Hard drives in WTC rubble?

Miragememories said:
The controlled demolition of WTC 7 certainly made one heckuva powerful hammer!
Click to expand...

Not really - as has already been pointed out, data was recovered from hard drives in the WTC towers. The answer that LeetMan is looking for here, is that the worst possible way to try to hide your data is to fell the building that houses it.

By the way, there is now a great free program for Windows PCs to encrypt your hard drive. If someone stole my laptop, they would get a hard drive filled with data indistinguishable from randomness (unless you have the password). The program is TrueCrypt, and I highly recommend it for all NWO employees with laptops: http://www.truecrypt.org/
 
with encrypting it will just take longer to recover the data :)
 
Myriad said:
...
(However, I'd be surprised if the CSI people -- the TV show, that is -- don't have such a device, that works in seconds, and then immediately displays exactly the information you were looking for.)

Respectfully,
Myriad
Click to expand...

Wouldn't they just take a photo of the remains, then click the 'enhance' button until the data was visible to the naked eye? I really want one of those 'enhance' buttons...
 
Last edited:
defaultdotxbe said:
we have a degausser at my office, we use it for tapes and floppies, but the label says you can use it for hard drives too, im assuming that would get the job done (although we can only run it for about 5 minutes before it overheats and needs to cool down for an hour, lol)
Click to expand...
Yeah, I know that type. It will certainly erase a drive so that it cannot be read using normal means. Whether it is safe against retrieval specialists is another matter, however.

A little anecdote: Back when blonde jokes were popular, we had one about the blonde who stuck a floppy disk to the message board with a fridge magnet (because she had heard about the blonde who did it with a thumb tack). Just for kicks, we tried it, and guess what? We didn't loose a bit. I actually took a whole sheet of magnetic rubber and stuck a floppy on it, even sliding it along the surface..... It was fully readable afterwards.

Hans
 
BenBurch said:
Well, you COULD map the field on bits of a drive and might get something from it. Were you the CIA and were the drive fragments essential to national security, you could try.

But generally once its not flat none of the tricks the drive recovery people use would apply and you would have to invent some means of moving the sensor over the uneven surface.

Also, striking any ferrous metal with a hammer tends to induce a magnetic field as the atoms align themselves with the Earth's field, so I would expect something like that to go on.
Click to expand...

Ah - sorry. Wasn't ignoring this post in my reply immediately below, I'm having real problems with cacheing (I assume) causing some replies not to display. I write something then discover it's been answered. What can you do?
 
Last edited:
MRC_Hans said:
Yeah, I know that type. It will certainly erase a drive so that it cannot be read using normal means. Whether it is safe against retrieval specialists is another matter, however.

A little anecdote: Back when blonde jokes were popular, we had one about the blonde who stuck a floppy disk to the message board with a fridge magnet (because she had heard about the blonde who did it with a thumb tack). Just for kicks, we tried it, and guess what? We didn't loose a bit. I actually took a whole sheet of magnetic rubber and stuck a floppy on it, even sliding it along the surface..... It was fully readable afterwards.

Hans
Click to expand...
I'd need evidence for that, as my experience is that floppies are generally unreadable once written...:D
 
Reheat said:
...I dare say there was not time to destroy much in WTC 7. Perhaps a few of the most critical documents were removed or destroyed and since CLASSIFIED material is kept on REMOVABLE HD's I doubt there was classified material on HD's left in WTC 7. However, I would guess there were multiple unclassified HD's in the rubble.

ETA: All Classified material is kept in fireproof safes to include the removable HD's. If there was not time to take the material out of the building it should have been in the safes in the rubble.
Click to expand...
Nitpick: In the secure areas where I used to work, the computers (which were either not connected to an external network, or connected via SIPRNET or other secure means) had ordinary non-removable hard drives.
 
MRC_Hans said:
Yeah, I know that type. It will certainly erase a drive so that it cannot be read using normal means. Whether it is safe against retrieval specialists is another matter, however.

A little anecdote: Back when blonde jokes were popular, we had one about the blonde who stuck a floppy disk to the message board with a fridge magnet (because she had heard about the blonde who did it with a thumb tack). Just for kicks, we tried it, and guess what? We didn't loose a bit. I actually took a whole sheet of magnetic rubber and stuck a floppy on it, even sliding it along the surface..... It was fully readable afterwards.

Hans
Click to expand...
we did a similar experiment with out degausser, took a floppy and tapped it to the surface and lifted it back up as qickly as we can...unreadable (replicated in 20 out of 20 trials, lol)

we also dertermined it can erase a stack up to 4 floppies high

old tapes that have large metal plates get dangerously hot (havent figured out why)

and the thing produces a unique "burnt" smell that we have dubbed "baked data"
 
sts60 said:
Nitpick: In the secure areas where I used to work, the computers (which were either not connected to an external network, or connected via SIPRNET or other secure means) had ordinary non-removable hard drives.
Click to expand...

Well, I've never seen a SIPRNET or a standalone classified computer that did not have removable HD's kept in a safe UNLESS it was a facility cleared for OPEN Classified storage. This is in DoD, but I believe all Federal Agencies are essentially the same.

In fact, the ONLY way that I could envision fixed HD's complying with Classified Protocols is that if the ENTIRE facility were cleared for OPEN Classified storage which WAS NOT the case for any of the WTC Buildings. Essentially, I would argue that your nitpick is irrelevant to this discussion.

I have worked in that type of facility, but that was during the 70's, BEFORE Computers (BC).
 
Last edited:
I have always maintained that WTC 7 was a controlled demolition–not to destroy information in the building–but to protect and retrieved the information on paper and hard drives. The building was pulled and a security perimeter was placed upon it by the National Guard. After search and rescue were completer for the area of the collapsed towers, WTC 7 was given priority for cleanup. In the past I have speculated the remains of WTC 7 was taken to a military base and the hard drives and remaining paper that was not burned in the fires were retrieved.

The CIA offices in WTC 7 were secondary facilities that targeted people who worked at the United Nations. The CIA station for New York City was at another location.
 
MaGZ said:
I have always maintained that WTC 7 was a controlled demolition–not to destroy information in the building–but to protect and retrieved the information on paper and hard drives. The building was pulled and a security perimeter was placed upon it by the National Guard. After search and rescue were completer for the area of the collapsed towers, WTC 7 was given priority for cleanup. In the past I have speculated the remains of WTC 7 was taken to a military base and the hard drives and remaining paper that was not burned in the fires were retrieved.

The CIA offices in WTC 7 were secondary facilities that targeted people who worked at the United Nations. The CIA station for New York City was at another location.
Click to expand...

Asd your shred of proof for that fantasy is?
 
CurtC said:
Not really - as has already been pointed out, data was recovered from hard drives in the WTC towers. The answer that LeetMan is looking for here, is that the worst possible way to try to hide your data is to fell the building that houses it. By the way, there is now a great free program for Windows PCs to encrypt your hard drive. If someone stole my laptop, they would get a hard drive filled with data indistinguishable from randomness (unless you have the password). The program is TrueCrypt, and I highly recommend it for all NWO employees with laptops: http://www.truecrypt.org/
Click to expand...


There’s also BitLocker, which is native to some of the pricier versions of Windows Vista. That said, if the bleeding-edge technologies sites I read are anything to go by, Microsoft sends universal encryption keys to the GOP, the New World Order and the Jews.
 
Par said:
There’s also BitLocker, which is native to some of the pricier versions of Windows Vista. That said, if the bleeding-edge technologies sites I read are anything to go by, Microsoft sends universal encryption keys to the GOP, the New World Order and the Jews.
Click to expand...
an instructor in a recent class i took on windows security said that in the US its illegal to use any form of encryption the government cant break, he didnt know the exact law offhand but it would be interesting to find

theoretically all encryption is breakable, just might take several lifetimes, lol
 
MaGZ said:
I have always maintained that WTC 7 was a controlled demolition–not to destroy information in the building–but to protect and retrieved the information on paper and hard drives. The building was pulled and a security perimeter was placed upon it by the National Guard. After search and rescue were completer for the area of the collapsed towers, WTC 7 was given priority for cleanup. In the past I have speculated the remains of WTC 7 was taken to a military base and the hard drives and remaining paper that was not burned in the fires were retrieved.

The CIA offices in WTC 7 were secondary facilities that targeted people who worked at the United Nations. The CIA station for New York City was at another location.
Click to expand...

but if protection and retrieval were the goals then why not throw up a security cordon around the damaged building for some spurious but believable reason - we are assessing the structural integrity, we are searching for survivors, body parts from the towers, evidence from the attack etc etc. you could then take whatever you wanted at your evil leisure.

in what screwed up universe does the plan "lets blow up the building and then look for all the sensitive stuff in the rubble pile" look good to you?
 
defaultdotxbe said:
an instructor in a recent class i took on windows security said that in the US its illegal to use any form of encryption the government cant break, he didnt know the exact law offhand but it would be interesting to find

theoretically all encryption is breakable, just might take several lifetimes, lol
Click to expand...

The government gave up trying to control strong encryption years ago.

They found another way to get the data. Rather than use brute force attacks on the encrypted data, the spooks simply install hardware or software that captures the users password.
 
defaultdotxbe said:
... theoretically all encryption is breakable, just might take several lifetimes, lol
Click to expand...

Not true!!!

Real "one-time pads" are unbreakable even in principle without the pad. And if the sending pad is burned at transmission and the receiving pad is burned after decoding, and no surreptitious copies were made, you cannot crack the communication you intercepted.
 
Reheat said:
Well, I've never seen a SIPRNET or a standalone classified computer that did not have removable HD's kept in a safe UNLESS it was a facility cleared for OPEN Classified storage. This is in DoD, but I believe all Federal Agencies are essentially the same.
Click to expand...
Our project was at a USAF base, with most of the development work going on at our contractor facility (I worked in the limited area and used our classified PCs and network). The entire building, bathrooms included, was at a higher clearance level. (Amusingly enough, though, when construction was completed but before data was put in there, USAF kindly had an open house and picnic for the contractor families. So the project itself was no secret.)
Reheat said:
In fact, the ONLY way that I could envision fixed HD's complying with Classified Protocols is that if the ENTIRE facility were cleared for OPEN Classified storage which WAS NOT the case for any of the WTC Buildings. Essentially, I would argue that your nitpick is irrelevant to this discussion...
Click to expand...
Nitpick-irrelevancy cheerfully stipulated. :)

Anyway, I didn't think it was possible for the lunacy of "WTC 7 was blown up to destroy documents" to be exceeded. But it has indeed been topped by the surreal "WTC 7 was blown up so that the documents could be removed."

Words fail me.
 
BenBurch said:
Not true!!!

Real "one-time pads" are unbreakable even in principle without the pad. And if the sending pad is burned at transmission and the receiving pad is burned after decoding, and no surreptitious copies were made, you cannot crack the communication you intercepted.
Click to expand...

[nitpick] As long as you can't crack the pseudo-random number algorithm used to generate the key. [/nitpick]
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom