My thought exactly. I was a kid when they were in use, but I do remember my father being annoyed with them because some would fail just lying in his desk drawer and, at that time, they were anything but old. After checking several sources, I found this assessment:
Floppy disks were never very reliable, and some didn’t even work correctly right out of the package. Some manufacturers claimed the lifespan of floppy disks was three to five years, while others said they could last ten to twenty years.
Don’t attempt to read the discs, or pass them along to anyone. As mentioned above, a simple method (hammer / shears / heat gun / propane torch) will render them unreadable to all but exotic (& extremely expensive) procedures. A degaussing coil (cheap on eBay) will erase them beyond all hope of data recovery.
In the (highly unlikely) event that someone later inquires into this, say: “Those discs - now destroyed - had no possible value to me. I had no reason or means to read them, and thus absolutely no knowledge of what they may have contained.”
“What disks? I threw away 4 dumpster-loads of old moldy crap that guy owned. I have no idea what was in most of the boxes.”
Asserting that you carefully destroyed an old disk of a technologically obsolete format strongly suggests that you knew they contained something destroy-worthy. That’s painting a gigantic “Dig here for buried treasure” sign right on your forehead.
I think it is much more reasonable to say: I didn’t know what was on those, and I had no interest in looking, but it could have been personal stuff, and the raw material is of no value to anybody, so I just destroyed all of it.
I’m going through that exact process right now with a stack of very ancient Mac laptops. The choice is dig through all of the files on 15 computers, evaluate what everything is, then decide what needs to be removed before disposing of the computers; or spend 1-2 minutes per computer to start overwriting the whole drive, then let them run unattended for 7 hours, and dispose of them confident that any sensitive data has been destroyed.
Of course when the grizzled old retired detective finds out there was a bunch of disks from that one pedo he couldn’t put away, any behavior is going to be suspicious: destruction=cover up; keeping=illegal possession of CSAM; non-destructive disposal=distribution of CSAM.
Makes sense. I was reading some of the suggestions as volunteering to the authorities that “Yes, they are gone, but I did an extremely thorough and conscientious job of utterly and irretrievably making double damn sure there was no way any snooping Federal agency with an unlimited budget could ever recover them. Now why did you ask me that?”
That was the part I was objecting to. Destroying them, or simply pitching them within a large volume of trash is something an innocent person with nothing to hide would do. Going to highly unusual lengths, then volunteering that unusuality to the naturally suspicious sorts who work as investigators seemed to me to be … unwise.
That person may have avoided any impropriety, but they sure aren’t avoiding the appearance of impropriety. Don’t do that. Especially not around kiddie porn.
This is almost a Trolley Problem.
Though he had nothing to do with any criminal aspects of the situation and acting in good faith, Smith contacts the authorities about some CSAM he has incidentally come to possess.
As a result of that contact and despite Smith’s best efforts, at the very least his name is dragged through the mud and he draws suspicious attention to himself. Maybe he goes to prison for a while.
As a result of that contact, some potential harm to other people/children is prevented.
Is it really worth Smith’s sacrifice? What if you’re Smith? Do you view it as worth it?
Summary: school officials who were investigating sexting came into possession of CSAM images. They reported this to the school resource officer, who delayed reporting it to his superiors. Two weeks later, when the police did find out they executed search warrants on the school officials, and arrested them.
Perhaps the school officials made a mistake in proceeding with the investigation without law enforcement involvement, but as far as they were concerned they had contacted law enforcement. After months all charges were dropped, but as said, this was only after their names were associated with kiddie porn arrests.
Given the factual reality that the contents were on ~20 (if not 30) year old disks, the probability that useful evidence could be derived from them that leads to a prosecution now is extremely close to zero. Even if 100% of the digital bits were perfectly retrievable, making evidence from them would be much, much harder.
Given that mere possession, regardless of how one came into said possession, of such material is a serious crime that’s trivial to prosecute, trivial to get convictions on, and very, very headline-worthy for prosecutors wanting to increase their public profile, it doesn’t seem like much of a conventional Trolley Problem to me.
But if I was forced to cast this scenario into a Trolley Problem it would go about like this:
Smith is tied to the trolley tracks on one branch of a track switch. On the other branch of the track switch is nothing; just clear unobstructed track as far as the eye can see.
The track switch is currently set to direct the oncoming trolley down the unoccupied branch. Should Smith activate the remote control in his hand to redirect the trolley down the other branch and over his own body?
ISTM the morally correct answer in this case is clear enough.
I have a friend who came to learn that her husband was trading in kiddie porn. I don’t know if he produced it, but he was making a nice income selling it. She told the authorities.
Nothing bad happened to her.
Well, lots of bad things happened to her. The police raided her house. She lost her husband. She lost access to that income. The police had her look at a lot of the photos (obscured so only the faces showed) to see if she could identify any of the children. She had to hide for a time, fearing retribution from her ex. (When he killed himself, she stopped worrying about that.) But she didn’t suffer any legal or reputational harm. The police even let her keep her laptop when they raided and took all the other computer equipment in the house.
There’s certainly a risk of reporting. But it’s not a guaranteed disaster or anything.