[PLUG] forensics (WAS NO ptr record for lists.pdxlinux.org...)

[Ed Sawicki]

On Sun, 2003-09-28 at 14:44, Michael C. Robinson wrote:

> There are legal concerns with allowing connections 
> for spammers of any sort unchecked, liability 
> concerns.  For example, imagine someone decides
> to figure out you have an email address and
> then sends illegal material to it.  If law 
> enforcement finds out about this material say 
> you go to prison for it.  I think it's clear 
> that you can be held responsible for anything 
> on your computer no matter how it got there, 
> even if only a ghost of it is left.

You've brought up an interesting forensics problem that
I've been concerned about for many years and have written
and lectured about. If, for example, child pornography is
attached to a message in your e-mail inbox, I doubt you'd
be prosecuted (even with the present administration)
because it can be assumed that it's unsolicited. 

But delete the message and the attachment and the data is
logically deleted but still there on your hard disk with,
perhaps, no way to determine that it's origin was 
unsolicited incoming e-mail.

However, this may have little to do with the discussion of
PTR records.

Ed