What Could a DOJ Person Do With This?

[MineralMan]

It's a 1TB USB memory stick. Costs about $10 right now on eBay. Slips right in your shirt pocket. Actually you could put several of them in your shirt pocket, or anywhere else you wanted to. 1TB is enough data storage to hold lots of stuff, as long as it is in digital format. I have a 1TB hard drive in my cheapo Dell desktop PC. I could mirror my entire hard drive on one of those, but most of it is empty, so I don't need that kind of storage power.

A guy could hand such a small thing over to almost anyone, like, for example, somebody from WaPo or the NYT. That somebody could stick it into any USB port and browse through or copy anything that stored on it, or even make multiple copies of the thing, if the PC it was plugged into had enough storage space. Or if you had two USB ports handy, you could just copy everything from one port to the other and not even stress over your own storage capacity.

It's even USB 3.0 compatible, so it can handle a pretty high rate of transfer. $10. Anyone could afford a handful of those, right?



So, if there any DOJ folks reading this, you could follow this link:

https://www.ebay.com/i/372652593417

[mahatmakanejeeves]

1. The data on federal computers are encrypted. NT

[meow2u3]

2. Ebay is even selling 2TB USB 2.0 sticks

For those of us with slightly older computers without USB 3.0:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1TB-2TB-OTG-Flash-Drive-Memory-U-Disk-PC-Laptop-USB-2-0-Dual-Port-Flash-Drive-US/143208036076?hash=item2157dd36ec:m:m1gqQ7sD6-QcUkMfsSK4FhA&var=442138237752

[berni_mccoy]

3. Would never connect to the OS. Gov't runs device control software on all their endpoints

I know this for a fact.

[2naSalit]

4. +1

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

5. I'm sure government computers have safeguards against such things.

They use encryption and can track who is using which computer and what they are doing with it. That is probably why nobody has done what you are referring to - they'd be busted in a heartbeat.

[brush]

6. Easy peasy. Text files, even 400 plus pages, would take just a fraction...

of 1tb. Please, please, please let someone take patriotic action and leak it discreetly to WAPO, NYT, Rachel, O'Donald, Lemon—somebody.

[DetroitLegalBeagle]

7. Nothing except risk getting fired/charged if caught with them

External access points like USB ports are disabled, either through software or physically, or non existent to begin with.

[dumbcat]

8. All the computers on my federal network

even back in 2010, had their USB ports disabled. Couldn't use memory sticks.

[FakeNoose]

9. What about people who take their office laptops home?

Remember the famous incident where Hillary's emails ended up (by accident) on Anthony Weiner's laptop? A lot of managers and executives take their work home with them, even ones who work for Uncle Sam. It seems there must be a way to get something out of the system without destroying the device.

I'm not a systems security expert obviously, so this puzzle is for smarter heads than mine.

[standingtall]

10. Does the thing even work?

a 1 tb flash drive for only $10.Sounds fishy. The cheapest 1 tb flash drive on amazon is about 200 bucks. If you can get a flash drive with that much storage for that cheap than there really would not be much need for external hard drives anymore.