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:Huh?

[teamhasnoi]

If the detective said that, he should probably go back to school and find that LAWS are what he is to enforce. Not crimes. If he wants to enforce crimes, go work for the White House.

legal system in a mess?

[AmigaAvenger]

Umm, you know our policy system is f'ed up when this happens. They are probably going to be tried as terrorists. (I am serious about that!)

But the FBI normally keeps what they get

[Static242]

What makes this scarry is the FBI can swoop in and grab all your hardware with little more than a "by your leave." Even if you are innocent they will hang onto your hardware so long it will become obsolete. There in lies the "threat". Now others out their who have tampered with their hardware for personal gain at the expense of others will have to tread lightly. Hopefully they will just obey the law.

Other highly moderated posters have stated that the cable provider should have sent some kind warning letter. That is a load of liberal crap! That is like telling a theif who breaks into your home that if they do it AGAIN there is going to be a penality. The people who modified their cable modems knew what they were doing. Theft is theft pure and simple.

They strung their own fiddle. Let them dance to the tune the police will be playing for them.

Re:Going Overboard?

[nochops]

Just substitue $your_favorite_crime in the relevant parts of this, and you'll see how ludicrous it is.

Dear customer,

We have detected that you have MURDERED your WIFE, blah blah blah. You have 3 days to BRING HER BACK TO LIFE, or your FREEDOM will pernamently be canceled and you will be blah blah blah.


A crime is a crime, and there are laws against stealing. You steal bandwidth, you get turned off, and your equipment gets seized pending an investigation.

I see so many people who pretend this isn't a real crime, that I have to wonder the avarage age of /.'s readership. I mean c'mon. AFAIK, most of the /. crowd are sysadmins, programmers, etc....in other words, high-level tech people, and they are supposed to be intelligent. I shudder to this that the guy who programmed the software I may be using, or the guy who runs the NOC at my ISP doesn't think this is a crime.

How about this, next time your car gets stolen, the police treat the case the way a lot of the /. crowd want this case to be treated (just a slap on the wrist)...and we'll see how you like that.