emptywheelI've pulled together what we can learn from the October 22, 2020 CYA memo on the Hunter Biden laptop. Hoping some tech folks, esp @malwarejake and @matthew_d_green can review it to see if they can figure out why FBI had to install laptop hard drive in new laptop to get an image of it.
Jake Williams@emptywheel @matthew_d_green After a cursory review of the whistleblower transcript (item 20), there is no reason I can see why you'd do this. It's honestly a bit perplexing to me. But this drive seems to have been mishandled at every turn - at least this is consistent...
Alternate theory: it's inarticulate wording?
Note that he doesn't know how to spell Cellebrite.
But there was "computer guy" in the room.
@matthew_d_green
@malwarejake Also, is the observation that iMessages were encrypted (on the drive) but there was a business card with the password consistent with what we've seen elsewhere? @matthew_d_green
@emptywheel @matthew_d_green I don't remember that there were encrypted iMessages, but their investigation is very different (both in goal and scope) than mine. I'm sure there's data on that drive that I've never encountered, even across multiple analyses of the system.
Heck just on email, the reporters understand even just the email contents FAR better than me. I was the guy saying "yes, we can validate this email is authentic." The FBI can just subpoena Google. Whole different scope.