Yes, I think those are the essential questions. Admittedly it would normally be quite difficult to eliminate any detectable trace...I'm assuming that a huge blast of heat should do it. Cooling can be done by liquid, for instance. The liquid could be programmed to flush at certain random intervals to cover correlation between operation and smokey interest. (But this probably eliminates dual-use arguments.) Assuming it's doable then I'm as yet uncertain about the legal ramifications. Say the smokey's are stopping you for something "routine" and you burn your stash right there. Do they have the legal right to even mention the disposal operation? And if they do, is there any legal way to state what substance was destroyed? Perhaps it was pot (as opposed to something harder), or moonshine, or even some designer drug that's not yet technically illegal? -TD
From: Thomas Shaddack <shaddack@ns.arachne.cz> To: Tyler Durden <camera_lumina@hotmail.com> CC: eugen@leitl.org, cypherpunks@al-qaeda.net Subject: Re: Stash Burn? Date: Mon, 2 May 2005 20:29:13 +0200 (CEST)
On Mon, 2 May 2005, Tyler Durden wrote:
yes, this reminded me of another brilliant idea.
Why don't some cars have a little tiny furnace for stash destruction?
If you've got an on-board stash and some Alabama hillbilly with a badge pulls you over, you just hit the button and have you're little stashed incinerated. Who cares if the badge knows you USED TO have something on board? Too late now if any trace of evidence is gone.
What's wrong with this idea?
Let's focus on the technical realization first. How to annihilate a sizable chunk of matter without leaving even minute traces of it? We should keep in mind that contemporary forensic detection/analysis technologies are pretty damn sensitive.
We also shouldn't forget that burning the substance releases a considerable amount of energy, and takes time - at least several seconds. Soaking it with liquid oxygen could dramatically reduce the burning time, and lead to total oxidation to CO2/H2O/SO2/NO2/P2O5, but it also bears certain risk of explosion, and LOX does not belong between user-friendly substances as well.
The method also should not provide any hard evidence about when the incinerator was last used, in order to make it difficult to prove the exact moment of its deployment. This sharply collides with the requirement to dump the waste heat, as the unit will be pretty hot for some time after initiation, even if it will be directly connected to the car's heatsink.