Kachi wrote:
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If the remnants of the temporary file are still on your hard drive (which it would be, until it is overwritten), then you are in possession. Typically, when a file is deleted, whether temporary or manually deleted, all the info remains on the drive, just the pointer to the files are removed. FBI, state police, sheriff's depts., etc. can easily see deleted files that haven't been completely overwritten.
Right, you're in possession of that file, but if that file isn't illegal material itself, but rather evidence of access to illegal material, then you're not in possession of illegal material. e.g., when you stream something, your computer isn't saving any of that material-- there's no way for you to access it later on an offline computer (at least normally), correct? That's what I'm talking about. Again, I could be wrong; that's just my amateur interpretation of the law (which is itself probably muddled since actual cases are rare).
When you stream something, your computer still downloads it and still stores the data its streaming in a temporary file (or files). Those files are deleted after the data is done streaming (or some buffer point, depending on the software), but it's still located on your computer, no matter how you access it. Law enforcement absolutely have the tools to recover that data on your computer. Unless the physical datablocks on your disk were overwritten with some other data, it's still there.
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I've never heard of someone being arrested and charged for illegal material on their computer without the police having found it on the computer-- I can't say if "found it on their computer" refers to the actual illegal material, or just proof of the computer having accessed illegal material. I can say that I've never heard of anyone being busted by having their IP traced... usually their computer is seized due to being investigated for other charges. However, that may just be a law enforcement logistic issue, and not a matter of any actual legal absolution.
It's more a logistics issue. Law enforcement largely does not have the time to sit around watching every download anyone does. But if you become a suspect for other reasons, and they have cause to search your computer, they will use the tools they have to uncover everything they can. Also, just because you've never heard of anyone being busted by having their IP traced doesn't mean it doesn't happen. It does. Often. Usually in cases of attempted hacks though. Intrusion detection and tracking is serious business, and there's a division of the FBI that does nothing but deal with crimes of that nature.
For the most part though, law enforcement relies on private parties to point them in the direction of a crime. If you get hacked and you don't notice, or don't have the tools to provide some decent tracking data to start things off, law enforcement isn't going to be able to help you much. In this case, a private party has handed a bunch of such tracking data to law enforcement. They can at least use that to investigate. Unfortunately, the anonymous nature of the data source means that there's a custody issue with regards to the data. They'd have to basically recreate the same data via their own investigation for it to be usable for things like warrants and subpoenas. That's assuming that by publicly bragging about what they did, Anonymous didn't blow the whole investigation part of things, of course.
