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You Are Not a Lawyer
Paul Ohm is starting a new "very occasional" feature on the Freedom To Tinker blog called You Are Not a Lawyer — "In this series, I will try to disabuse computer scientists and other technically minded people of some commonly held misconceptions about the law (and the legal system)." In the first installment, Ohm walks through the reasons why many techies' faith in the presence of "reasonable doubt" is so misplaced. "When techies think about criminal law, and in particular crimes committed online, they tend to fixate on [the 'beyond a reasonable doubt'] legal standard, dreaming up ways people can use technology to inject doubt into the evidence to avoid being convicted. I can't count how many conversations I have had with techies about things like the 'open wireless access point defense,' the 'trojaned computer defense,' the 'NAT-ted firewall defense,' and the 'dynamic IP address defense.' ... People who place stock in these theories and tools are neglecting an important drawback. There are another set of legal standards — the legal standards governing search and seizure — you should worry about long before you ever get to 'beyond a reasonable doubt.'"
Sounds like the piece should be called "Ohm's Law".
Difference between them and us?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
IANAL
YANAL
then who the hell is a lawyer?
TWTHIAL?
WWJD?
JWRTFM!
*I post because I care
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
IANAL but I know some Law facts.
1 - dont trust cops.
2 - Dont trust judges.
3 - Dont trust lawyers.
4 - assume that everyone is trying to shaft you.
5 - Once you are in the legal system THEY OWN YOUR BUTT.
6 - If you are going to do something illegal, make sure you CANT GET CAUGHT.
7 - Dont do anything illegal.
Honestly, Judges hate you, cops hate you, everyone on a jury if you get that far hates you. you are considered Guilty until proven innocent. Dont even believe the Bullshit given to you as a youth that it's the other way around. It's not and never has been that way.
Finally, you cant talk a cop out of arresting you. You can make him think it's more bother than it's worth and let you go if it's not worth it and you're being a nice guy. They will let a nice guy in Abercrombie that says yes sir, no sir, thank you sir go with a warning way before the dont touch me pig screaming hoodie wearing blacked out eyesocket head shaved like the damned pincushion for a head guy. It blows my mind how stupid many criminals are, if you dress and look like a punk, the cops will treat you like a punk.
I never got in trouble as a kid. but then I was aware of my location and had a scanner in my pocket with a earphone in all the time. Friends learned that if I left a party or gathering, they need to as well.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Actually yes, a whole lot of people who call themselves techies are stupid. They also think they are far more intelligent then they are. On top of that, many who call themselves techies believe they are so far above blue collar 'mouth breathers' that with very little work they can completely confuse them. I mean, hell, you just did something similar here. You assumed that the article writer must be an idiot because, well, you said so. Go ahead and rethink your logic and consider that perhaps something happened, maybe even several times, that prompted the writer to write what he did.
Most people are idiots, that they call themselves a techie doesn't change that.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
I don't think the point is getting involved, it is that many tech types, and more likely self proclaimed techies, will stray into gray areas and they need to know that their short sighted, I can't be punished theories aren't all that strong outside of their mind or circle.
I have seen this in the past where people on IRC serve ip copyrighted materials and think a simple warning "if you are a law enforcement or affiliated with them, you are not allowed in the server" will get any evidence thrown out if they are busted. It's stuff like that which people think justifies behavior or removes possible penalties from it that is being addressed. It's the I'm using Lime wire but I have an open access point which I will blame everything on, just to have your computer taken by warrant before you can delete the lime wire program or any of the files your sharing.
Basically what it seems this article is saying is "despite all the technical 'doubts' you may throw against the charges, your live will already be ruined by the seizure of your equipment and the trial-by-media that ensures various charges"
And sad as it is, that's probably a fairly true statement. Even here on slashdot I remember that when some guy stated that the kiddiepix on his computer came from a trojan that had massively owned his machine (and it was shown it had been fairly owned), many still believe that the possibility was too low.
From my own experience, it's not that impossible. Where I used to work, we had a contractor setup a machine in a horribly insecure way. The box was owned over the weekend, and when I got back to the office it was pretty much unfixable short of a full format. In addition, the filenames I did see before I wiped it were fairly disturbing.
So when you think about it, if your machine is owned, what is somebody going to do with it? The answer would be, "all sorts of things they wouldn't want to be caught doing with their own machine."
Now fast-forward to another event in my own life. I was at one time accused of shoplifting from a video store. The cop on the phone told me it was on camera, gave a description that could have well enough been me, and gave my license plate # as the vehicle identified. After a few days of trying to get things sorted out, and being constantly threatened by the police, I contacted the video store in question to see if the tape-in-question had been misplaced and not stolen. After talking to the manager, I found out that no tapes had been stolen at all, and that they never carried a tape by the name given (oh, and their cameras actually only monitor, not record). However, there was a file with the police, which I can only guess originated from somebody calling in a fake complaint.
It took the video-store owner calling the police dept up to get them to stop threatening me, and after that the calls just stopped (no apologies). If I hadn't called into the store to check on things myself, who knows how far it might have gone.
So if you're trusting the thoroughness of the legal system or the good sense of a jury to save your ass, think again. Even if you're innocent your life could still be ruined by a false accusation, a suspicion, or bad luck. When the police believe that you're guilty, they will come after you heatedly and often without regard for your potential innocence. The can lie to you, they can make your life miserable, and they aren't going to stop just because of some obscure "open wireless" defense.
At least people expect the cops to break down your door in the U.S. Nobody expects the...
Oh, forget it.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
...navigate the twisted corridors of the law instead of technology or computer code.
That y'all built yourselves... talk about job-preserving legacy code... ;)
I'm a lawyer, and I'm getting a kick out of these replies, etc.
A technique that defence lawyers use is to attack the legitimacy of the gathering of the evidence. Succeed there, and it all becomes inadmissible, and the prosecution fails.
Never mind your fucking Venn diagrams.
That, I believe, settles the matter.
I hate my flatmate
I basically agree with you, but I think your description of the problem is oversimplified and misleading. People are not monolithically "smart" or "stupid". Everybody's smart and stupid about different things. Like those wizards in the Harry Potter books that can master complicated magic spells, but can't mail a letter. What turns smart people into assholes is when they assume their smartness in one field automatically transfers to another.
I think computer techies are particularly bad this way because they tend to be self-taught. Often the most effective strategy for learning a technology is to just sit down and fiddle with it. Or they read a book that was probably written by another self-taught techie that often gets details wrong (how many of you can correctly define "ASCII"?) but gets enough essentials right to get the job done.
What techies don't get is that this style of learning just doesn't work with the law. Even if you understand a legal principle (and when techies try to understand something as abstract as a legal principle they often get it wrong) you don't have a practical understanding of its proper application in every context. Lawyers spend years studying and arguing about this stuff, and even so they have to specialize in order to develop any real expertise.
Encrypt everything, hide everything, obfuscate everything, always assume that THEY are out to get you. Keep your bags packed at an alternate (undisclosed) location, keep some cash hidden and have an extra passport ready (always lose the first one they send you) in case they confiscate your first. Always pay cash, wear a broad brimmed hat and large dark glasses in public, grow a beard (you can quickly change you appearance by shaving). Use anonymous pay as you go cellphones or be careful what you say over the phone, keep your phone turned off and the battery removed.
Remember it ain't paranoia if they really are out to get you!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
Never mind your fucking Venn diagrams.
!?
*squints his eyes*
You just made a powerful enemy.
As always, XKCD has already covered this. ;)
And I'd like to be the king of all Londinium and wear a shiny hat.