Thread: WesternDigital: "Don't ship to terrorists!"

It's not just harddrives that have ridiculous labels - it's everything!!

I saw a label on a bottle of antifreeze that said:
"DO NOT EAT!"



Court transcript:

plaintif: "I am suing for damage to my health incurred from consuming XYZ's antifreeze."

defendant: "But the label says clearly 'DO NOT EAT'."

plaintif: "I didn't, you fool - I DRANK IT!"

judge: "Guilty!"



So many frivilous claims are filed in court an WON these days - it's no wonder there are stupid labels on everything. In the old days if you used something in a way that was not it's intended use you were labeled an idiot. Nowadays you're labeled a plaintif...

By now the point should be understood. I'm sure that such messages from WD are only to satisfy the yuppies who think that SUV's support terrorism, etc.

I understand that what happened during 9/11 is quite devastating, but I also believe that other countries, America in particular, are excessively paranoid now.

I agree with this, the world we live in now is rediculous, but that's what needs to be done... americans are the real terrorists... because we will do anything to get anything... we both know that we could find a lawyer that would sue WD if they found WD HD's were the backbone of a terrorist network...

this way at least WD can say ahead of time that they don't support the use of their products in those applications... it's all about liability... have you ever read this:

You give Cprogramming.com advertising rights to anything placed on the server but maintain copyright and privilege to remove information from server.

I bet the people at WD really don't care if their equipment gets into the hands of terrorists... they just don't want to get hit with a lawsuit and bad PR...

Someone metioned something about tracking computers w/o the internet. I've heard, and it sounds plausible to me, that some 3 letter institution can sit in a van across the street, and by using those things that look like satellite dishes or something like it, can pick up the frequency of your hard drive spinning/reading/writing, and practically watch the bits being written...so essentially they can see what's on your hard drive if you're accessing it...scary huh?

i kinda doubt that... there'd be too much background noise, and there's also the fans and other drives spinning... besides, they have no way of knowing which platter it's reading from or which sector...

Originally posted by Waldo2k2
Someone metioned something about tracking computers w/o the internet. I've heard, and it sounds plausible to me, that some 3 letter institution can sit in a van across the street, and by using those things that look like satellite dishes or something like it, can pick up the frequency of your hard drive spinning/reading/writing, and practically watch the bits being written...so essentially they can see what's on your hard drive if you're accessing it...scary huh?

I call bull scheisse. The EMR cannot be detected from that far and the magnetic field that the read/write heads on the HD creates is so minimal that figuring out the magnetic field from 1 foot away would be impossible alone, especially with the HD spinning AND the permanent magnets that are in the HD to begin with.

When I read this post I did not know whether or not to laugh or to cry.

Originally posted by Xei
I call bull scheisse. The EMR cannot be detected from that far and the magnetic field that the read/write heads on the HD creates is so minimal that figuring out the magnetic field from 1 foot away would be impossible alone, especially with the HD spinning AND the permanent magnets that are in the HD to begin with.

When I read this post I did not know whether or not to laugh or to cry.

Well, I wouldn't say it's impossible, but it's improbable that they've worked an easily deployable way to do it. One of my favorite stories of ingenious spying is one of Leon Theremin, the Russian inventor who gave us the musical instrument bearing his name:

Equally successful was another of his devices, this one produced in 1945. That year, pioneers (Soviet boy scouts) in red neckerchiefs solemnly presented a gilded eagle, emblem of the United States, to American ambassador A. Garriman. The eagle was to hang on the wall of the ambassador's room for several years while a special little "gift" from Theremin functioned inside it - a bug! Because it functioned without cables or batteries, even a special team of American technicians imported from the United States by officials of the American embassy in Russia could not find it for a long time (until the mid-50's!).

Point is, there's more than one way to skin a rabbit. Anything's possible.

Originally posted by Sebastiani
Point is, there's more than one way to skin a rabbit. Anything's possible.

No, not everything is possible. In order to detect what the HD was writing (reading would be impossible BTW) they would have to look for EXTREMELY SMALL fluctuations in the electro-magnetic field (which would be undetectable, guarunteed). So now think about how many things create EMR, someone walking 5 feet away would disturb it, especially the small amount that a write head would be creating. Now think about the HD platter its self: It's magnetic - with every revolution the field would change. Then think about the metal casing on the HD, it would most certainly distort the magnetic field (whatever small amount existed) or else it would stop the field entirely. Then add the electronic circuits, they would probably create more of an electromagnetic field than the write head on the HD. Then the wires on the walls (a detectable field woudl not reach a wall, though, but for arguements sake...) would create another field. Then radiowaves would create another field, so would cars that drive by. I could go on.

A device that would be meant to recognize such small fields would create one about 5 trillion(estimation, it may reach infinity if compared) times greater its self. I guaruntee that reading someones HD 'wirelessly' is impossible and always will be (given that HD's work off of the same principals in the future and don't go wireless themselves).

The possibilities of technology are not unlimited.

By the way, I could go much further in to explanation if you want by giving an example which implied the possibility that we could. In the end, if we could (which we cannot and never will), then the fact of not knowing the data(and each single bit's charge) its self on the HD would destroy your theory completely as you would not know the rotational displacement, either.


(I could give you pictures, mathematical examples, and the usual text-based explanations if you give me a few days to prepare a presentation if you still don't believe me.)

was waldo talking about EMR or sound? I couldn't really tell from his post...

some 3 letter institution can sit in a van across the street, and by using those things that look like satellite dishes or something like it

damn... now I know why the UPS guy always smiles at me when he's delivering to my neighbor...

Xei:

I'm not arguing that reading a hard-drive from a distance is possible. I'm just trying to make the point that often things are accomplished in ways we wouldn't have initially thought possible. Information that is not directly accessible can often be obtained using several levels of indirection, exploiting various side-effects of physical interactions, etc. For instance, if I were to say that a television signal could be transmitted using a simple flashlight, that may seem impossible. Even if you already knew it to be possible, you may not at first realize there is more than one way to do it!