Slashdot Mirror
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.
Since when do armed agents of the law sieze private property without the owner having been convicted of any crime?
What a sad state of affairs.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
Since a similar article like this was posted to /. before and I brought up the same point I'll bring it up again. Where in the article did they state that the FBI agents came in with guns? It's just sensationalism and it does not belong. Now I know someone is going to claim that it's SOP for agents to bust in with guns however it is not. Instead of just rewriting my whole rant here... I'll just add a link to my previous /. comment...
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=44074&cid=4590 690
-Cardoe
"Man, I can't believe office [insert local cop name here] stopped by for going 8 over the speed limit"
And I'm sure he called for lots of backup and confiscated your car, too, right? The problem is not that the law was broken; the problem is that the tactics used were those akin to what would be used against a terrorist, when in reality the suspect was nothing more that a petty thief.
And the masses cried out, "09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0!"
Ah well, so much for the right not to be "deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law."
Seriously...
Impounding your car for speeding? For the Americans out there, vote libertarian and support the ACLU. I'm afraid for my children.
Fear is the mind killer.
Once again, we see an example of people doing something that is relatively harmless and given an unusually strict punishment simply because it is labelled as "cyber crime." The people who create some laws seem to have little understanding of the technologies that we use and their lack of knowledge is leading to some sort of irrational fear of any individual who commits any sort of crime using technology that they don't seem to understand. However, what makes this so disturbing is that modem capping was not said to be illegal in the article. It was referred to as "not legal." So has there been any legislation against this? Anytime? Anywhere?
And of course, even if there were then we should be disturbed. Was this "crime" any reason to confiscate so much of the offender's equpiment? Even a VCR was taken, but strangely, an XBox gaming console was left behind. I'm not sure what exactly it is that's motivating these steps in the wrong direction. Is it some sort of irrational fear that leads to those that commit computer crimes being put in the same category as terrorists (which they have been, BTW) even if their crime is simply that of "stealing" bandwidth? Ignorance may be bliss for those at Buckeye Cablesystems and other corporations and the governments that make laws protecting them, but it certainly isn't for the rest of us.
This is bad news, people. It seems that if you're committing anything that can be labelled "cybercrime" you can be given absurdly strict punishments just because your crime has that label.
Sounds like a good way to get back at the big evil cable companies that slashdotters are angry at. Certainly they couldn't prosecute hundreds of people who were infected with a virus. I bet entire ISP's could be taken out with just a few virus victims on each service. What an interesting idea.
While I agree that the suspects did wrong and deserve a punishment, I also agree with essentially every other poster in claiming excessive force in the search/arrest of these suspects.
Personally, I think the individual(s) at Buckeye should be held accountable for their estimate of $250,000+ in damages, assuming that the figure is inflated (and it seems that it is). What if my neighbor was being too loud when I was trying to sleep, and as a result, I called the police and reported multiple gunshots and screams coming from his house? While this case isn't perfectly analogous, the desired result seems to be the same. In essence, I'd be "teaching him a lesson." Unless this quarter of a million dollar figure is accurate, should someone at Buckeye not be held responsible? The FBI is not at the beck-and-call of every mid-size corporate goon with a bone to pick.
-- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
The loses could not be anywhere near what they are claiming.. Here's the way I see it..
.0875kbytes/sec slowdown per violator (assuming they were all using it at the same time and maxxed out their own cable lines). You also have to assume that the CM companys outgoing pipes are already saturated, if they were not, the loss to everyone else is nothing. Again, this is bandwidth the company is already paying for regardless.
The cable provider has a certain amount of bandwidth they provide their customers to the outside world. This is what they pay for. They pay that amount regardless of WHO is using it and when. The only loses the cable company should be able to claim is from the customers who cancelled their services because they were not getting expected rates and it can be proved these rates were lower because of a direct result of what these 11 people were doing. That is a very hard thing to prove. Compare the cancels/month directly related to bandwidth concerns before, during, and after these offenders were uncapping. If they are no different, there is no loses.
Even if they were originally capped at 1.5/128. The most you could really get out of a CM is what? 5mbit/500kbit maybe? The have the potential to get roughly just over 3 times what they were paying for. Divide this extra 3.5mbits among say 5000 subscribers and you get a potential loss of 700bit/sec per customer or roughly
Okay its late for me and my math may be off so please be easy if I made a dumb mistake and fell free reply with a recalc with your estimates if I am grossly underestimating something.
I am not saying what they did was justified, but the damage estimates are WAY off..
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
What the *FSCK* does a VCR have to do with broadband theft? Evidence? Evidence of what?
"Jesus saves, but everyone else in a 10 foot radius takes full damage from the fireball."
This is yet another example of how far out of control the FBI has become. This is an abuse of power as frightening as Ruby Ridge or Waco. More so - more so, even. At least in Ruby Ridge and Waco there was at least a pretense that the subjects were armed and potentially violent. These people were just ordinary people working in their homes. It's not like they were distributing child porn, or soliciting 13 year old girls to have sex, or stealing credit card information. They were, in effect, eating "too much" at what was advertised as an all-you-can-eat buffet. The FBI has no business whatsoever being involved here. At most, Buckeye should have sued these people in civil court for breach of contract. Unfortunately for all of us, the cable companies bought themselves laws which basically makes the police their contract enforcement agency.
Shit like this just reinforces my belief that our legal system is broken beyond repair.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Before I left, I grabbed a box of cat5, 2 128 meg dimms, a tone and probe kit, and some cat5 crimpers and a celeron 400mhz system.
Admit to snooping in the company books. Clever. Kind of illegal in many jurisdictions.
Admit to theft. Also clever. Very illegal, just about everywhere.
Post with a link to a website with pictures of your home and pets. Unbelievably clever. (I think it's cute that you ask people to hire you on the web page, by the way.)
Yes indeed, it's a shame that the FBI has trouble finding criminal masterminds like you.
~Idarubicin