[ale] cabling and GA

[Greg Freemyer]

On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 4:39 PM, Michael B. Trausch <mike at trausch.us> wrote:
> On 03/30/2010 03:08 PM, Greg Freemyer wrote:
>> If making dd copies of hard drives requires a PI license in GA, I'm
>> sure you have to have some kind of license to lay cable.
>>
>> fyi: As I read the law you also have to have a PI license to be a
>> forensic accountant, to run a rape kit in a hospital, or any number of
>> other activities.  The key is if your documenting evidence for a court
>> case, you need a PI license.
>
> So in other words, if you're doing any of those activities for a client
> or whatever, but it's not for the purpose of going to court, you don't
> have to have a PI license, is that correct?
>
> Why would one need such a license to take an image of a hard disk or
> some other type of media?  That seems to me like the state just grasping
> for reasons to put money in its pocket.  I mean, anyone can take a
> precise, bit-for-bit backup of a hard disk drive using dd, if they have
> the hardware to move the bits to.  I would think that if you were
> *interpreting* data for the court, though, that you would then _maybe_
> need a license or credential of some sort that says you know what you're
> doing, though thankfully it's typically pretty easy to figure out
> definitively what happened how, since most users never clean up when
> they do things because they think that deleting a file is great
> security, for some reason.
>
> Would that also mean that if I tell someone what happened on a drive or
> that someone is hiding things and show them how, that I would be
> violating law if that went eventually went to court but not if it wasn't
> headed that direction at the time that I told them what was going on?
>
>        --- Mike

Mike,

My understanding is that you need a GA PI license if you are
collecting evidence or preparing reports in anticipation of their use
in a court or law, etc.

Almost 100% of what I do is in anticipation of a lawsuit, so I have a
PI license personally and my company does corporately.

Currently it is a misdemeanor, but a few years ago the Governor had to
veto legislation make it a felony.  Apparently the CPA's mounted a
large effort to see it veto'd because they did not want it to be a
felony for them to do forensic accounting work without a PI license.
:)

I also think ER docs doing rape kits etc. currently are obligated to
have a PI license. (but I doubt any do.)

Similarly I suspect any IT incident response teams that envision their
reports ending up in court should have a PI license.

To highlight how weird things can get, I know of a person that was
arrested for port scanning a computer in GA.  I don't know the
details, but a quick google finds:

http://www.internetlibrary.com/cases/lib_case37.cfm

A key sentence is "After the meeting, Cherokee County terminated its
relationship with plaintiff, who was subsequently arrested for a
criminal attempt to commit computer trespass against defendant."

Fun, fun
Greg