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Man arrested for net threat, cops take apart his computer and display it

I can understand it when police put seized weapons, drugs, and other illegal items on display for the media, but I don’t really see the point in this:

The video report is about the arrest of a man who made posted a message on an online bulletin board in June claiming that he was going to kill a bunch of people at JR Tabata Station. The man claims he posted the message as a joke, but police have taken his case so seriously that they needed to disassemble his computer and dramatically display its individual parts as if each of them was a brick of cocaine.

25 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - August 25, 2008 at 3:26 pm

Categories: Odd / Strange Tags: crime, japan

eric

wow. and he had such an impressive setup.
http://www.cosmodeonline.com/blog Philip

Just as lame as being arrested for having “0.368 gram of dried plant matter, including cannabis”
Koiyuki

Thanks to incidents like Neomugicha and the Akihabara stabbings, internet threats are harder for the police to ignore. Therefore if someone makes a threat over the tubes, they’re a lot more likely to find who said it and crack down on them like lightening
Oops

Computers are much more deadly than knives, guns, and cocaine!

Well, maybe they thought there was a bomb inside or they just wanted to seize his computer so they can use it themselves later on. Their budget must be getting lower. -.-
http://wasabinoise.com WasabiNoise

hardware p0rn! XD
_kovert

I think you are missing the actual threat implied by these images.
If you threaten to kill people through the internet, you may lose your entire collection of internet porn.
Klauscore

ROTFL. Maybe they were trying to find where *exactly* the threat was inside the computer. Maybe there is a new type of hardware for this kind of thing, I’ll ask at the Yamada Denki tonite. 640 MB threat-accelerator card.
http://www.reallyjapan.com Ruben

I guess he was some kind of PC Akihabara otaku and disassembling his computer worked as torture for him

DoctorBlackJack

That is exactly what I thought.

The Dude

They must have disassembled his computer before his eyes in order to make him sign the prepared confession.

gonta

Err – what a nasty bit of kit. I bet the guy wants a 24 inch iMac and thought “how shall I dispose of this crap. Shall I dump it – no that’s naughty. Shall I pay 5,000 yen to get it recycled – neh! I know, I’ll make up a dumb ass threat on some blog and then the cops will take it away for free……..sorted”.
revil

why would they take it apart?! What the hell are they even looking for in there?!

The Overthinker

Very small guns, perhaps. Or maybe instead of using his computer to threaten to kill people he had threatened to use his computer to kill people….

Personally I think it’s just a bit of media propaganda: “Look, we really DID look inside his computer for evidence!”

HKHamster

Very impressive! Very clean, spot less, it looks like the police have cleaned the PC, very thorough job. Oops you’re right, maybe there was a self-destruct mechanism, can’t take any chances nowadays.
edwardhasnewgoggles

The reason they took it apart is so they can look at the hard drives through their own computers. I can’t vouch for a “forensic data analyst”, but I would imagine it’s a lot easier than hacking the computer itself (were it to be hacked).

I think it’s completely reasonable. Most of those parts displayed are hard drives, so it’s reasonable they’d take most of the computer apart.

DKO

Yeah, the same way cops take bodies apart for pathologists. Oh wait, they can’t do that, because that’s the pathologist’s job, not the cop’s.

Hopefully the cops didn’t destroy any “evidence” while taking the computer apart. Do you think they were wearing protective wristbands while at it?

edwardhasnewgoggles

You are right, cops don’t take apart bodies and they don’t take apart computers either. The newscast made no reference as to who took apart the computer.

Typically in cases where a thorough investigation is required, cops will hire outside help (or within the crime lab they may have) for their crimes. This is where your forensics specialists come into play. In your example, a forensic pathologist would come into play since any plain old cop can’t investigate that far. There’s practically every type of forensics you could think of.

In this case there is a possibility for other threats that could have occurred from the same computer and in light of the recent stabbing incidents, they more-than-likely hired someone who specializes in computer forensics to investigate to see if it was a bluff, if there are real plans for a stabbing, etc. This is not a new concept…this has happened in several cases and proven efficient.

404error

dont buy dell pcs^^ it makes you do bad jokes on the internet^^xDD
Level3

I’d much rather have the cops put my computer innards on display, than have them put the contents of my hard drive on display.
Mister M

There are idiots everywhere, and he was the one who finally got what he was looking for. Congratulation!!
sputnik

This concept isn’t limited to Japan. A short time ago some kid made some threats about blowing up his school on the English equivalent of 2ch and was promptly reported to authorities by fellow posters + site admins. I’d rather be safe then sorry.

Bad Wolf

Absolutely. We want the wack jobs taken away.

But did they disassemble his computer and put it on display for the media? I think that is the point here. Why on earth would they display the innards of a computer like they were confiscated weapons, drugs, or ladies unmentionables?

Godfrey MacGyver

Ladies unmentionables are dangerous and must be displayed…

Dr. Pepsi

I think he learned his lesson.
anon

“So that’s how criminal’s computer looks like!” orz

Man arrested for net threat, cops take apart his computer and display it

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