This is part 1.
David Loveall II is an FBI Senior Computer Scientist.
The EDNY called on him to rebut J. Richard Kiper’s report on the allegedly tampered Camila digital photos.
Loveall has been with the FBI since May 2010 and is currently assigned to the Operational Technology Division (OTD) in Quantico, Virginia. Prior to that, he worked as a forensic examiner for the FBI in Kansas City.
He was not involved in the investigation or prosecution of United States v. Keith Raniere.
Kiper had a 20-year career as an FBI Special Agent from 1999 to 2019. Over half his career was in cybersecurity and digital forensics. Kiper held various roles, including case agent, supervisor, unit chief, forensic examiner, trainer of forensic examiners, and trainer of trainers of forensic examiners.
Review the two technical reports:
Loveall reviewed Kiper’s “Summary of Technical Findings” dated April 25, 2022, which was used by Keith Raniere in his Rule 33 Motion for a new trial.
Loveall had access to the three devices to analyze:
A Western Digital Hard Drive
A Canon EOS camera
A CompactFlash (CF) camera card.
The FBI found 22 contraband pictures of Camila on the hard drive.
Observing the metadata from the digital photos, the FBI determined Raniere took Camila’s photos with a Canon camera. He transferred them to the camera card. Next he transferred them to a Dell computer, which was not found and finally to a hard drive the FBI found in plain sight in Raniere’s library at 8 Hale Dr.
.
Kiper’s report stated the FBI tampered with the evidence and had several findings.
In this post, we will examine the first finding – giving both Kiper’s allegation and Loveall’s rebuttal.
Kiper’s Finding #1 reveals files on the hard drive do not match the camera card yet have the same file name.
Here is how Kiper explained it:
Finding 1:
Some digital photo files found on the CF card had the same filenames and date/time stamps as their supposed backups on the WD HDD, yet they depicted two different people.
Moreover, these same CF card files contained thumbnail pictures from another existing set of photos, thus proving manual alteration of the CF Card contents.
Kiper goes on to explain the technical aspects of this.
In simple terms, Kiper discusses digital photo files found on a memory card (CF card) and a hard drive (WD HDD).
His says some photo files on the CF card had the same names and timestamps as their supposed backups on the hard drive, but depicted different people.
Additionally, some files on the CF card contained thumbnail pictures from another set of photos, suggesting the contents of the CF card were manually altered.
Photo files 93-97 on the hard drive’s forensic report were not found in first FBI CF card report, but were found in a 2nd FBI CF card report.
However, these files on the 2nd CF card report were not viewable as photos and their “digital fingerprints” did not match, indicating manipulation.
Kiper’s analysis also revealed that photos 93, 94, 96, and 97 on the CF card were different from their namesakes on the hard drive.
However, these CF card files contained the same thumbnail images as 180-183) on the hard drive, suggesting intentional alterations.
Loveall did not find this strange:
He wrote that “Kiper’s conclusion that this proves that the card’s contents must have been intentionally altered is not correct.”
In simple terms Loveall argued that the way the file system in the CF card works is that files are created and deleted over time.
If the CF card does not have enough space to store all the photos taken by the camera, older photos are deleted to make room for new ones.
Metadata is stored separately from the actual photograph and when files are deleted, they are not immediately erased from the CF card; the file system only marks the space as available for reuse.
If a new file is saved in the space previously occupied by a deleted file, the FBI forensic tools can make a partial recovery of the old file, and this can cause metadata from one file to be mistakenly attributed to another.
Kiper’s claim of intentional alteration of the CF card contents is not supported by the photos being different.
It can be the result of how file systems manage data, and it does not necessarily indicate manipulation or wrongdoing.
Frank Parlato 
Janine Morrison 
J.J. O'Hara 
Richard Luthmann 
Marie White 
Paul Serran
Please leave a comment: Your opinion is important to us!
[…] Battle of Experts: Kiper v Loveall on FBI Tampering in Raniere Case […]
[…] Part 1 Battle of Experts: Kiper v Loveall on FBI Tampering in Raniere Case […]
Working link to the Loveall report https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nyed.416187/gov.uscourts.nyed.416187.1213.3.pdf
To Kipper,
Any good you did while an argent gets tossed out the window bit-by-bit every time you represent someone – you know to be guilty.
Attorneys pledge, “I will discharge my duties to my clients to the best of my ability”
You didn’t take such a pledge.
You don’t have a professional obligation to assume innocence.
The evidence is either true or false.
You’re fully cognitive of what I’m saying is the truth. Keep grinning. You are a soulless human being.
The bottom line, this is new evidence as needed in Rule 33.
Raniere liked his pictures – he started as far back as Raniere’s CBI days.
He kept it up through DOS and found a way to get women to take their own pictures of their private parts that were sent to him.
The collateral, which is full of pictures, demanded by Raniere, still hasn’t been turned over to the Judge who ordered it.
Keith Raniere is never getting out of prison.
I don’t think this is all the evidence. Keith was too smart to keep the photos in plain sight when he split for Mexico.
No way they were on the hard drive.
I have no more Fs to give.
Me either. I just hope Frank comes out okay. I think he’s a hero.
My bet is that keith believed he was so smart and so above the law that he employed a worm. I believe it’s possible this might be a part of the reason he received such a stiff sentence. Let’s not forget he was trading in humans. If you really wanna learn how Keith raniere thinks? You can read his patents.
Please. He didn’t use any worm. He wouldn’t waste his lazy ass on that. What he threw a hail Mary about as “tampering” was just the normal operation of a digital camera when taking pictures on a flash card and operating systems that work with files on them and other hard disks when they are deleted and/or moved around.
So, I’ve read Kiper’s opening statement and several of the pages so far. Loveall link is broken.
I’ve always believed Keith tampered with his own files. I’m sure Mr. Mega Society was more than aware he possessed contraband photos of a 15 year old girl.
My suspicion is that he may have used some kind of worm to self destruct the files. Just think about, it, really. Think about John Tighe.
How To With John Wilson on NXiVM.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-features/how-to-with-john-wilson-nathan-fielder-nxivm-season-3-interview-1235546430/
Someone somewhere tried to sabotage the government’s case against NXIVM.
If the question is: “Who would want to sabotage the government’s case against NXIVM?”
The answer tells us about the kind of people who have WAY TOO MUCH access to OUR government’s files.
Frank
I am Angela- (redacted)-
I heard your cousin tried to poison you sending you a container that was open and she pretended she was sick Witt COPD with an imaginary husband.
Look out Angela. Your cousin is dangerous. She not just a liar. Be careful. I will expose all.
WTF
Dear Suneel, I’m totally confused. Is there a visual tutorial we can see?
Straight to the Point,
Suneel’s Vanguard Library pic is incredible informative.
It points to a camera and a computer.
It answers everything.
What else do you need to know?
Today marks the birthday of a particular monster.
Frank Report
Allison Mack Reveals Monster Side – in Email to Nicole 24 Hours After Sexual Assault by Raniere
November 1, 2019
Allison Mack’s True Role in the Sex Trafficking of Nicole [Part 1]
October 16, 2019
Allison Mack Begins to Set up Nicole for ‘Sex Trafficking’ Via a First Walk With Raniere [Part 2]
October 20, 2019
Allison Mack’s Pubic Hair Clues Nicole Into Raniere’s Intent to Traffic Her -‘ I like It Unshaved,’ Pervy Sex Cult Leader Says
October 26, 2019
Day of Infamy – the Gruesome, Graphic Details of Keith Raniere’s Sex Trafficking Nicole – and Allison Mack was ‘Freaked Out’
October 29, 2019
I hope Alison will watch the “Out of Shadows” documentary on Bitchute.
infobae
NOTICIAS
Qué pasó un día como hoy: las efemérides del 29 de julio
Hazañas, tragedias, nacimientos y muertes son los sucesos más importantes que pasaron un día como hoy
29 Jul, 2023
Cumpleaños
[ … ]
1982: Allison Mack, actriz estadounidense.
[ … ]
BuzzFeed
Celebrity·Posted on Jul 27, 2023
23 Actors Who Basically Ruined Their Own Career Overnight
by Hannah Marder
[ … ]
6. While perhaps not quite as famous as some of the examples on this list, Allison Mack from Smallville seemed poised to make a career for herself in the 2000s. However, she soon became heavily involved in the “personal development company” NXIVM, which was exposed as an MLM and cult in 2017. She was eventually arrested with charges of sex trafficking and forced labor after leading a sex cult within NXIVM that allegedly involved starving and branding women, essentially enslaving them.
She was recently released shy of serving her complete three-year sentence, though it’s extremely unlikely she’ll make a return to acting. Mack [ … ]
[ … ]
https://www.buzzfeed.com/hannahmarder/actors-who-ruined-their-own-career-overnight
What does everyone make it mean?
So, in parlance, Kiper is full of horseshit.
Wanted to ask everyone:
What was Vanturd Raniere’s worst business idea?
1. Jness
2. Nxivm
3. The Knife
4. Consumers Buyline
5. The Source
6. Exo / Eso
7. Rainbow CULTural Grooming
8. Society of Protectors
9. Other (please name, I may have missed some)
Rainbow. Those kids had no choice.
Kipper went along and humoured Keith for a pretty Bronfman penny.
Hiring Frank
Peaches,
That’s the best answer, by far! LOL
Thanks Alex, I love nxivm trivia.
I think the Knife and exo/ eso were brilliant
Poor Danilelle. I cannot imagine how much of her own money she poured into Exo/Eso. Just to watch it crash and burn. What a scam she tried to pull. It was straight up MLM. She still has her head up Kieth’s ass.
Pilgriim – DOS is missing.
10:18, I didn’t include because I was thinking more of business ventures that flopped. DOS was more of a sex/slaver cult. But DOS can be an answer, based on its sheer stupidity.
This is in no sense a battle.
Kiper wrote a deliberately turgid report, confusing whats and hows to support an utterly unsupported hypothesis of evidence tampering. He claimed there was no other explanation for the misnamed files etc. than FBI tampering.
The weakness of Kiper’s argument is that all it takes to disprove his conclusion is to show that there is indeed another explanation. Which is what Loveall did.
Judge Garaufis, who decides this case, will be looking at this from a legal not a technical viewpoint. All he needs to know is that the claim that “there’s no other explanation” has been rebutted.
The “no other explanation” claim is the meager prop that this entire Rule 33 claim depended on. That meager prop has been knocked down. Raniere’s appeal is a dead duck.
So we can argue the technical details until we’re blue in the face, it makes no difference. Raniere’s legal claim is finished.
And as for the tired claim of FBI tampering, those who want to believe in conspiracy theories will continue to believe no matter what. There’s no way to prove a negative so there’s no way to prove the FBI didn’t fabricate pictures.
Nevertheless, the matter is dead.
Thank you Mr. Sausage
Aristotle I whole heartedly agree with you!!!
Now can I see your sausage?
I am kicking myself for not thinking of it. Its computer science 101.
Delete is not delete, it never has been for computers. Kiper knows this. However, Kiper wasn’t paid to come up with theories on how the data is valid, he was paid to come up with theories on why it wasn’t. This is a good example of why battle of the experts is so tricky in courts.
What Loveall is describing is how “delete” actually works in Windows and really in most operating systems. This can really get complicated as suspect the card was formatted in FAT32 and likely the external hard drive in NTFS but the overview of both works the same in principle as these are standards applied across the board regardless of manufacturer or operating system. Standards that have been around for decades. When a hard drive is formatted, be it thumb drive, camera card, etc. it create a table that segments the empty space with that table marking the space as free via a flag (say 0 for free, 1 for not free).
When a file is written, it picks a spot, checks if its free and writes a piece of file. Checks the next segment, if free, writes another chunk of file, and so on until the file is written. If a spot is not free, it just finds another spot that is. As its doing this, it updates the table to note info about the file and change the flag to not free. As a result of this free vs not free, a file might be written contiguously over the hard drive or could be widely spread out. In effect the disk table is a table of pointers that point to where all the pieces of file is stored. The table is how the operation system literally pieces that file together to present to you. The table that tracks all of this is why you might buy say a 2TB hard drive but only have 1.86TB of space. That remaining space is for the table.
So then what is a delete? Its just removing the pointer in the table and marking it as free. The data is still there. Its not removed, its not overwritten, its just hanging there for the right tool to come find it if choose too. What really happens is the data is eventually overwritten. You make a new file, it comes across one of those now free spots, writing to it and replacing what was there. However, its possible that say a file that was written in over 200 segments only has 30 of its segments overwritten by a later file. The other 170 segments could still be hanging out. Recover software, such as forensic software, can still piece that file together from those 170 pieces.
In short, delete doesn’t delete, its changing a flag and removing a pointer. Department of Defense has the DoD 5220.22-M Standard to erase hard drive data by performing 7 different overwrite passes on data to erase it since deletion isn’t real. The FBI likely uses this same standard. Kiper would know.
All of this is why its recommended to destroy hard drives, SSDs, etc. instead of just throwing them away. So what is a quick format? Just clearing the table of its pointers and marking segments as free. A full format is rebuilding the table and checking the hard drive but its not overwriting any previous data. The data is still there, just now the OS can’t figure out what is where as it relies on the table. Forensic software could still recover that data. If really want to do the DOD standard, there is software for that. For most people, most of the time, none of this matters. Really only time any of this matters is possibly a high profile person that people want to collect data from or plan on handing one of your old hard drives for someone else to re-use.
Exactly. In layman’s terms: when files are deleted, they aren’t truly deleted. Their sectors on disk which hold the data are just marked for deletion in a “table of contents” (which also exists on the disk in a particular location) for the disk. The sector’s contents are still there until the OS reuses that sector for another file’s contents and overwrites it. So it’s very possible that the data of files that are deleted still remain on disk, and the disk’s table of contents for an old file now point to mixed data. The only way to really delete the content of a hard disk that is unrecoverable is to wipe its “table of contents” and overwrite the entire disk multiple times with random data. There is both free open source and commercial specialized software that does that. Of course, if you don’t want to reuse the disk anymore you can always just burn it.
Thanks for the explanation, Erasend.
I don’t know that much about programming and I haven’t been able to read the loveall report, but I am vaguely aware of pointers (as you’ve explained) and that some core languages interact directly with the hardware.
I’m a bit naive but with these elements combined, I don’t see how it’s not at least a possibility that Keith was able to acquire something like that. To my mind, all it had to do was cast enough suspicion that the pictures would be thrown out as evidence and this seems to be Keith’s strategy.
You seem to be a lot more knowledgeable about these things than I am. What do you think?
Kiper v Loveall-
In the IT field years of experience mean nothing. Intelligence and education are what matters.
So let’s take a look at
David Loveall’s educational background:
https://dfor.gmu.edu/person/david-loveall/
Kipper has a bunch of technical certifications. On his website he lists his CompTIA certificate which is a joke. His PHD isn’t even germane to his expertise. Where did he earn his PHD? LMAO!
Why the editors of the Frank Report are so impressed by Kipper is beyond me. Maybe Kipper picked up lunch, the dinner tab or paid for a lap dance. 😉
Kiper had more to say than this one finding. Just hold your hordes of criticism. My man is innocent.
But Kipper has a Seagram bank account your wife’s boss would be proud of. And Kiper may still be correct. We’ll never know.
I do know Keith took the pictures. Or else he would have made a post-it-note demand to his lawyers and not gone down in 120 flames before bringing up the topic.
The 2008 Guinness Book of World Records (Australian Edition) lists Vanguard as the worlds smartest photographer!
Come on! As IF Keith didn’t try and hide his pictures? Why do you think he was so confident to the point of bringing no defense? Seems to me that everyone can admit the evidence is scrambled just like scrambled eggs. But what? The FBI is supposed to expose all their tech and investigative techniques just because keith demanded it?