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Judge Blocks Trump Admin From Searching Data Seized During Raid on Reporter's Home
(www.commondreams.org)
this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2026
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IT guy here, unless the computer case was sealed, they could pop the drive and use it to make a disk image or simply clone it to another drive, the only way I can see how that could be detected is if you have a log of how many hours it has been powered on and compare it to the drives log.
The point is, none of that data can be used as evidence. If the DOJ presents any evidence that could only have come from that drive (cloned or otherwise) their entire case goes out the window and they get in trouble. Though with the way consequences are being ignored lately I doubt that's their main concern.
They can always use parallel construction
Same issue. It’s called chain of evidence, something that is required for evidence to be admissible.
No matter what solution one can come up with the origin of the evidence is needed
Parallel construction is a tactic that is used specifically in situations similar to this, in the interest of hiding illegal evidence usage by investigators (amongst other things)
They present a viable way they found that evidence. They've been doing this since forever, using illegal information, then constructing a plausible case for how they found it legally for the courts, which only matters if the accused has good lawyers in the first place.
And even that would require a software layer log that wouldn't kick in until the software is fully booted. There would have to be a hardware layer controller logging spin up via firmware for that to work.
If they threw this into a cloaner, there's really no way to tell.
But they wouldn't even need to do all that, they would just shop around for a trump appointment judge in a nearby district, and then convince them to retroactively rubber stamp a warrant based on some flimsy probable cause, exactly like the Patriot Act was written for. No need to parallel construct.