i think i'm done my distraction with the usb key, now. i didn't salvage anything off of it, but i convinced myself that what was on it was routine. i was just paranoid about forgetting something. if i did, there's no evidence it existed.

i still don't know what happened with that; i stopped writing to the key immediately after the weirdness happened, so the files should have been easily accessible. but, they only came up on a deep scan, and they came with some directory corruption, as though they'd been decaying on the drive a while. it's all very strange.

what i remember doing is deleting two files in the root directory, leaving a folder called bd-2 in tact. that's a little blurry as to the exactness of the directory structure, which is what it causing me all of this pause. but, the whole drive wiped. my initial thought was that i accidentally deleted the folder and it should be a quick undelete. but it seems more like that the thing collapsed under itself; it just vanished. do file directories randomly collapse like that, or is it further sign of intrusion?

remember the prime directive. you can't be fucking with my files like this. i actually have no delusions as to the nature of "network privacy", but zapping my usb key crosses boundaries. if somebody did zap me, please don't do it again.