Sony, Hotz Argue over Hard Drives

New court documents obtained by PSX-Scene show that a battle is unfolding between hacker George Hotz's lawyers and Sony over hard drives. As you may recall the court ordered Hotz to turn over his hard drives to a third-party called TIG. The company was charged with analyzing and isolating any data that might be relevant to the case. The original court order called for TIG to analyze the drives "for the purpose of isolating, segregating and/or removing the information on those devices related to Defendant Hotz's circumvention of the TPMs in the PS3 system." But Hotz's legal team says that TIG is giving Sony too much information..

According to court documents, TIG wants to create two full image files of the drives in decrypted and encrypted format. Hottz's attorneys say that this is more information than Sony is entitled per the court's order:

"SCEA is not entitled to inspect the impounded drives under the impoundment order, nor is it allowed to create and preserve additional copies of the impounded drives, but this is precisely what it seeks to do."

SCEA asked the court to allow it. Here is what it told the court:

"For the foregoing reasons, SCEA requests that the Court order that Mr. Hotz comply with TIG‟s recommended impoundment protocols and that those protocols be supplemented to ensure that preservation requirements are met as follows:

(1) TIG create and preserve two forensically sound images (e.g., bit stream images) of each impounded storage device in its encrypted form: One to be maintained by TIG in a secure vault for preservation purposes and the second to be used for decryption and/or any other necessary analysis by TIG;

(2) TIG create and preserve two forensically sound images (e.g., bit stream images) of each impounded storage device in its un-encrypted form. One to be maintained by TIG in a secure vault for preservation purposes and the second to be used for TIG‟s necessary analysis; and

(3) TIG maintain and preserve all of the forensically created images for the duration of the lawsuit.

SCEA further requests that the Court order Mr. Hotz to: (a) provide TIG with the tools and keys necessary to decrypt the impounded storage devices and the keys and passwords necessary to decrypt or unlock any protected files contained on the impounded storage devices;

(b) identify for TIG all virtual machines or hard disks stored or at any time run on the impounded storage devices.3 Furthermore, to verify compliance with the impoundment order, SCEA requests that the Court order Mr. Hotz to provide a declaration setting forth: verification that all storage devices on which any circumvention devices or any information relating to Mr. Hotz's circumvention of the technological protection measures in the PS3 System are stored have been delivered to TIG; why the storage device used by Mr. Hotz in the January 7, 2011 YouTube video entitled “Jailbroken PS3 3.55 with Homebrew” was not delivered to TIG for impoundment; and the identity of any remote storage of the circumvention devices or any information relating to Mr. Hotz's circumvention of the technological protection measures in the PS3 System.4 Finally, SCEA seeks fees and costs in relation to this motion."

Check out the court documents below - all from PSX-Scene:

86-1.pdf

86-main.pdf

87.pdf

Source: PSX-Scene