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FBI Raids Homes and Seizes Bandwidth Pirates' PCs
Saturated Subnet writes "Recently in Toledo, OH FBI agents and a local police task force raided 13 residence and seized 23 computers. Some users of the local cable broadband provider had uncapped their cable modems." It appears to be a smaller ISP, and the
article says these 23 people cost them a quarter of a million bucks. Who
has time to look at $10,800 worth of pr0n?
What happend to just cancelling their service?
Who's going to use buckeye cable after it is known they have their customers arrested? Who's to say they didn't make the mistake? Someone complains of high ping, tech tampers with modem, and a few months later, the customer goes to jail? There's service with a smile. Thanks, but if I heard that, I'd certainly be looking at my DSL providers.
If you drove down the highway at 300 km/h (180 mph) and thought it was perfectly alright because it's your car and you can tinker with it if you want, should you get caught?
No, the roads are governmentally (and thus publicly) owned.
How about something simpler? I suggest the following:
Dear customer,
We have detected that you have uncapped your cable modem, and are using more bandwidth than specified in your contract. You have 3 days to revert the changes you made to your cable modem, or your service will pernamently be canceled and you will be billed for the excess bandwidth you have used at a rate of $XX.XX per megabyte.
Any reason why this wouldn't work? Sending the FBI to investigate is a waste of time and resources for our govt IMHO.
Keep in mind that the quarter million dollar figure may have nothing to do with the actual actual damages incurred. Companies often make up figures like this in order to get the FBI's attention, since nothing under $5000 worth of damage is worth investigating. It also makes for better headlines, especially with a politically ambitious prosecutor.
Sure, this would be lying to Federal agents, which is a felony; but several companies got away with it in the Mitnick case, too.
Finding God in a Dog
Some people may be wondering why the FBI was involved with this. The answer is simple. This constitutes fraud.
If you were to wire up a box on your phone to enable you to get free calls then you'd find your self in the same situation. And its escentialy the same crime as uncaping your cable modem/dsl router. As stealing phone calls detriments the ability of the whole network from ordinary users, so does stealing bandwidth.
I find myself stressing this again, Bandwidth Is Not Free. Bandwidth is not an artificialy restricted resource. It is a true limited resource, there is only so much you can put over a cable, and you need to ofset the costs of maintenece on that cable and the initial cost of laying it in the first place.
Doing it is illegal. Its also easy to trace. So they called the people who have jurisdiction for wire frauds and computer crime. its as simple as that. ISPs regularly warn users not to do this, and when they do, its justifyable to take it up with the authorities.
Wether its rational to do search and seazure of equipment is another matter, that may put the FBI in the wrong.
You're anology has this huge gaping hole in it...
1. Speeding is a crime...
2. Breaking TOS is a breach of contract
One of these subjects you statuatory court, the other subjects you to civil court.
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
...that sometimes they will get caught and will have to pay the consequences for their actions?
I am very comfortable knowing that the cable companies are being proactive about nailing those who are stealing service. I pay for my all my services. Why should someone else get a free ride?
I have nothing against classical hacking, but when it comes to service theft, it's what it is: theft.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
...it is breach of contract, nothing more. And, since it is a breach of contract, as numerous others have pointed out, a pair of wire cutters (or a flip of a switch) would have more than sufficed to put an end to this behavior.
... you are merely in debt for the difference still owed. No theft committed. None.
If you agree to drive 10 truck on the expressway for a certain, flat tax, and instead drive 500, you haven't stolen anything. Not even the taxes you should have paid. The road is still there, the taxes you did pay are still there
You've violated your contract (and failed to pay taxes that are due), but once again, that is not theft. The same is true in this situation.
Your other point is very good: wonders how many Al Q'aida sleeper cells are going to go undetected here in the U.S. because of American companies like this one who feel it somehow appropriate to appropriate the FBI's services as an enforcement arm of their End User License Agreements and service contracts.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
"I find myself stressing this again, Bandwidth Is Not Free. Bandwidth is not an artificialy restricted resource"
Yes yes, we all get that. Its why bandwidth costs $40 a month. We really really really really understand it.
What's not at all clear is if this is against the law. Just saying "its stealing" doesn't mean anything. "Its stealing" defines payroll taxes as well, but nobody is prosecuted for it.
So while we really really really understand that bandwidth is limited. And we really really really understand that its against the TOS for guys to uncap their cable modem, we really really really don't understand why the FBI is involved, since we really really really don't understand what laws were broken.
Okay? You can go on again about bandwidth being a limited somethingorother that you enjoy.
Where I do have a problem is with what actually happened and the lack of due process associated. Look at the sequence of events:
- The ISP notices the uncapped modem (I gather they use SNMP to ask the modem what its set to: nothing sophisticated).
- The ISP calls the FBI and alleges that this crime has cost it over $10,000. Hmmm. Where did that number come from? I'm on a 512kbit service for £25/month. Suppose I uncapped my modem to get the theoretical maximum of 64Mbits (the full channel bandwidth that is shared between all users on a spur). That is in theory a 128-fold increase in service, so I should be paying £3,200 per month, or around $5,000. So that may be two months service at 64Mbits. Maybe not too unreasonable, although I don't know how they estimated the time.
- The FBI get a search warrant based on the ISP's complaint and seize computers. This is perfectly legal: the authorities are permitted to seize the "instrumentality of the crime". If a PC was used to uncap the modem then it is an instrumentality of the crime. Also, if the case came to court then the defence could ask what evidence the prosecution had that the supposed perpetrators were actually responsible. Maybe it was a prankster thinking to do a "favour". Any prosecution is going to need smoking-gun scripts found on the suspect's PCs.
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No charges are filed. Despite what I said just now, the whole thing is never tested in court. Confiscation of the computers (and any private data thereon) is considered enough of a punishment, and doesn't require the expense of a trial.
All of this is perfectly reasonable and legal, but it is never the less an end-run around the due-process principle. Based on a complaint and a search warrant your property can be effectively confiscated, and you have almost no come-back. Of course in theory you can sue for the return of your property, but all the police have to do is claim an "ongoing investigation" to make the suit fail.Paul.
You are lost in a twisty maze of little standards, all different.
"I tend to think more on a moral level than a legal level."
I tend to believe your knee jerks more than your brain thinks.
But I believe I'm being too kind.
Did you catholic upbringing allow you to simply state things, claim they're moral imperitives and that removes them from any further debate?
You don't get the moral high ground that easily.
P.S. Aren't you shocked, just *shocked* about all those priests? I mean, who could believe that a guy who willingly gives up sex could be repressing pedophile urges. I'm just shocked!
Maybe I am just one of those old moralists or it was my Catholic school up bringing. I think when you take something that is not yours, its stealing.
Yes, but nothing here has been taken.
So if you if you signed a contract that states you will only take 1.5Mb/s of bandwidth and you modify a device to take more than 1.5Mb/s, you are stealing along with breaching a contract.
No, you're not, anymore than you are "stealing" if you rent a car agreeing to not drive it faster than 65 MPH, then take it out on the highway and top it out at 120 MPH.
You are misusing equipment and violating your contract. You haven't taken anything, ergo you have stolen nothing.
It is abuses of the English language like this that not only muddy thinking, but result in the kinds of preposterous public policy such muddy thinking creates, such as the Microsoft/Hollywood attempt at using DRM to cripple technology and consumer choice in the name of preventing "theft" which doesn't even exist (c.f the Palladium thread and the numerous DMCA, SSSCA. CBDTPA, and TCPA threads).
Redefining words to mean something they don't, and then misusing those definitions, is not the moral high ground.
If you want to argue that abusing equipment and violating service agreements is morally wrong, I would agree with you. However, if you want to continue to argue that abusing a service now suddenly equates theft, even when nothing has been taken, then I must respectfully disagree.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
In other news today, we find that the FBI is overbudget by $59.5M this year. Independent analysts and slashdot readers point to the increased costs of equipment siezure and storage, then transport and return of same said equipment.
Story at eleven.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yes, but nothing here has been taken.
You are so wrong it's obscene. When you signup with an ISP, what do you get? You get an internet connection, and X amount of bandwidth. You have BOUGHT that bandwidth, it's yours... If you take more than that it's stealing.
Your thinking is so muddy it's obscene. The Mississippi River is pristine in comparison.
Let me use another real world analogy that should clear this up:
If you are a shipping company using the limited capacity of, say, the Panama or Suez canal, and you have a contract that allows you to send 5 ships a day through the canal for a particular price, and you decide to slip 10 ships through instead, have you stolen the canal?
No.
Have you stolen money from the canal operators (assume for a moment there is no way for them to easilly charge you each time a ship passes through, ie. no toll booth on the canal itself)?
No.
Do you owe the canal operators money?
Yes.
Are you in violation of your contract?
Yes.
Are you absuing the services of the canal by taking up more of its capacity than your contract allows?
Yes.
Are you "stealing" capacity?
No, because capacity is a numerical measure, not an object that can be stolen. You are misusing the canal's limited resources, but you are not taking them anywhere.
To make this even more crystal clear for those who are still unable to shed the mental shackles of the Newspeak definitino of theft that the media cartels have been feeding them for the last two decades, consider this.
If, instead of filling the canal with ships and using up its capacity in that fashion, are you engaging in theft if you blow the canal up and turn it into a dry river bed?
No, obviously not. You haven't engaged in theft at all, you've engaged in vandalism, sabatage, and perhaps terrorism, but you have not engaged in theft, even though you've reduced the canal's usable capacity down to zero.
How about if you build a damn to block the canal (but don't destroy it)?
Again, no, you aren't stealing anything, you are merely abusing the canal and making it useless to others, ie. are reducing its usable capacity to zero.
Using something in excess to what your contract allows, such as capacity, is not and can never be theft. Indeed the very nature of what we are talking about precludes the possibility of theft as such, without rewriting the definition of the word itself to mean something different than it does, which is exactly what you, and the software and entertainment monopolists you so transparently represent, are trying to do. Which is muddy thinking at its worst.
Allow me to reiterate for the remarkably dense: You haven't stolen anything, you haven't taken anything. Capacity is not an object that can be taken, no theft can be committed.
Your inability to think clearly is a direct result of your misuse of the English language, probably because of your inability to question the misuse of the same language software and entertainment monopolists have been feeding you for years.
BANDWIDTH isn't a thing, it is a measure of capacity, and just as your overuse of a canal's capacity doesn't entail theft of any kind, so to your overuse of a network's capacity doesn't entail theft of any kind.
It does, however, mean you are in violation of contract and very likely owe a serious debt to the providor whose equipment and network you have misused.
It is plain and simple misuse of the English language and common sense that truly results in muddy thinking, exactly like the kind you are displaying here.
Yes, bandwidth is limited. But it nevertheless cannot be taken, and cannot be stolen (without rewriting the defintion of those words), it can merely be misused or abused.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
So-called metered bandwidth, e.g. fractional T1s or T3s, are still the responsibility of your upstream provider to limit your bandwidth. The only exception I've seen to this is when you are buying a fractional T1 with "free" 100GB transfer -if you take a deal like this, you've made the bed now sleep in it.
Bandwidth limiting is built into many routers and switches, and it's now part of BSD distributions (altqd). There is NO excuse for a cable ISP to not limit their own upstream bandwidth usage at the router, and limiting -or cutting off- customer bandwidth is also likewise trivial.
Finally, if they became aware of uncapped modems back in Feb, why didn't they just cut them off? Simplest thing!
I think the reason they didn't is, they wanted to scare the rest of their customers into behaving.
Big Daddy, Johnny, Burp, Aunt Zelda, Scott, Slurp, Big Momma
once you become suspected of a crime, all of your assets plus any assets around you automatically become subject to civil forfeiture nowdays.
Of course Ken Lay hasn't been charged with anything.
None of the Toledo bandwidth thieves are socialites with a history of making donations to political parties. Nor can they afford fantastic legal advice. If they could, they wouldn't need to steal bandwidth.
President Bush said something about how "95 percent of American business is run honestly and fairly, without incident." Too bad that other 5 percent is stealing MILLIONS OF DOLLARS from people who never had it to begin with.