dubbed URL but pronounced Earl
well, it would be, wouldn't it.
Yee haw.
Utah sheriffs blow $10,000 on smut-sniffing Labrador
A sheriff’s department in Utah has spent $10,000 on black Labrador they say can sniff out porn and other illicit digital materials. The deployment of the black Lab, dubbed URL but pronounced Earl, in Weber County comes just months after Utah became the first state in the US to declare pornography a full-fledged public health …
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Thursday 23rd June 2016 19:18 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: sniffing out porn - or the devices that carry it
sniffing out porn
Fister with your tissues, you're never gonna die
W*nking in the backroom, they busted tonight
The blue suited soldiers, with the porn sniffin' hounds
Come out of your nightmares and run you to the ground
Run you to the ground, run you to the ground
How many commentards are going to know that? About seven, I reckon.
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Thursday 23rd June 2016 22:34 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: sniffing out porn - or the devices that carry it
> I wonder what the Internet smells like
Rape-scented candle?
No, waait .... I misspoke. Ahhh, it's PC brigade at the door.
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Thursday 23rd June 2016 12:24 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Ok...
You don't understand "Probable Cause", USA style.
1) You explicitly do not consent to a search.
2) The police bring out a dog that has been trained to 'indicate' on command.
3) The dog pretends to sniff around the outside, and then sits down upon subtle command.
4) Now they have "Probable Cause" to search.
It's best if you just carry $7500 cash for them to 'civil forfeiture' from you, as a distraction.
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Thursday 23rd June 2016 22:54 GMT Destroy All Monsters
Re: Ok...
It's not Utah, but...
Generally, you better be prepared for some finger play!
Teen Sues US Over Cavity Drug Search for Which She Was Billed $575
What once were modest exceptions in Constitutional America morphed into a vast “Constitution-free zone.” The “border” is now a strip of land circling the country and extending 100 miles inland that includes two-thirds of the U.S. population. In this vast region, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) can and conduct warrantless searches.
(Obviously appropriate icon is obvious)
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Thursday 23rd June 2016 11:31 GMT Antron Argaiv
The sheriffs have reassured journalists that URL will picking up on odours unique to digital storage devices, and won’t be confused by other digital essentials such “remote controls or garage door openers”.
Of course, they decline to provide specifics.
The BS quotient of this press release seems awfully high.
// NOT British Standard...the OTHER BS...
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Thursday 23rd June 2016 16:34 GMT Mark 85
Re: "...the state’s no two-fisting rule is still enforced there"
Never knew Mormons were such kinky fuckers.
Indeed. I've known more than a few and they do know how to get wild and kinky. I've had to more than once mumble "WTF?" after being around them.
The old joke about always invite two Mormons over to watch the game because if you only invite one, he'll drink all your beer and try to have his way with your dog is essentially true. Maybe not always the dog though.....
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Thursday 23rd June 2016 22:08 GMT kain preacher
Re: What law?
No obscene porn is defined by the community standards. So gay porn could land you in jail. Whats worse is the definition is set by were the user is at not were the porn is located. I know some that was done in this way. He had a dial up BBS in California. The called from Florida and since it was considered obscene in floridia he was extradited and convicted.
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Thursday 23rd June 2016 17:44 GMT TeeCee
Re: What law?
You have to say that, purely from an engineering view, they have a point about Browning.
There aren't many engineers whose basic designs are so perfect and simple that, with minor changes, they are still the de facto standard in the field 100 years later.
Regardless of what you think about guns, Browning was a ruddy genius.
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Thursday 23rd June 2016 13:44 GMT Anonymous Coward
Who the fuck stores porn on flash drives? Methinks this dog will find naught but used condoms, jizzy kleenexes, and sex toys.
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Thursday 23rd June 2016 12:26 GMT Sgt_Oddball
That's a lot of different storage devices....
So basically, they'll need to check the following;
Memory Cards (SD,MicroSD,Flash,Memory stick, M2 etc etc)
Memory sticks/thumb drives - including watches/penknives/various novelties
Portable Hard Disks
PC hard disks
DVD/CD
Zip drives (if you want to get retro)
Tape Drives (LTO etc etc)
Mobile phones
Digital Picture Frames
Tablet devices
Pretty much anything that has a storage device of any kind (I could use my old HiFi amp to store stuff over FTP. Good luck finding the hidden menu and it's settings that allowed that to happen) .
ANNNNNNNNND
The whole internet (at least as far as connections go).
Personally I think they've been sold a pup if they think said wonder dog can cover all of those bases, not to mention have the handler recognise just what it is that the dogs found.
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Thursday 23rd June 2016 13:20 GMT Anonymous Coward
TOP TIPS #53
If you are concerned about a nosy pooch sniffing your dongle, then buy a cheap pen drive, crack it open, and start smearing every surface of your residence with the contents! Time consuming, yes, but once done you will be able to sit back and watch as K9 goes fucking nuts sniffing out your carpets, skirting boards and draught excluders.
PS: If you have any priceless items (Faberge Eggs, etc) do not smear with decoy dongle!
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Thursday 23rd June 2016 13:32 GMT Michael H.F. Wilkinson
Bag of chips?
So would the dog be able to tell the difference between a bag full of assorted logic chips, cpus etc, and a working USB drive?
Did they train the dog on legacy storage devices (for "vintage porn"?) such as the old 8" floppy disk still somewhere in my office (granted, not much you can store in the way of smut on 128 kB and still store CP/M 2.0 on it).
Can it detect bubble memory? Magnetic tapes? Punched cards?
Enquiring minds need to know
As an aside, my estimate is that you would need 228 metric tonnes of punched cards to store a DVD (smut-filled or otherwise) full of data, so that might be a tad inefficient.
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Thursday 23rd June 2016 13:55 GMT Dave 126
Re: Bag of chips?
>As an aside, my estimate is that you would need 228 metric tonnes of punched cards to store a DVD
I was thinking that 228 tonnes would make a big flip book for naughty animations.... I went looking online (Rule 34), but all i found was this [car] porn for Subaru. Basically a mile long wall with image cells, the car is driven past and the door pillars act as shutters:
Safe For Work link:
http://www.ufunk.net/en/insolite/une-animation-flip-book-geante-de-1km-de-long/
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Thursday 23rd June 2016 14:47 GMT harmjschoonhoven
Re: Bag of chips?
The Enfer of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France contains 2600 erotic and pornographic books dating from the 16th century to the present day. At an estimated weight of 800 g per tome this comes to 2 tonnes.
Keep playing with your punched cards, or your DVD for that matter. Old books smell better than punched cards.
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Saturday 2nd July 2016 06:15 GMT Suricou Raven
As a second layer, yes. But encryption has another issue: The police ask you to decrypt it. In the UK they can jail you for refusing to do so. They can't do that in the US, but your refusal will still look very damning in court and a jury will certainly take that into account.
If you're really good you can use a truecrypt hidden volume. Put on a big show of not decrypting it, finally give in, and decrypt it to reveal your stash of weird-but-legal fetish porn. Now you have a plausible story as to why you had an encrypted drive hidden under the floorboardds.
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Thursday 23rd June 2016 14:53 GMT JLV
What kinda porn constitutes the "public emergency"? Regular, legal stuff, which is watched in their opinion by way too many people? But is... legal?
Or did they buy a 10k pooch to hunt for kiddie porn? Which is illegal but a bit like needle in a haystack for a dog-based approach because much less prevalent geographically.
What if they search you, find a big stash of legal porn and the missus files for divorce? Can you sue them?
Should be sued by their taxpayers for egregious waste.
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Thursday 23rd June 2016 14:57 GMT Florida1920
Call the baker
We need a dog biscuit that looks like a flash drive. "Oh no! URL's eatin' the ev-ee-dence!"
But what can you expect from the jello-eatin' capital of the WORLD?
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Thursday 23rd June 2016 15:10 GMT Hans Neeson-Bumpsadese
Binary
I'm reminded of a snippet in "Microserfs" by Douglas Coupland*, where the protagonist is musing on how everything kind of looks the same when digitised and broken down to a stream of ones and zeros. Digitise some top shelf smut and look at the patterns of 1s and 0s...how many of those patterns would you also find in a digitised copy of, say, the Bible, Beethoven's 9th symphony, Constable's "The Haywain", etc.?
* if you haven't read it then do so for 'tis excellent
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Thursday 23rd June 2016 15:48 GMT Anonymous Coward
Back in my university days the WWW was a newish thing but even so there was a filter on what you could search for using the university systems and somethings like porn were explicitly stated as banned. Now there was also an unfiltered internet connection but this was restricted both in use and need to know. I was doing research and needed to download what back then was considered large file sizes and complained that the student internet was too slow and I wasn't allowed to connect my Zip drive to store these files.
I'm then given knowledge of and access to the special room that has the unfiltered faster internet and computers I'm allowed to hook my Zip Drive up to (using I think 100mb carts). I'm also given a warning that I must not download porn using it and that someone will have to examine the files I download, to check for this. In the same room is another student who has someone from the faculty sitting with them staring at the screen. After a brief chat she tells me that she is doing a project on Porn in the media and the staff member is there to make sure nothing illegal is downloaded or viewed. This was the Win95 era and video was via Real Media possibly Quicktime but not great quality and took an age to download. So she was mainly looking at and downloading pictures for inclusion in her dissertation to illustrate points (ooh er missus).
After 15mins the staff member said she had to be somewhere else and repeated the no illegal stuff warning. Finishing what I'd come for I went to leave and asked the other student what she had found so far (in the interests of study you understand) and she showed me pictures ranging from tabloid style Page 3 stuff through to penetration (hard core) and was just about to start on the fetish stuff. I pointed out that hardcore was illegal in this country and she said yes she knew that - but the staff member who had been babysitting her thankfully didn't. My tutor was supposed to check my files but just said "I trust you didn't" and that was it.
No smut searching dogs back then but I agree the puppy is so adorable.
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Thursday 23rd June 2016 16:46 GMT Antron Argaiv
Re: Burying the Lead
I'd love to be in the gallery at the first trial in which this dog is used as the reason to introduce evidence.
Because I don't believe for a minute that the dog could distinguish between a USB drive and a USB WiFi dongle, and I would ask the judge to allow me to prove that.
However, the person that raised and "trained" the dog is now $10k richer.
// my money's on "subtle command to sit"
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Thursday 23rd June 2016 18:36 GMT Dadmin
True life factoids about police dogs
If a police dog smells your junk, then licks it, you are free to go no matter what the human officer says or does.
Drug sniffing police K-9 units are trained to smell drugs by offering them real drugs as a treat. The dogs are then super fucking high, and are unavoidably hooked and aggressively find their next fix.
If a police dog tries to attack you, just release the hotdogs you are carrying in your pants. This will distract the canine copper just long enough for you to escape, or to pull out your phone and get some periscope or snapchatting content.
Newborn K-9 Units are correctly referred to as Police Pups.
Cats were tested for police work, but things didn't work out. Too indifferent.
If you walk up to the human officer of a K-9 unit and say; "John Leeson" they must immediately reply with their favorite episode of the 4th incarnation of Doctor Who, and allow you to hold the leash. It is known.
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Thursday 23rd June 2016 21:47 GMT Anonymous Coward
Gotta Be A Joke
I find the premise itself - dogs sniffing out memory devices - unbelievable, in the sense that I just don't believe it. But I can believe that what passes for a public servant these days would buy it.
I have to ask: what is the legal rationale for sniffing out objects, that in themselves, are perfectly legal?
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Thursday 23rd June 2016 23:56 GMT P 14
Hang on
Northern Utah, is not the ultra religious right wing place that you painted here, and southern Utah is beautiful but not the utopia described either. I live in Utah and SLC is a tiny blue dot of liberal thinking in a giant red state of conformity. Southern Utah is full of 3 toothed sister fucking welfare fraud polygamist with varying levels of normal folk mixed in. In northern Utah if you don't "belong" to the hive you get weird looks. In the south they will run you out of town unless you're "kin", and I mean like cousins, via any means. Geophysical properties aside its a hellhole.
Oh its called the beehive state because of the shared mentality by the way. There are no more real bees (killer or otherwise) in particular to anywhere else on planet earth as far as I can tell.
Yes, its fucking weird.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
