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?

Comments

Re:And they needed the FBI for this?

[joshv]

True. But why take the PC's? The bandwith isn't on them. :)

Seriously. I don't see how the PCs could come under the scope of a search warrant. There would be no evidence located on the PC that would be material to the alleged crime committed -tampering with the cable modem to remove bandwidth caps.

Certainly the PCs used the excess bandwidth, but I think the FBI is overreaching on this one, and is likely to run in to legal troubles when these cases go to court.

-josh

Re:And they needed the FBI for this?

[CptNerd]

Even worse, according to the article, "no arrests were made, no charges filed." So, the people had their property taken, but no charges filed against the owners? So, what is the property taken for? Is the FBI now going to be used to gather evidence for civil trials?