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Toledo Uncappers Getting Shafted
Jacob writes "Broadband Reports has a well written article detailing the plight of those Ohio cable modem users who found themselves facing gun wielding FBI agents for uncapping their cable modems. Buckeye Cable has clearly crossed a line and the tech community and consumer groups should be all over them like a wet, angry rag. Kudos to Broadband Reports for not letting this thing die." Granted, those who were indicted were violating their service contracts, but having their posessions siezed by FBI agents is overkill.
I think the "Drug War" opened up the laws that allow this. Basically, an arrest is made against the property itself for being involved in the crime, and I have no idea what the options are to get it back.
Yes, I do indeed love this country.
they are making examples of these folks. Try modding your x-box, downloading mp3s, violating TOS, cable theft,etc. and maybe you will be the next example.
Certain entities don't like it when you break their rules. In one sense you are not paying for their service, in another sense you are not stopping them from selling it to the neighbors. But, I don't think they would have been caught if they weren't causing some problems by using excessive bandwidth.
Karma: Censored (mostly affected by decency laws)
cable modem users who found themselves facing gun wielding FBI agents
Hate to break it to ya, but FBI agents usually wear their sidearms even when off duty, and having them out when raiding a residence is standard (and smart, too - don't want agents being shot while they scramble for a weapon.
The gun wielding thing was added to the original article for sensationalism - the linked article in the original writeup didn't make a single mention of guns.
Sheesh... the outrage here over SOP (on behalf of people clearly guilty of theft of services). Bandwidth costs $$$ and I hope they get in a nice amount of trouble for what they did.
WTF are you getting those numbers? 2.5Mbps cable line here in NS, Canada is $40CND/month ($25US). Perhaps the real problem is that the people with the keys to the onramp are being a little to stingy in the US?
Up until a bit ago, this was very valid criticism. Typically, one node could provide 30Mbps to a neighborhood, and a single cable modem could snatch up a max of 10Mbps of that for its own use. It was a lot like being plugged into a hub. When usage spiked, you were in collision city. However, cable providers have started sending out configuration files to cable modems telling them to only snag a certain amount of bandwidth.
And putting the throttle in the equipment at the customer end of the cable was a big mistake, opening a major can of worms. (Especially given that some customers own their own equipment...) Makes it vulnerable to tampering, leading the company into playing "whack-a-mole", in this case with a BIG mallet.
The proper solution is to do the throttling at the head end. Downstream you can limit bandwidth with a subscriber management box between the head end and the backbone. Upstream the cable systems assign timeslots to each modem from a central box. So you can limit upstream bandwidth by limiting the timeslots. (Or just have the SMS drop the extra packets - which will cause TCP connections to throttle back.)
Of course that means the cable companies have to buy an SMS, rather than pestering the FBI to bust their subscribers.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
For those of you who don't work near the ISP industry, bandwidth is --VERY EXPENSIVE--. $200 per megabit per month is an absolute STEAL (to get that rate, you need to be buying it on the DS3 level). $400 per meg is more realistic on lower levels.
Two words for you. <b>Shared Bandwidth</b>. If bandwidth was *really* that expensive, you wouldn't see 3MBit DSL connections for $70 CDN/month, including the modem rental.
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
"Where are the guns?" SOP for Federal BI Agents in ALL circumstances is to be armed... and ready.
The firearms were most likely in holsters on their hips. If you are referring to an "Elian" style raid (with said Agents brandishing MP5s and wearing balaclavas) then you are most likely correct that the article sensationalises the situation.
However... any armed Agent wandering around anyones house in search of a frigging uncapped modem, and evidence to such, is a serious liability in any age. In other words, the alleged crime does not fit the method of search and seizure involved. This matter could be more easily, and less expensively to the taxpayer, dealt via private litigation.
cheers
front
You're a little conservative on max line bandwidth. You can get up to around 7.5M. Up or down, it doesn't matter, cable isn't asymmetrical. The only reason cable companies make caps like they do is because no ISP in their right mind wants more data going out of their network than is coming in. It screws up their figures for determining by how much they can oversell their backbone link(s). Which is, not coincidentally, why most TOSes have a stipulation that you can't run any servers. Backbone providers don't care, obviously, there's no difference in direction for them. But I digress, your numbers are a little off, but your point is spot on. What Buckeye did was fabricate numbers in order to fraudulently utilize the resources of the FBI. I'm no big fan of the FBI, but shades of Operation Sundevil aside, there'd better be some accounting for this.
Due Process went out of the door when the Government decided to start the "War on Drugs." They are expanding this even further with the "War on Terrorism."
Anybody with an IQ over 100 and a copy of the Constitution can tell you that law enforcement agencies should not be able to do something like this. Yet they do it all the time, even when they have absolutely no intention of pressing charges againt the people they do it to.
If you are suspected of being a drug dealer, you are in danger of having property such as your car or house being seized by police and auctioned off to the highest bidder, even if you are never officially charged.
There are some links to info at the LP homepage, I believe (http://www.lp.org).
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
They were violating a civil contract, which is different.
I guess you are not a lawyer. While you may have violated a civil contract if you uncapped a modem, the fact is that you ALSO broke criminal laws. For example Texas has several state laws that include penalties of up to 6 months in jail for theft of cable services.
If I walk into a store and shoplift, say $500 worth of merchandise and get caught the consequences can include a felony conviction.
The fact is that what these people did was just as severe a crime. Now maybe the concept of the FBI actually making the arrest bothers some people, but in reality is that any different from the local or state police making the arrest? Probably not, in fact I would expect that the FBI would be a lot more professional about the whole thing.
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
" Yes, but from that point they have a short period of time to bring you to a judge where they must convince him why they want to keep you."
I'm certain that's a comforting thought to Jose Padilla who's been imprisoned since May without a trial, access to a lawyer, a telephone call, or one moment without bright lights shining down on him. Yes, the man has to learn how to sleep with the lights on in his tiny cell in a military brig. Anyone who's read 1984 will recognize the rooms with the brights always on with no windows as belonging to the Ministry of Love. I've got news for you; our rights have been eroding for some time, and Sept 11 gave the resident president all the power he needed to bring about a landslide. I hope to God there's a major backlash and soon, or there won't be much left of this country for our children. They'll have to read about it in books, so long as the books they're reading don't make the government suspicious. Perhaps my children will one day turn me in to the FBI for being unamerican.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
On another note, I always read that the Iran-Contra affair was about selling *weapons*, not drugs.
It was about selling drugs to get the money to buy the guns to trade to the Iranians for the return of our hostages. It was illegal to give Iran military weapons. Any government department that has any legal money whatsoever gets that money from Congress since that is one of the major roles of Congress. So since they were not authorized to give weapons to those countries, they had to come up with another source of income. So they imported and sold large amounts of cocaine to fund their illegal operation. This, in a nutshell, is what happened.