If one were to work in a government department with a strictly controlled LAN that come down hard on the use of usb drives and any other device that can store data, had a restrictive 40mb email limit, and yet also had a tantalisingly useful 600dp scanner that zips through pages in seconds, would it be possible to scan, lets say, Yu Suzuki's GameWorks Vol. 1, store it on a certain persons local C: drive, disconnect said persons computer from the LAN, and reboot said computer with a linux live disc or usb, could the scanned file be retrieved from the C: and the computer rebooted to the network afterwards with no one being able to trace said data transference? I don't think this person is willing to risk their job over it, I...er, he was just wondering whether it was theoretically possible.
If they disallow USB drives or the like, then they may also have no ability to burn onto optical discs. The live CD idea might be safer, however there is a chance that they might have a way to detect that the scanner was used or to detect the presence of the files. I would make sure I knew everything I could know about the capabilities the admins have on the network. Especially if an error could result in loss of employment.
Yeah, they'd be a record of the scanned file sent to my work inbox, but not sure they'd be able to detect an intrusion on a disconnected desktop with a live CD. Gonna try the dvd burner first though, pretty sure that will work.
Not worth risking your job for scans IMO. No need to have them immediately, however you've been doing them up to now is fine enough. It's not worth it doc!!!!!!!!!!!
It was more of a thought experiment than an actual plan, but I should be able to get away with the disk burning option (if it works). I've already used the scanner for smaller jobs (scanning my SC-3000 box, because it was too big for my A4 scanner).
I have no idea what your superior's personalities are like and how willing they are to bend rules for harmless non-work use of government equipment, but how would they respond if you asked for permission? I presume you've already considered and dismissed it, perhaps expecting an unfavorable response, if you're so intent on doing it without their knowledge.
I'm pretty sure the answer would be no in regards to a usb drive, but there shouldn't be any problems with the disk burning plan. It's not worth asking about, really. I suppose technically it comes under 'misappropriation of government resources' but since it doesn't actually cost anything to scan and transfer data I can't see there being a problem.
You should check for libraries or universities which might have scanners like that. I've seen some at mine anyway. And unlike the scanner at your work, all you need is a student ID to use it, or to know somebody else who does. They sit around, unusued, most of the time, too.
Now that I think of it, I'm not sure we can use blank CD/DVDs. I've tried breaking the .pdf file into smaller pieces using ultraedit and sending as .dat files to recombine at my end, but the first component never comes through, no matter how small it is, probably because some automated filter is reading the header of the .pdf to check the size, rather than the actual file size. zipping it didn't work either. Anyone know how to edit a .pdf header to fool an automated firewall check? EDIT: Nevermind, I figured it out. Converting from ASCII to EBCDIC corrupted the file so that the firewall couldn't read the header.
Hope that didn't damage the file. If you had a way to encode it differently (like yEnc or something)' it might not be detectable if their filter only check for base64 encoded files.
Yeah, it didn't work. I figured I could convert back to ASCII with my version of ultraedit at home but no such luck. I'll try the encoding option
I am invincible! Note to self - conversion from byte-based ASCII to word-based unicode is reversible, ASCII to EBCDIC is not.
