Slashdot Mirror
Australian Federal Police Raid Major ISPs
pflodo writes "The Australian (newspaper) has an article about Telstra the major Australian ISP and other 'declined to name' ISPs that have been raided by Australian Federal Police to 'seek the identity of particular subscribers' in relation to their activity and files stored on the ISP's servers. I imagine they will eventually raid some domestic homes and make a scapegoat of some unfortunate teenagers."
Why would someone committing computer-related illegal activities store anything on their ISP's servers? That's just begging for the systems administrator to find it themselves, and report you for something (assuming it violates their ethics code).
One of the strongest truths in anything that isn't necessarily legal, or could be interpretted as not legal, is that you don't leave any evidence that others can control. If you're really smart, you leave no evidence at all, period, but if you do leave something, make sure that it is in your control, and your control alone.
The other thing that I'm shuddering about is the possible downtime effects that this has on everyone else who uses the equipment for fully legitimate purposes. Suddenly, the possibility of server outages, network outages, and other miscellaneous service problems ensue, especially if a federal entity decides that equipment itself is to be confinscated as evidence, and they don't take care to properly handle what mess they leave behind.
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
It can happen that way.
I've actually seen this first hand (under slightly diferent circumstances). They don't charge in with guns drawn, but they do appear without notice, in considerable numbers, bearing appropriate warrants and court orders, and secure anything that they might consider evidence. Which may be your mail server.
The idea is to preserve the evidence, but the way they go about it is misguided and unnecessary more often than not.
Although it sounds like a good idea, that would make me even *more* paranoid...after all, which subscribers are you going to target for surveillance (assuming you don't have the resources to monitor everyone), the regular people, or those who opted for a "high-privacy" connection? After all, they *must* have something to hide!
:)
What we really need is a better anonymizing service, or perhaps a distributed proxy system. When I use our university's internet connection, I set up an IPSEC tunnel between my notebook and my home network, as I don't want the IT people logging my browsing and watching for subversive sites (2600.com, etc.). It would be great if a tool was available to do this on a mass scale. Something like Freenet, but for short-term web caching instead. Encrypted communication between hosts with requests spread over a large number of peers, squid-esque caching, 'bogus' packets to defeat traffic analysis...feel free to let me know if such a beast exists
From the Article: FEDERAL police have executed search warrants on Telstra and internet company Eftel in one of Australia's largest investigations into alleged music piracy, which could be worth up to $60 million.
Wow... $60 million!
Assuming the price of a CD is $20, it means that the pirate has an MP3 collection of equivalent to 3,000,000 CDs!
Assuming each CD has 10 songs on it, then the pirate has 30 million MP3s!
Assuming each MP3 is about 5 megs... then the amount of storage required is 150TB!
Did they raid Kazaa's ISP literally... or is this just one journalist's idea of sprucing up what should have been a normal IP-infringement case?
Welley Corporation - SLM Scammers
I work for a QLD govt department that DOES take computers and servers for evidence. If somebody's committed a crime, too bad. Investigation takes precedence.
My father was accused of having child porn on his hard drive. The police took the hard drive. It took him 3 years to get it returned. They don't care.
I don't think these analogies are really accurate. Of course it's perfectly legal to build your own bicycle, sew your own clothes, and (in some places) brew your own ale. It's also legal to go down to your local music shop, buy a guitar, and make your own music. In all of these cases you're making a creation of your own, using resources you obtained legitimately. You aren't "taking anything away" from anyone or any company.
What it's not legal to do is hop onto someone else's bicycle parked on the sidewalk and ride away, stuff a pair of Levi's up your shirt on the way out of the department store, or walk out of the gas station with a few Colt 45s. And whether we like it or not, it's also generally not legal to share music.
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
I may be a little bit under read when it comes to the law, but here in australia I was under the impression that ignorance is no excuse. In fact I was under the impression that this was the attitude of courts world wide, can't image a court going "ahhh well you didn't know murder was a crime. Off you go then, and don't do it again.".
And drug dealers aren't criminals everywhere in the world :) hell they are legitimate business people in holland :)
What's really ironic about drug raids is that the "street value" they quote is a function of prohibition, not market economics. Government sets the price of illegal drugs, not drug dealers! The higher the level of prohibition, the higher the price of black market items. The more tax money they throw at the "problem", the more money the drug dealers can make. And the more money the drug dealers make, the better their chances of avoiding the law. It's a win-win situation for government, which profits not only in revenue but power over the people, and it's a win-win situation for drug dealers who are clever enough to avoid the law. The only losers here are the tax payers, who pay not only in tax dollars but liberty (including but not limited to ownership of your own body) and security (which decreases proportional to the violent crime stimulated by the black market).
Am I concluding that prohibition is designed specifically to benefit government at the expense of the people? You bet I am.
I do have a hard time grasping that, mostly because of its extreme variance from the truth.
I mean, I don't even know how to rebut that. Its so painfully, blatantly obvious that large corporations get preferential treatment in nearly all matters, vs. private citizens (and yes, drug dealers). Tell me, when's the last time you heard about a corporate office tower being raided at 4 a.m. with flashbangs and shotguns?
Sorry, not insightful.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
--I don't download mp3s or movies, so we'll get that out of the way FIRST.
When I was a kid, you had a clear cut choice in the record store, and that's ALL we had really was records. There was some reel to reel tape action, but basically it was records and the am radio. You could get EITHER an album on 33 size OR a 45 that had two tunes on it. I can't tell you how much of the albums were wasted space, so a lot of 45 "singles" got sold, even though the song on the flipside sucked.
Downloading and swapping accomplishes what the customer HAS ALWAYS WANTED but these morons REFUSE to get it. People do NOT want to pay for crap, it's called BUNDLING. They don't want to pay for CRAP they don't want.
If I go to the car dealer and order a new car, I got the choice to decide on my accessories. If I go to get a new bicycle, I got a CHOICE whether or not I want blinking lights on it, electronic turn signals, baskets, whatever, I can GET what I want. No fenders? sure. With mainstream commercial music you got NO choice. You can't easily preview, you can't find anything that isn't on the approved list, and if you get suckered into buying some "disc" you got no idea how much of that disc has anything you want on it or even if it will even play in your player!
Oh, listen to the radio to decide, because the radio will provide you a way to preview? No it won't, they play the same 40 top songs and have since I was a kid in grade school. NOTHING HAS CHANGED IN FACT IT GOT WORSE.
Anyway, I started boycotting paying for music when I had gotten several cassettes and noticed I really only wanted one or two songs off the things. I started even boycotting live music when the price of a ticket got to what was for me ridiculous levels, switched to "local" music at local smaller venues. I was in the mega concert biz a bit, I saw what the waste and greed did to people, it was wasteful and greedy, that's why humans have those words. Those industries are chock full top to bottom of coker and booze addled people who all got this paranoid delusion of grandeur that they are all worth this totally absurd amount of money. top to bottom and sideways. Ridiculous levels of money. The producers, the middleman, the pressers, the pr firms, the "stars" you name it, out to lucn on believing they are really worth these sums. Paranoid Delusions of Grandeur, expectations that they got some "right" to profits at obscene levels. Screw them!
The big names ain't worth it, the big middleman companies that constitute this business ain't worth it. IF they can cut their expectations down on what THEY think they are worth, and ALSO make it dog squat easy and simple for people to be able to preview and buy indivdual songs CHEAPLY AND EASILY, they wouldn't have any problems and would actually make MORE money than what they are making now.
Frankly, those people are just plain STUPID if they can't see this. VCRs haven't "killed" the movie industry, even though this was claimed. Cassettes didn't "kill" the music industry. The xerox machine didn't "kill" the book industry. Web forums where articles are discussed hasn't killed the online news business. What all these things HAVE done is to point out COMPLETELY unreasonable expectations of "profit" that some people get, figures they pick right out of their asses, then they DEMAND to get that profit. People deserve SOME profit from their work, everyone and their cuzzin leroy who is an "artiste" and their middle man skimmers DON'T need to be millionaires from these "efforts". If people really thought this stuff was worth it, they would pay for it happily.
It's the same with writingbooks, software writing,painting pictures, whatever. If people got over this sheer greed, they could see this. The "music industry" as it's run at the top by the corps who use the riaa as their front mouth piece need to buy a MUCH cheaper clue. What they are seeing is a righteous BACKLASH to entire generations of people getting ripped off by being charged way more than what this stuff is really worth, and now that the tech exists to SHOW what it's worth, they just need to deal with it. How their dollar gets divvied up with 'the artistes" is for them to figure out, don't ask the customer to do it! If these 'artistes' think it's ok to sign away their rights for cheap,that's their business.
EVERYONE works hard at their jobs, I don't see it written in stone everywhere that because you are such and such you can just DEMAND to be a millionaire. And by the RIAA controlling the so called "public" airwaves through graft and payola, by conspiring to keep cds artifically inflated in price, by all their other monopolistic practics based on GREED, they finally got the people fighting back and SHOWING them what their products are worth. 10 songs on a cd AREN'T WORTH 15$. They are worth MAYBE 10 cents apiece, something like that. Because they never were content with making a living, and instead conspired to have inflated paychecks, people revolted, used technology, and this is what the market can bear now. It's the RIAA and MPAA and the "artistes" they represent who NEED TO BUY A CLUE, and knock it off with extravagant millionaire lifestyles and false expectations for their "work".
I so DETEST both those industries that I watch very few movies, I stopped going to the movies, I stopped going to expensive live concerts and stopped buying pre-packaged music a long time ago,with the exceptions of already produced and used discs or tapes, and that's it, because the dollar I pay for a used tape or cassette or disk is ALL that "entertainment" is really worth.
And ditto professional sports for that matter.