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Sandisk SD card can store tamper-proof photos for 100 years

By Larry Dignan | June 23, 2010, 5:03am PDT

Summary

SanDisk has started shipping a SD card that writes once and can store images and data for at least 100 years. The SD card is being used by police for tamper-proof forensic image archiving.

Topics

Card, SanDisk Corp., SD Card, Photograph, Flash Memory, Memory, Semiconductors, Hardware, Components, Larry Dignan

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Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic. He was most recently Executive Editor of News and Blogs at ZDNet. Prior to that he was executive news editor at eWeek and news editor at Baseline. He also served as the East Coast news editor and finance editor at CNET News.com. Larry has covered the technology and financial services industry since 1995, publishing articles in WallStreetWeek.com, Inter@ctive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning magazine. He's a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and the University of Delaware.

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Sam Diaz

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Sam Diaz

Sam Diaz

Sam Diaz is a senior editor at ZDNet. He has been a technology and business blogger, reporter and editor at the Washington Post, San Jose Mercury News and Fresno Bee for more than 18 years. He's a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and a graduate of California State University, Fresno.

Andrew Nusca

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Andrew Nusca

Andrew Nusca

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Andrew J. Nusca is an associate editor for ZDNet and SmartPlanet. As a journalist based in New York City, he has written for Popular Mechanics and Men's Vogue and his byline has appeared in New York magazine, The Huffington Post, New York Daily News, Editor & Publisher, New York Press and many others. He also writes The Editorialiste, a media criticism blog.

He is a New York University graduate and former news editor and columnist of the Washington Square News. He is a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He has been named "Howard Kurtz, Jr." by film critic John Lichman despite having no relation to him. A native of Philadelphia, he lives in New York with his fiancee and his cat, Spats.

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SanDisk has started shipping a SD card that writes once and can store images and data for at least 100 years. The SD card is being used by police for tamper-proof forensic image archiving and SanDisk plans to target other industries.

These SD cards—dubbed WORM (write once read many)—are now being shipped in volume. SanDisk added that it has sold its WORM SD card to Japan’s National Police.

According to SanDisk, the SD WORM card allows law enforcement officers to “create unalterable, permanent photographic records that serve as resources during investigations or as potential evidence during trials.”

The card works like any other SD card where you plug it into a digital camera and later transfer images to a computer. The images taken on the card can’t be altered. The WORM card can also be used to store witness interviews.

SanDisk is targeting law enforcement agencies with the WORM cards—at least at first. Typically, forensic images have been stored on 35mm film, which degrades. Japan has no statute of limitations for series crimes so the WORM card could come in handy if officials need to access images more than a few decades old.

The company said that its 100-year unalterable data storage claim is based on internal testing for SD cards stored at normal room temperature with humidity and static protection.

Although law enforcement agencies are the first target market for the SanDisk tamper-proof SD cards, the retail, legal and government sectors are likely to be interested in the technology.

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Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic.

Disclosure

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan has nothing to disclose. He doesn’t hold investments in the technology companies he covers.

Biography

Larry Dignan

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic. He was most recently Executive Editor of News and Blogs at ZDNet. Prior to that he was executive news editor at eWeek and news editor at Baseline. He also served as the East Coast news editor and finance editor at CNET News.com. Larry has covered the technology and financial services industry since 1995, publishing articles in WallStreetWeek.com, Inter@ctive Week, The New York Times, and Financial Planning magazine. He's a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism and the University of Delaware.

For daily updates, follow Larry on Twitter.

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Talkback Most Recent of 18 Talkback(s)

  • How long before a hack renders this "protection" useless?
    Without independent verification, I don't buy this. Where is the science and proof?
    ZDNet Gravatar
    kd5auq
    06/23/2010 06:22 AM
  • RE: Sandisk SD card can store tamper-proof photos for 100 years
    @kd5auq - I think it a pretty safe bet that if the Japanese police are using this that they've been through this technology VERY thoroughly. The JPN force are a REALLY serious organization.

    Chances are that they're using some form of self harming diode on the write-line junction on each page - once the device has completed writing a page, the write line blows and the contents of that page can no longer be changed.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    de-void-21165590650301806002836337787023
    06/23/2010 12:40 PM
  • Only protected once written
    But what about someone modifying it before it is written. Assumption of protection is the biggest security flaw and risk.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    Q360
    06/23/2010 06:39 AM
  • If written in the camera--tamper proof for life.
    @Q360 Or at least until someone figures out how to get around the police departments' physical security. You really expect these things to be online full-time? Hard to modify it before it's written if the camera itself is doing the writing.

    However, I also see some real possibilities as a replacement to optical disk storage, if they can store, say, 32Gig at a time?

    Imagine your already-existant photo library;
    Imagine your massive AV library (and I don't care if you're using iTunes or something else.)
    ZDNet Gravatar
    vulpine@...
    06/23/2010 09:40 AM
  • It they actually use some sort of PROM technology ...
    It would be useful. But if it's really done through some sort of firmware/software routine, then it could be hacked and that would render their claims invalid.

    Physical security and solid procedures for maintaining the chain of evidence are still the most important things. Technology can't solve problems caused by bad procedures or sloppy execution.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    terry flores
    06/23/2010 06:45 AM
  • wax cylinders, anyone?
    Edison had transcription audio recording cylinders 100 years ago that were write once. Care to retrieve the audio today? What makes you think there will be hardware and an OS to read the stuff? "Long live the 21 MB Floptical drive!!!"
    ZDNet Gravatar
    psion@...
    06/23/2010 07:34 AM
  • Exactly my thoughts (nt)
    nt
    ZDNet Gravatar
    Economister
    06/23/2010 08:13 AM
  • Edison players
    @psion@..Collectors still have working Edison players. Best defense for forensic evidence is multiple layers of storage--card, disk, portable HD. Sufficient overlap between information storage technologies exists for archivists to have plenty of advance warning for re-archiving on new media.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    littlepitcher
    06/23/2010 11:49 AM
  • RE: Sandisk SD card can store tamper-proof photos for 100 years
    @psion@... As per the media:

    Wax cylinders from that era do exist and are still workable, as long as they were stored with some semblance of care. I personally have ancient-but-working 78 RPM records that were first "pressed" in 1918 (this is pre-vinyl, remember; these records were made of shellac, a crude bakelite-substance, and a paper-cotton board core). In spite of being 92 years old, they still have passable (no, not perfect, "passable") fidelity.

    As an analogue, the SD cards quite likely have error correction, duplicate pages (or even a 'parity stripe' of sorts), and materials that, if kept with reasonable care, can probably last 100+ years.

    The trick, as you've mentioned, is in the equipment. OTOH, it wouldn't take much to snap up a usable number of spare laptops with SSD drives and store them in areas throughout, say, the region (or in Japan's case, set a dozen or two aside in every prefecture), for the express purpose of reading those cards at some future date - and nothing else.

    Policy helps too - set a time (say, every 10-20 years) where the SD cards must be read by some automated double-blind process and copied off to another, newer write-once long-term media.

    I suspect that, especially in the case of police evidence, there's (eventually) going to be a date where you can simply chuck a given SD card into a vault somewhere, and either forget it exists, or let the historians deal with it. Maybe chuck in a specially-built computer, and if you're uber-anal, maybe a generator (or solar panel kit, wind turbine, etc) to power the thing can be thrown into the same vault as well.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    Random_Walk
    06/23/2010 01:46 PM
  • I have an Edison reader
    @psion@...

    I can read that audio "data", I have an Edison cylinder phonograph.

    However, your point is taken, make sure you transfer to newer formats as they appear and become standards.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    WindowWasher
    06/25/2010 12:15 PM
  • Compare to the older CDRs
    Just brings back memories of bad data recovery from 2 to 5 year old CDRs. If it isn't designed right, then data will slowly degrade.
    Then there is the issue of always maintaining the capability for the storage interface. Who says that SD card readers will be around in 20 to 100 years? Maybe we'll have moved onto the latest and greatest, i.e. organic storage, by that time.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    DocTech
    06/23/2010 09:02 AM
  • RE: Sandisk SD card can store tamper-proof photos for 100 years
    @DocTech: CD-R's are a really bad analogue... they're made of (by long-term measurements) a volatile dye sandwiched between two layers of cheap plastic and a flimsy ( usually crap) layer of reflective plastic foil on top.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    Random_Walk
    06/23/2010 01:52 PM
  • I await proof with bated breath...
    We have 10 years of archival photos, never altered, only viewed. Such a card would prove a valuable backup and free much space elsewhere. (I imagine 3: 1 in use, 1 in a home safe, 1 offsite.)
    ZDNet Gravatar
    fjpoblam
    06/23/2010 10:03 AM
  • Kewl.. emp the police station and bam evidence erased.
    sweet. just need to build an emp device.... whats the number for the local physics department?
    ZDNet Gravatar
    Been_Done_Before
    06/23/2010 10:40 AM
  • RE: Sandisk SD card can store tamper-proof photos for 100 years
    @Been_Done_Before: Do you know what in the Hell an EMP is, and how one of sufficient size is generated to wipe a card from outside the frickin' storage vault? (hint: unless you have a thermonuclear weapon loafing around in your basement...)
    ZDNet Gravatar
    Random_Walk
    06/23/2010 01:54 PM
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