Posted by /-/ooligan I don't know anything about this because I love Obama and never pas a tress. But I've heard that some people remove the EXIF info from whatever photos they publish electronically and are cautious about what they admit to in the photo captions. They claim this makes it difficult for investigators & prosecuting attorneys/district attorneys/assistant US attorneys to even roughly establish at least one fact necessary to establish probable cause that a crime has taken place -- "On or about (date), suspect(s) _____ did violate Penal Code ###..."
However, especially for some high-profile/sensitive sites (Freedom Towers, for example!), the photos or video themselves might be enough prima facie evidence necessary to obtain a search warrant for a suspect's camera, computer, & other hard drives where the original images with intact EXIF files may exist. Once they have an exact or approximate date for the alleged crime, further investigative methods (site/area CCTV, cellphone tower logs, etc.) could help put together a pretty good case.
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Hoolie: Thanks for weighing in. I think yours is the most comprehensive assessment of the different scenarios.
While being investigated by Special Agents from the Department of Transportation (DOT) Office of Investigations for adventures on certain ships
we came to the conclusion that everything we posted on the internet was circumstantial in nature based on the very pointed questions they asked us while being interoggated, such as:
When did you do it? - looking for a date and time to associate with the event
How did you get inside? - determining if we could get burglary charges
How did you get on the ships? - determining if we could get burglary charges
This was after we published the whole story online. I continually answered, "It's on the web, why are you asking?" I refused to give dates or even the year we did it and finally we said we would have no further discussions without our lawyer present.
Using internet photos as basis for a warrant to search your house, only to find the original photos with EXIF data/time stamp intact is a very sly approach that we haven't counted on as most agencies don't have the time or money to bother with it. It amazes me that NYC has the budget to invest in this lightweight illegal stuff when there is much heavier problems going on in the city.
I carefully remove all EXIF data from my original photographs so that even with a warrant, they won't find a date and time from me. On higher stakes adventures, I don't carry a cell phone.