behind bars for a while in my opinion. Child pornography is a massive no-no. That aside, I don’t believe it’s right for investigators to be able to have the ability to break into your computer in search of evidence, without a warrant.

What makes all of this worse is the fact that this son was not even home at the time. Had he been there, he could have granted a search, or turned it away as well. The fact that they caught this guy with child porn is fantastic, but the utter lack of respect for privacy is appalling.

Source: Wired