• TechyDad@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Rudy has admitted to copying the contents of the laptop to his own hard drive. That’s a crime. At most, if you get possession of someone’s abandoned laptop, you can wipe the drive and use the factory reset laptop as your own. You don’t get to copy the data and use it as you see fit, though.

      • TechyDad@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        There were digital “locks” to prevent people from reading the data. Giuliani (or, more likely, someone working for him) bypassed those locks to get the data. If you sneak into someone’s room, rip off the lock on their diary, take photos of various pages, and then share those with people online, you can definitely face civil charges.

        • cricket97@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          the computer was unencrypted. there were no locks in place. “sneaking into someones room” is not a valid comparison when this laptop was dropped off there and never picked up.

          • TechyDad@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            A computer doesn’t need to be encrypted. It can just have a password to count as breaking into it/invasion of privacy.

            Of course, all this assumes that the laptop was real in the first place. What also could have happened is that Rudy got his hands on some of Hunter Biden’s files (for example, via some group hacking Hunter’s actual computer). Then, they could toss those files on a laptop along with “evidence” that they manufactured (e.g. made up emails from Hunter about all the crimes he was going to crime). Then they would pull the hard drive and wave it around as iron-clad evidence.

            With this method, Rudy would be mixing actual Hunter Biden content (e.g. the photos) with made up content to try to make the fictional content look legitimate. It would also count as an invasion of privacy since Rudy would have had to obtain those photos in an illegal manner and wouldn’t have had the right to distribute them.

            • cricket97@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              A computer doesn’t need to be encrypted. It can just have a password to count as breaking into it/invasion of privacy.

              Not when it became the store’s property, which it did under Delaware law. All the files on the computer are unencrypted, there is no password protecting any of that. You can simply plug in the drive into another computer and explore at will.

              What also could have happened is that Rudy got his hands on some of Hunter Biden’s files (for example, via some group hacking Hunter’s actual computer). Then, they could toss those files on a laptop along with “evidence” that they manufactured (e.g. made up emails from Hunter about all the crimes he was going to crime). Then they would pull the hard drive and wave it around as iron-clad evidence.

              While that could have happened, there is no evidence at all of this. You can’t pitch conspiracy theories as if they’re real.

              • TechyDad@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Again, that’s assuming that everything came off the laptop and that the laptop was actually abandoned. We’ve never gotten the full story on that. The laptop could have been Hunter Biden’s, but wasn’t abandoned. It could have just had the data copied off of it when the person was working on it. Or the shop could have told Hunter that the laptop was a loss and that they wiped it.

                In either of these cases, the data wouldn’t be the shop’s to give away and definitely wouldn’t be Rudy’s to parade on national TV. And that still doesn’t factor in that the laptop might not have been Hunter’s in the first place, but could have been loaded with data from Hunter (obtained via illicit means) in an effort to make it look like Hunter’s laptop.

                So far, we’ve gotten the right’s narrative about the laptop’s origins. This doesn’t mean that it’s the truth.

                • cricket97@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  You are just making up a conspiracy theory with 0 evidence. Don’t be surprised that I’m dismissing it. We could spend all day saying “well what if…”