ForumGarden

Not exactly sure how they can say it wasn't used but here ya go:



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060629/ap_ ... NlYwN0bQ--

They can say with certainty that nobody powered the laptop up.

I guarantee that if I'd been offered it and wanted to use the data for criminal purposes, I'd have the disk out and copied and back in and the whole laptop passed back to the security services, at which point (if it hadn't been powered up before I handled it) nobody could tell the copy had been made. I'd even wait a day before getting it back to them so the drive cooled to room temperature. Surely nobody would expect anything different?

Of course, if they can be sure they know the history of its movements from theft to recovery, that's different. Any legend I'd have built for that would be the most crumbly aspect of what I'd have done.