For the past several weeks now we have been inundated with news stories about destroyed CIA tapes. The President is exercising his right to remain silent. I wonder if anyone has also mentioned he will be treated as innocent until proven guilty? I am sure he knows of his right to an attorney, but if we detain him as a terrorism suspect we may be able to stash him away down in Gitmo or at a Rendition-friendly country for a few years until shit dies down.
But all the criminal activity aside, I want to know this: Who really makes tapes of anything nowadays? There are no destroyed tapes. Basically because there are no tapes! The criminals involved with this investigation often mention videos and the news stories alternately mention videos and tapes.
This is 2007. Let’s get realistic. These videos were recorded onto some kind of camcorder and were then digitally saved to a hard drive somewhere. There ARE no tapes! If they’re smart, they’ll sell the digital recording device on eBay to a UK buyer or someone engaged in German porn. That way, the traces of the torture videos will be written over so many times as to be irrecoverable. If they sell their disks and cameras to the porn industry, then even if a disk were sent out for recovery all we’d see is the Money Shot.
A typical hard drive data wipe requires data to be written to every writable sector several times before it is certified as “clean” and I would expect an additional step of destroying the hard drive would be mandated. Not destroying by smashing either, but destruction by an incinerator or another more robust shredding or melting process.
It’s only a matter of time before someone who was not comfortable with the illegal torture activities shows up with a USB stick, or a camera phone or some other digital representation or copy of the tortures at Gitmo.
This is the digital age. Remember the pictures at Abu Ghraib? Remember the Holocaust concentration camps? The records exist. They will be found for the torture at Gitmo. It’s only a matter of time before someone’s conscience catches up to the illegal atrocities of this Republican Administration and they all go to jail. The President may pardon every criminal involved, but let the written and digital records come forth. The truthiness is out there!
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