Continuation Part 19: Amanda Knox/Raffaele Sollecito

[LondonJohn]

Thanks for this reply. It is easy to repair a damaged hard drive. You just take to the hard drive recovery place

My point with CD and NB was only to show that people were misled into thinking the hard drive data was never recovered.

I read or at least skimmed the discussions but only recall them discussing how the damage might have been done, nothing about the recovery of all the data except Amanda's.

It's far from correct to say that it's "easy" to repair a hard drive whose electronics circuits have been fried - even where the magnetic platter itself (on which all the information is actually stored) is entirely undamaged. As I said before, you need to find a way of "remembering" where the now-destroyed "brain" of the hard drive split up, assigned and addressed all of the information. For some hard drives, that's not too difficult to do. For others, it's extremely hard to do. And if you cannot do it (or cannot do it properly), then all you're left with is a nice undamaged magnetic platter upon which resides a gobbledegook mishmash of binary data which is therefore - to all practical intents and purposes - useless and undecipherable.

 

[LondonJohn]

Again as a (deliberately simplistic to illustrate the principle) example, imagine if the complete works of Shakespeare were stored on a single hard drive. Now imagine if, in the process of storing this information, the hard drive's "brain" had assigned the first word of the first play to a certain location on the magnetic platter (imagine that was the location with the address 9358662), then it had assigned the second word of the first play to another location (7591826), and so on for each word in turn of every play by Shakespeare. So the "brain" knew where each word was on the platter: it knew where the first word was stored, where the second word was stored, and so on and so on.

Now, imagine that the "brain" were destroyed. All the words of the entire works of Shakespeare would still be right there on the magnetic platter, in the places where the "brain" had put them - but you'd have no way of understanding which words were where and in which order, unless you could find another "brain" which worked in exactly the same way as the original "brain" and which could recreate the first "brain's" method of assigning the words to particular places on the magnetic disc.

 

[Grinder]

How hard could it be when the Italians were able to fry the BIOS and recover the data in less than a couple months?

Btw, analogies are supposed to make things easier to understand.

 

[acbytesla]

Thanks for this reply. It is easy to repair a damaged hard drive. You just take to the hard drive recovery place

My point with CD and NB was only to show that people were misled into thinking the hard drive data was never recovered.

I read or at least skimmed the discussions but only recall them discussing how the damage might have been done, nothing about the recovery of all the data except Amanda's.

LOL. And shell out a chunk of change. But even then it's a crap shoot. I kind of hate this discussion since like everything in the computer industry is no matter how much an expert one might be there is a ton you don't know.

We use to have a circa 1970 5mb drive on display at my company. What was great is that despite its original cost (around 10K) and massive size..(About 2 feet by 2 feet by 2 feet and weighing 50 pounds) you could see all the same essential components that are in today's tiny but massive drives. Platters, drive motor, floating heads. The technology is exactly the same.

This is true about all disk drives, they all have these components, yet they can be different from brand to brand and model to model. And just when you think you know it all somebody changes something. Does it just a little bit differently.

Anyway my point simply is I'm speaking generally about what I know. To know specifically, one would have to go to say Toshiba's website and pull up the necessary info. Sort of like checking the parts on say a 1995 F150 with the 5.8 liter engine.

 

[acbytesla]

How hard could it be when the Italians were able to fry the BIOS and recover the data in less than a couple months?

Btw, analogies are supposed to make things easier to understand.

Very easy...maybe. I've personally seen it done in the same day at my company. But we had the expertise and the parts.

More likely in this case, the tech who was there to clone the drive had no clue what went wrong. He also might know how to clone a drive, but not have the knowledge or access to the same model drive to do the recovery. The process is very straight forward and even a total neophyte can do it on most drives.

But you HAVE to HAVE another of the EXACT Same model drive and it might have to have the exact same firmware. So, even if you take a drive in to recover the data it might not happen right away. I'm pretty sure that originally they just said "sorry, we couldn't recover the data. It wasn't until one of the courts demanded that they send the drives out to a recovery service did that process take place.

 

[Grinder]

It wasn't until one of the courts demanded that they send the drives out to a recovery service did that process take place.

The expert's report is dated March of 2008. I very much doubt any court even knew about it much less ruled on it. At the time they were not charged with murder only being held as in Italy they can wait a year to charge.

 

[JREF2010]

Very easy...maybe. I've personally seen it done in the same day at my company. But we had the expertise and the parts.

More likely in this case, the tech who was there to clone the drive had no clue what went wrong. He also might know how to clone a drive, but not have the knowledge or access to the same model drive to do the recovery. The process is very straight forward and even a total neophyte can do it on most drives.

But you HAVE to HAVE another of the EXACT Same model drive and it might have to have the exact same firmware. So, even if you take a drive in to recover the data it might not happen right away. I'm pretty sure that originally they just said "sorry, we couldn't recover the data. It wasn't until one of the courts demanded that they send the drives out to a recovery service did that process take place.

Matteini rejected the Defense request to have the hard drives repaired early on. As I recall even Hellman said, years later, it wasnt important and declined the defense request, in addition to other requests like the decibel/sound testing too.

Not sure who sent the drives out and if they removed the platters to retireve data, or somehow got a partial recovery, not complete. But it wasnt big news when they got it done.

And as I understand it wasnt 100% recovered, and Raffaele wrote in his book he still believes that computer data they "lost" ...could have been his alibi. So unlike the Guilters try to sell it, it wasnt recovered.

 

[acbytesla]

The expert's report is dated March of 2008. I very much doubt any court even knew about it much less ruled on it. At the time they were not charged with murder only being held as in Italy they can wait a year to charge.

I'm doing too much of this based on my memory which can be faulty. IIRC. It was Amanda's laptop, Meredith's and one of Raffaele's computers that had their drives fried and they were unable to recover the data from Amanda's.

? ?

 

[LondonJohn]

I'm doing too much of this based on my memory which can be faulty. IIRC. It was Amanda's laptop, Meredith's and one of Raffaele's computers that had their drives fried and they were unable to recover the data from Amanda's.

? ?

I think that's correct. And IIRC, in the case of Knox's laptop's hard drive, it was impossible to accurately mirror the assignment protocols of the original hardware and firmware, even with the "brains" from an identical model disc. IIRC it was because that model used some form of dynamic assignment to optimise disc usage, but that meant that it was impossible to reproduce it unless you knew the exact order in which each addressable sector had been allocated.

And I apologise if my analogy made things more difficult for Grinder to understand on this issue

 

[Grinder]

I'm doing too much of this based on my memory which can be faulty. IIRC. It was Amanda's laptop, Meredith's and one of Raffaele's computers that had their drives fried and they were unable to recover the data from Amanda's.

? ?

http://www.amandaknoxcase.com/evidence-destroyed/

Following the tests carried out, by various interveners, it therefore appears that the Toshiba disk belonging to Miss A Knox’s Toshiba-brand laptop was damaged with problems evident in the electronic board, which resulted as being inactive, just like the other two. While the contents of two of the three disks have been recovered, following the Krollontrak company’s diagnosis, the third disk seems to have been also damaged in its component mechanics, while CBL Data’s and Recovery Tech’s diagnoses confirm that the third disk has been damaged in its electronic component. In reality, the damaged component is the electronic board, where an integrated circuit sits, sometimes referred to as “BIOS”, containing the binary code that allows access to the data, calibration, writing and reading. This technical specification belongs to the Toshiba manufacturing house, a proprietary [page] technology. The electronic board and the binary data contents of the disk being inextricably linked and intertwined, and the Toshiba logic board being damaged, it has therefore been impossible to recover it. Only a possible intervention by the parent company or its licentiate, by means of supplying the binary/BIOS code, would be able to justify a further intervention. It is however truly incomprehensible that three hard drive units, differing among themselves as to capacity, produced by among the most quoted manufacturers, belonging to and operating on three different laptops, could all three end up damaged in a similar manner and all three react in the same manner to an attempt at reading the data by an external disk controller run by the Operating System residing on an IBM PC furnished by the IAC/CNR Institute and of relative utility for data recovery.

I can only read the report supplied by amandaknoxcase.com of the translated defense expert report. The highlighted text means what it says to me, which is that the data was recovered and from the lack of any qualifier it seems completely.

 

[Grinder]

I think that's correct. And IIRC, in the case of Knox's laptop's hard drive, it was impossible to accurately mirror the assignment protocols of the original hardware and firmware, even with the "brains" from an identical model disc. IIRC it was because that model used some form of dynamic assignment to optimise disc usage, but that meant that it was impossible to reproduce it unless you knew the exact order in which each addressable sector had been allocated.

And I apologise if my analogy made things more difficult for Grinder to understand on this issue

Truly not just Grinder.

Read the post above and that should clear it up for you.

 

[LondonJohn]

Matteini rejected the Defense request to have the hard drives repaired early on. As I recall even Hellman said, years later, it wasnt important and declined the defense request, in addition to other requests like the decibel/sound testing too.

Not sure who sent the drives out and if they removed the platters to retireve data, or somehow got a partial recovery, not complete. But it wasnt big news when they got it done.

And as I understand it wasnt 100% recovered, and Raffaele wrote in his book he still believes that computer data they "lost" ...could have been his alibi. So unlike the Guilters try to sell it, it wasnt recovered.

At the end of the day, this whole matter turned out to have little material impact upon either the prosecution or the defence. Sollecito's team was still able to get the activity log from his laptop (not that it did him much good at all when up against mendacious prosecutors and credulous courts which deferred to those prosecutors), and Knox was never going to benefit in any significant manner from her hard drive (even the photos of her and Kercher wouldn't really have been that much use to her under the circumstances).

But the issue is still important, because it points to two very important factors: 1) there was clearly - and provably - gross ineptitude from the police's own forensic "specialists", who were supposed to be experts (an eight year old mucking about with a hard drive probably wouldn't have made the same dreadful errors they made); and 2) the hard drives might have contained extremely important evidence for either the prosecution or the defence. It turns out that they did not, but imagine if (obv. hypothetically speaking) there had been a google search on Knox's machine, made in the early hours of 2nd November, for how to clean blood from tiled floors? Or if there had been an essay typed, edited and repeatedly saved by Knox into her laptop between 9pm and 11pm?

And, in my opinion, the gross incompetence of the police's so-called "experts" in this matter also reasonably calls into question the competence and expertise of the police's specialists in other areas. Areas which really were of great consequence in this trial process. Areas such as crime scene evidence collection, forensic blood and DNA analysis, foot print and shoe print analysis........

 

[LondonJohn]

Truly not just Grinder.

Read the post above and that should clear it up for you.

You're presuming to speak for others on whether my analogy made sense to them? Is that Randi prize still available......?

 

[Grinder]

Matteini rejected the Defense request to have the hard drives repaired early on. As I recall even Hellman said, years later, it wasnt important and declined the defense request, in addition to other requests like the decibel/sound testing too.

Not sure who sent the drives out and if they removed the platters to retireve data, or somehow got a partial recovery, not complete. But it wasnt big news when they got it done.

And as I understand it wasnt 100% recovered, and Raffaele wrote in his book he still believes that computer data they "lost" ...could have been his alibi. So unlike the Guilters try to sell it, it wasnt recovered.

I searched from the murder date to the end of February 2008 and can't find any mention of Matteini rejecting a request on the drives or for that matter any mention at all.

It certainly wasn't big news that the contents had been recovered as I have demonstrated with writings of authors and commentators here.

I can't find any mention of partial recovery just the defense expert saying 2 of the three were recovered without a qualifier which one would assume would be added as it was the defense expert.

It wasn't a "guilter" that said it was recovered but his expert. There is ongoing debate as to what some of what was found actually meant vis-a-vis time of use that night.

 

[Grinder]

You're presuming to speak for others on whether my analogy made sense to them? Is that Randi prize still available......?

You're assuming they have never been discussed offline. Not the specific just in general.

 

[acbytesla]

At the end of the day, this whole matter turned out to have little material impact upon either the prosecution or the defence. Sollecito's team was still able to get the activity log from his laptop (not that it did him much good at all when up against mendacious prosecutors and credulous courts which deferred to those prosecutors), and Knox was never going to benefit in any significant manner from her hard drive (even the photos of her and Kercher wouldn't really have been that much use to her under the circumstances).

But the issue is still important, because it points to two very important factors: 1) there was clearly - and provably - gross ineptitude from the police's own forensic "specialists", who were supposed to be experts (an eight year old mucking about with a hard drive probably wouldn't have made the same dreadful errors they made); and 2) the hard drives might have contained extremely important evidence for either the prosecution or the defence. It turns out that they did not, but imagine if (obv. hypothetically speaking) there had been a google search on Knox's machine, made in the early hours of 2nd November, for how to clean blood from tiled floors? Or if there had been an essay typed, edited and repeatedly saved by Knox into her laptop between 9pm and 11pm? And, in my opinion, the gross incompetence of the police's so-called "experts" in this matter also reasonably calls into question the competence and expertise of the police's specialists in other areas. Areas which really were of great consequence in this trial process. Areas such as crime scene evidence collection, forensic blood and DNA analysis, foot print and shoe print analysis........

Exactly! Any way you look at this, it was the Keystone cops. A comedy of errors. Not that it is very funny.

 

[JREF2010]

I searched from the murder date to the end of February 2008 and can't find any mention of Matteini rejecting a request on the drives or for that matter any mention at all.

It certainly wasn't big news that the contents had been recovered as I have demonstrated with writings of authors and commentators here.

I can't find any mention of partial recovery just the defense expert saying 2 of the three were recovered without a qualifier which one would assume would be added as it was the defense expert.

It wasn't a "guilter" that said it was recovered but his expert. There is ongoing debate as to what some of what was found actually meant vis-a-vis time of use that night.

I might be wrong , not Matteini , but the next one following that hearing, I forget their names of those Judges. I'll look for it. As I recall they requested to send the hardrives back to the OEM (manufacturer) for repair. The request was denied.

What was the house arrest court Judge? I think it was in that one.

 

[Grinder]

I might be wrong , not Matteini , but the next one following that hearing, I forget their names of those Judges. I'll look for it. As I recall they requested to send the hardrives back to the OEM (manufacturer) for repair. The request was denied.

What was the house arrest court Judge? I think it was in that one.

I'm looking a bit more and it never ceases to amaze. from Cliff Van Zandt Dec. 8, 2008

Police also seized the hard drives from computers belonging to the victim, Amanda and Raffaele and in their attempt to examine the contents of the hard drives. Unfortunately computer forensic experts hooked them up in the wrong manner, therefore frying the circuit boards and rendering the drives unreadable.

The prosecutor, in his attempt to validate his bizarre theory concerning the motive that would have allowed all three suspects to participate in the torture and murder of Kercher, continues to suggest Meredith was the victim of a ritual crime, perhaps one celebrated in conjunction with the night of Halloween. Other theories have surfaced that have embraced other forms of ritualistic behavior, to include suggestions that Meredith's murder had been ordered by an esoteric Masonic sect, the Order of the Red Rose, one that some may believe both Amanda and Meredith belonged to.

Between that date and March of 2008 it would seem 2 drives were read.

Post from July 4, 2009 by a Lashmore

Amanda and Raff don't really have alibis. They say they were at his place for the night and he claims that he was surfing the net for most of the night, but ISP records don't support his assertions. But the cops fried five computer hard drives relating to the investigation in one go in its early stages. They can't remember what they ate (when asked 5 days later) and have at times given conflicting stories while the police have done things to them like placing them in separate rooms and saying that one will no longer support the other. Which seems a dangerous ploy with young people's minds. Raff's told a few fibs at times like first up telling reporters that they were at a party that night which is the typical type of ******** kids always come up with every time you talk to them these days. Ask them what they did on the weekend and they generally lie, tell you it was marvelous and just tell stories.

If you were banging the girlfriend all night, you might tell your mates but stop short of giving that information to people like reporters who might tell your girlfriends mum etc...

Also crucially Rudy knew he was at the very minimum a part of the murder and he ran straight out and established an alibi at the club. The other two have made no effort to establish or agree on any stories that can be seen as an alibi between them. You'd think that if they were there that night it's something they'd take great pains to do, particularly as their trips to the cop shop and questioning sessions increased.

From comments on View from Wilmington

Randy said...
I think about the only thing AK's computer would show is some details on her and MK's relationship perhaps...I've always thought it kind of odd that the hard drives couldn't be salvaged. I wonder how much effort was actually put in to that.



Secondary DNA transfer...perhaps this can explain RS DNA on the clasp. maybe Amanda grabbed the bra after contacting RS or MK touched the towel RS used. Didn't MK and AK share the same bathroom. I have no idea how much DNA would get transferred in this way. I think MK's DNA on the knife can come from the lab like in the salmonella reference in Chris' article. Someone touched an area that was not cleaned and then it was transferred to the knife. Especially since the blood test didn't show the presence of blood.

The article about luminol on the injustice site was interesting since it mentioned about how streaking would appear in cleaned up areas.

MAY 15, 2010 AT 11:03 PM

It sure seems that people paying close attention and many PIP thought the drives were destroyed and the data wasn't recovered. Obviously the terms computers or hard drives were fried indicated to many people that the data was destroyed.

It never ceases to surprise me how many things were not clear about this case and at least I'm still learning details. Perhaps I was one of only a few that didn't know that ONLY Amanda's computer didn't have its data recovered.

If someone has the date of the first request to send the computer to Toshiba, please let us/me know.

So I just checked Massei and he wrote:As far as the accused Raffaele Sollecito goes, the Postal Police technical examination was carried out only on his MacBook PRO Apple laptop. Insofar as his other PC, an ASUS L300D, as well as Amanda Knox’s Toshiba serial number 7541811OK and Meredith Kercher’s G4 iBook sustained damage, it was impossible to retrieve data from their respective hard drives.

But from amandaknoxcase Amanda’s Toshiba laptop. The image is from page 12 of the computer consultants report dated March 31, 2008.
The police destroyed 3 computer hard drives by electrical shock belonging to Amanda, Raffaele and Meredith. The contents of Raffaele and Meredith’s computers was recovered. Concerning Amanda’s laptop which had photos of Amanda and Meredith, the defense computer consultant report noted:

Following the tests carried out, by various interveners, it therefore appears that the Toshiba disk belonging to Miss A Knox’s Toshiba-brand laptop was damaged with problems evident in the electronic board, which resulted as being inactive, just like the other two. While the contents of two of the three disks have been recovered,

What the hell?

 

[acbytesla]

I'm looking a bit more and it never ceases to amaze. from Cliff Van Zandt Dec. 8, 2008

Police also seized the hard drives from computers belonging to the victim, Amanda and Raffaele and in their attempt to examine the contents of the hard drives. Unfortunately computer forensic experts hooked them up in the wrong manner, therefore frying the circuit boards and rendering the drives unreadable.

The prosecutor, in his attempt to validate his bizarre theory concerning the motive that would have allowed all three suspects to participate in the torture and murder of Kercher, continues to suggest Meredith was the victim of a ritual crime, perhaps one celebrated in conjunction with the night of Halloween. Other theories have surfaced that have embraced other forms of ritualistic behavior, to include suggestions that Meredith's murder had been ordered by an esoteric Masonic sect, the Order of the Red Rose, one that some may believe both Amanda and Meredith belonged to.

Between that date and March of 2008 it would seem 2 drives were read.

Post from July 4, 2009 by a Lashmore

Amanda and Raff don't really have alibis. They say they were at his place for the night and he claims that he was surfing the net for most of the night, but ISP records don't support his assertions. But the cops fried five computer hard drives relating to the investigation in one go in its early stages. They can't remember what they ate (when asked 5 days later) and have at times given conflicting stories while the police have done things to them like placing them in separate rooms and saying that one will no longer support the other. Which seems a dangerous ploy with young people's minds. Raff's told a few fibs at times like first up telling reporters that they were at a party that night which is the typical type of ******** kids always come up with every time you talk to them these days. Ask them what they did on the weekend and they generally lie, tell you it was marvelous and just tell stories.

If you were banging the girlfriend all night, you might tell your mates but stop short of giving that information to people like reporters who might tell your girlfriends mum etc...

Also crucially Rudy knew he was at the very minimum a part of the murder and he ran straight out and established an alibi at the club. The other two have made no effort to establish or agree on any stories that can be seen as an alibi between them. You'd think that if they were there that night it's something they'd take great pains to do, particularly as their trips to the cop shop and questioning sessions increased.

From comments on View from Wilmington

Randy said...
I think about the only thing AK's computer would show is some details on her and MK's relationship perhaps...I've always thought it kind of odd that the hard drives couldn't be salvaged. I wonder how much effort was actually put in to that.



Secondary DNA transfer...perhaps this can explain RS DNA on the clasp. maybe Amanda grabbed the bra after contacting RS or MK touched the towel RS used. Didn't MK and AK share the same bathroom. I have no idea how much DNA would get transferred in this way. I think MK's DNA on the knife can come from the lab like in the salmonella reference in Chris' article. Someone touched an area that was not cleaned and then it was transferred to the knife. Especially since the blood test didn't show the presence of blood.

The article about luminol on the injustice site was interesting since it mentioned about how streaking would appear in cleaned up areas.

MAY 15, 2010 AT 11:03 PM

It sure seems that people paying close attention and many PIP thought the drives were destroyed and the data wasn't recovered. Obviously the terms computers or hard drives were fried indicated to many people that the data was destroyed.

It never ceases to surprise me how many things were not clear about this case and at least I'm still learning details. Perhaps I was one of only a few that didn't know that ONLY Amanda's computer didn't have its data recovered.

If someone has the date of the first request to send the computer to Toshiba, please let us/me know.

So I just checked Massei and he wrote:As far as the accused Raffaele Sollecito goes, the Postal Police technical examination was carried out only on his MacBook PRO Apple laptop. Insofar as his other PC, an ASUS L300D, as well as Amanda Knox’s Toshiba serial number 7541811OK and Meredith Kercher’s G4 iBook sustained damage, it was impossible to retrieve data from their respective hard drives.

But from amandaknoxcase Amanda’s Toshiba laptop. The image is from page 12 of the computer consultants report dated March 31, 2008.
The police destroyed 3 computer hard drives by electrical shock belonging to Amanda, Raffaele and Meredith. The contents of Raffaele and Meredith’s computers was recovered. Concerning Amanda’s laptop which had photos of Amanda and Meredith, the defense computer consultant report noted:

Following the tests carried out, by various interveners, it therefore appears that the Toshiba disk belonging to Miss A Knox’s Toshiba-brand laptop was damaged with problems evident in the electronic board, which resulted as being inactive, just like the other two. While the contents of two of the three disks have been recovered,

What the hell?

IIRC, Charlie has all of this and a great deal more on his wiki. I've forgotten the precise details. He did have much detailed documents about what happened to the drives. I contributed a tiny bit including photos and manuals of the device that was used to clone the drive images for forensic examination.
I seem to recall that it was 4 drives that were damaged but really only 3 that might have mattered. We joked at the time that Filomena running back into the cottage to retrieve her laptop was a smart thing or the idiot tech would have destroyed hers as well,

Sorry I'm not being of more help Grinder in your search.

 

[Bill Williams]

Exactly! Any way you look at this, it was the Keystone cops. A comedy of errors. Not that it is very funny.

Or as Marasca-Bruno put it in Section 4 of their report, a section the English-language guilters never quote, but a section that now holds sway in Italy....

4. One cannot avoid concluding, in the meantime, in this first attempted
analysis, that the history of this trial has been characterised by a troubled and
intrinsically contradictory path, around one sole certainty; the guilt of Amanda Knox
for the slanderous accusation of Patrick Lumumba. Regarding, on the other hand,
the murder of Kercher, the ruling of guilt of the same Knox and of Sollecito in the
first trial was followed by acquittal in the Court of Appeal of Perugia, as a result of
an articulated analysis of the evidence; then its annulment by the First Section of
the Supreme Court; and finally by conviction, in the Court of referral in Florence,
followed by today’s appeal to the Court of Cassation.

An objectively wavering process, whose oscillations, however, are also the result of clamorous failures, or investigative “amnesia” and of culpable omissions of investigative activity. Had they been carried out these would, in all probability, have
led to a picture if not of certainty, at least of tranquil reliability pointing either
towards guilt or innocence of today’s accused. Such a scenario, intrinsically contradictory, constitutes in itself already a first and eloquent signal of an investigation that was never capable of reaching a conclusion beyond any reasonable doubt.​

Lo and behold, what does the Marasca-Bruno report actually do in Sections 9.2/9.3? They actually do try to assemble that "Intrinsically contradictory" synoptic almagam of the "even-ifs" contained in the intrinsically contradictory oscillations in this case. English-language guilters then take that section (9.4ff) as if it was the conclusion of the report.

Even the "sole certainty" mentioned in the first paragraph, Knox's guilt in relation to Lumumba, is starting to fall apart. Cf. Mignini being censured by his peers for denial of counsel to suspects/arrestees.

None of this is very funny.