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Can You Really Be Traced From an IP Address?
Barence writes "Identifying individuals using nothing more than their IP address has become a key part of anti-piracy and criminal investigations. But a PC Pro investigation casts serious doubt on the validity of IP-based evidence. 'In general, the accuracy of IP address tracing varies depending on the type of user behind the IP address,' Tom Colvin, chief technology officer with security vendor Conseal told PC Pro. 'Whilst big businesses can be traceable right back to their datacenters, standard family broadband connections are often hard to locate, even to county-level accuracy.'"
If your address is static & your ISP is quite happy to cooperate...however, if you're like most people, on dynamic IP, or some behind proxy or on Tor etc then the "evidence" can be highly unreliable.
Depending on what data is being captured by the ISP for management purposes, this COULD be true.
But, if they can track you well enough to meter you (Comcast, AT&T, etc), they can track you down to your IP too.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
This is not the problem with IP tracking. In most instances the ISP will have logs linking IPs to customers, and people can be easily traced. The real problem is that AN IP IS NOT A PERSON. You cannot trace a person through an ISP (except through strong circumstantial evidence such as someone using their email account from that IP). If all the info you have is that someone/something at IP 12.34.56.78 downloaded kiddie porn, that's no evidence at all. Was it the suspect? Was it a family member or friend? Was it some random on the street who cracked the WEP key or accessed an open network? You have no idea and you never will unless you can find 1) evidence on a computer and 2) evidence that the suspect was using said computer at the time.
I'm often having to remind users in the office that a simple reverse lookup on our IP and there's the company name sat right there, a few clicks and you've got the building address. Go onto linked in and you've probably got half the employees full names. A lot of people forget just how much information you can get from work IP's. It's not CSI style VB GUI interface level but if you're about to go make some stupid edits on wikipedia don't do it from your office connection.
jaymz
has written a Visual Basic application to track your IP.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
In my experience you can generally trace an IP address back to a given location (using RIPE and then contacting the ISP and I presume using legal means to find out who was using that IP address at that particular time).
But of course after that you have no idea what happens, is it an open Wifi point? Is it a closed one but has been cracked? Has the wifi key been given out to a neighbour? All of these options cast doubt on the exact person who committed whatever criminal or civil act that is under investigation.
standard family broadband connections are often hard to locate, even to county-level accuracy
Advertisers rarely seem to be affected by this; every time I plug my laptop in while abroad the adverts change to the current locale..
"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
In 1997 a company threatened to sue me for breaking into their system (which I didn't do). Due to my good contacts with the ISP at the time I was able to get my hands on 6 months worth of packet logs related to my cable modem. This was a Dutch, but American owned, cable ISP. If they were logging things to that details at the time, I doubt it has gotten any less today. If you're with one of the bigger ISP's, rest assured, your packets are safely logged.
My DSL derrived Geolocaton is a good 50 miles from where I am physically located. As someone with a fairly common name then all I can say is good luck to using JUST the IP Geoloc to find me.
Now if the ISP was forced to release my details then fine, fair cop gov. Otherwise, yah boo sucks.
Then if people use things like vpn tunnels or 'tot' then 'ha ha' good luck...
They can track my IP, but not me! If "me" is connected to the net with something like Tor...
Apparently they can't meter you too well.
http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/att-vows-to-improve-inaccurate-broadband-metering/
As to the tracking, I'm sure it can be done, however, unlike DNA, spoofing is completely trivial, so I would never be comfortable having it as the only evidence in some type of trial.
It get's especially confusing to authorities when they realize we all have the same IP address anyways. (127.0.0.1)
Well yes and no. In the case of someone like the RIAA claiming they traced it back to a user -yes there is some room to say it's not foolproof. Far from it. But with someone like the FBI? That's not going to work. They will catch you in the act using a "man in the middle" sniffer like Carnivore to ensure the evidence chain of custody can be proved correct in a court room. Considering almost every piece of networking equipment made has LEO intercept capabilities built in, it's not hard.
Tiger Blooded Bi-Winning Machine
'In general, the accuracy of IP address tracing varies depending on the type of user behind the IP address...'
I whole heatedly agree with this statement. This is one of the few times this has happened with a Slashdot premise.
As a young graduate more than 10 years ago, I NATed a few of my employer's computer IPs, including the internal 192.168.X.X up to 3 levels and asked the then ISP support dude to find out what was going on. He could not, despite having the 'latest' software.
This gives defense lawyers one item they could use to challenge the DA. Trust me on this.
RTFA and you see that, as many of us already know, you can get a court order to get the exact identity of the account holder, so the problem as described by the summary quote is not the real issue. Rather, just because you know the account holder does not mean that you can prove that the account holder, or whoever you have on the stand, is the one that infringed.
Despite rear-end covering clauses in the terms of most home ISPs that state that the account holder is liable for everything that goes across their connection, most courts won't accept that. I wouldn't be willing to test it, but it's a very valid point of defense. The number of people with open Wi-Fi is staggering, and even then there are attacks which work on WEP (a ton) and WPA (GPU accelerated attacks can get passphrases in under a minute on many routers), which is the maximum security many home routers in use are capable of. That makes this point even more valid.
It's not just that it's difficult to track the IP back to your household, but that that's not the full extent. What if it's a shared account in a student accomodation, or you're running your PC as a node on a TOR network (so in both cases the "infringing" traffic might look like it's coming from your IP but you aren't the one committing the act). With difficulty in ensuring the IP was assigned to you at the time it was used on one side, and then in proving that it was you downloading the file on the other (and that's assuming you don't have the right to do so, or that you initiated the act knowingly) it's an incredibly flaky way to "prove" anything.
if they're billed, authorities can get the information, provided that they go through the hoops necessary. it's not instant and movie like, of course. even pre-paids get tied to a name when they're charged(and cellinfo is logged, for a time). so it's mainly used to find a place of evidence and then to raid that place for said evidence. it's not evidence by itself but a clue about where to maybe get evidence. by itself it's just a phone number and about as useful as that.
of course if there's been proxying and such, it's a different matter. why do you think tor etc exist? same problems exist with a phone too.
and this is finland, but then again, here policemen can do a house search by hunch and cases often depend on confession(and in IT/piracy/data related matters especially, with often the questioning policemen not even knowing what they're asking about). it's a fiddly line here, really. and just a small number of cases, which is why they have no idea what they're questioning about. the main bread and butter of these guys is drug cases and violent drunks, home abuse and such. but if there's a suspected murder case then the mobile phone logs, ip-logs, etc get combed routinely.
but about ip-targeted ads.. ip-geolocationing is a fraud, it only sort of works per country.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
You know what is even harder to identify: me sitting behind my Swedish Relakks> VPN connection.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
But, but, but...the meter is by account, not by "person". It's like a water meter: it doesn't matter who is using the water, all that the water company wants to know is how much is flowing out of its pipes to the customer of record. Take a WiFi access point: one IP address with NAT can be used by hundreds of people at the same time. (I know this because every year I run a WiFi network at a show with 300 people...and roughly 700 devices -- so tracing activity to just one device is a real needle in a haystack.) It gets worse if the ISP is monitoring ATM packets instead of IP traffic...
It's unlikely you can trace an IP back to a single user. You can, however, almost certainly trace it back to who it was assigned to, either statically or dynamically. The problem is that can be anything from a single home user to a small to medium sized company behind a NAT. Hell it could even be a large company - although they're more likely to be behind a many-to-many NAT, rather than one-to-many.
The only place I can see you being able to track back a single user would probably be in cases where you actually have the IP address of a workstation and you can compare to the login/logoff audit logs. I suspect the number of places assigning world routable IP addresses to workstations is vanishingly small. I can't see many places keeping NAT translation logs for the workstations on private IP blocks.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
...which of the 4 people living here and on which of the 9 computers (7 physical, 2 virtual) behind my NAT firewall committed the act based on the evidence you have already? Which subnet of my internal network were they using (the virtual machines are subnetted away from the rest of the network)? Is it possible that someone outside my home cracked my wireless security, joined my network, and committed the act in question?
An IP address only points to the person being billed for a service, it doesn't prove anything as far as who did what; especially if someone has cracked your WiFi.
You should have the exact IP assignment time table from the ISPs.
Then you need to be sure about the exact time drift among all the involved systems.
And finally you need to be sure about the person using that vey device using that very IP.
And even so, you still need to make sure about another dozen of constraints like NAT and open/broken WiFi access points.
So, of course you cannot. Apart of a very limited number of cases. Very, very limited.
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
> or that you initiated the act knowingly
IIRC, this is not a valid defense against the tort of copyright infringement. Neither is not knowing the true copyright status of the work.
Perhaps this was somewhat defensible in an era where distribution was for all practical purposes always funded by having to pay for works under restrictive copyrights. However, even since television began, long before the net, other models of distribution have become widespread. To me it's pretty amazing that this is still the law in the current reality.
that's right. butt they/you can have one (re)installed in china, & in various other counties, now. revirginization. what a product/vocation.
we're betting on the advanced dna babys. we know where they came from, & what they can do, no apologies needed.
Wheneven you connect to the Internet via your ISP and they give you an IP address, they record the time you connected and your account username (or cable modem's MAC address which can be traced back to your billing account). All, all someone needs is your IP address and the time the offense took place (has to be a specific time frame) and all the ISP needs to do is look in their database of addresses they gave out and they have you.
Yeah, you could have an open WiFi router but usually the company attempting to sue you (*cough* RIAA, MPAA *cough*) doesn't care. They want their own twisted version of justice and they want money now. They don't care if you have an open WiFi router and that the neighbor may have downloaded music on your network, they see that your account was responsible for the act and they want money!
Can you trace the final connection endpoint (i.e. the part that contacted the observed target as the last link in the chain)? Yes. Even if they fake the IP you *could* in theory do work to discover where that connection originated from. This assumes greatly that the IP you recorded isn't forged, random or nonsense and that you haven't just been "given" a list of IP's from a third-party who didn't do the correct analysis to determine where those IP's are gathered from.
Can you get from an IP to a physical location? Almost certainly. Usually to the campus, home address or business telecoms line that the IP is associated with. But it will be the IP of the other endpoint of the connection, not necessarily the origin of the user's actions. E.g. proxies, hacked routers, etc. And even that can be extraordinarily tricky to arrange over international borders.
Can you trace back through proxies and other hindrances to get to an actual connection origin. Yes. Doubling the work necessary at each stage and if you can force physical access to each of those origins in order to trace back where the source came from.
Can you get from a confirmed IP-packets physical origin to an actual person? Depends. Not automatically, and probably not at all without an admission of guilt or other concrete evidence and almost certainly it would only be "coincidental" rather than anything else (otherwise it would be like arresting everyone who used an Acer laptop because the connection originated from an Acer laptop)
Can you do "hacker-work" to knock on the door of Hacker 1 who lives in an uncooperative country who was trying to hide their tracks (i.e. someone you actually WANT to trace using police resources and raiding datacentres)? Probably not.
Can you do some simple police investigations to get from an abusive IP address to a home address that you can raid for more evidence in a co-operative, or your own, country (i.e. someone stupid enough to do something incredibly illegal and traceable from their home Internet connection)? Yes.
Can you then prove it was them that used that IP? Not without taking their computer and ISP logs and all sorts of other evidence and doing a full "ordinary" investigation.
Can you determine who random user X was who piggybacked on a wifi connection that you *can't* prove the owner used himself but can only trace to that IP? Not without some other evidence (e.g. spotting the car that was sitting outside).
Can you tie an IP address on the general Internet to a single person unequivocally? Not to the standard of any court that I know, no.
Can you tie an IP address on the general Internet to a single person enough to make you suspicious. Usually - yes.
Will it stand up in court? Not without a shit-ton of other evidence that's much more convincing.
anyone really believe that a jury would be able to make these types of distinctions? all they see is we tracked something back to your house without regard to how trustworthy the data is. it happens all the time with other forensic techniques increasing the number false convictions.
With the proliferation of wireless networks and cheap broadband connections these days, it's not hard to crack a WEP key, spoof a MAC address (so they can't even find the real hardware used), and do pretty much whatever you want online without being reliably traceable. At that point, you pretty much have to be in the area, sniffing for the MAC address used. The only thing you really can narrow down is to the county level at that point, but they could really be anywhere within even so.
This says nothing of free wireless internet cafes and public libraries either.
An IP address doesn't point to a user. It never has. It's just a means to facilitate communications. Even a MAC address does not point to a user: it points to a machine. That's it. If you use a fake MAC address, well... Then it doesn't even point to a real machine.
Having worked for several large ISPs in their "Copyright infringement" department (ironic I know) I can tell you that no, tracing an IP address back to its original user is not likely and shouldn't be admissible in court.
The way the system works is this:
The ISP gets an email claiming copyright infringement on a certain date and time by a paticular IP.
It's important to note, the ISP has no way of verifying any of the following:
The email came from the person it's claiming to come from
That person is the copyright holder
There is even a copyright on the file in question
The person sending the email did anything to confirm what they were downloading was a copyrighted file (is batman.zip the new or fan fiction?)
The ISP can not even confirm that anything at all was downloaded.
The ISP then takes the IP address provided and the time claimed and compares this to their DHCP server and looks for lease statements before and after the time the file was claimed to be downloaded. So if the complaint was at 10pm and we had that IP time stamps at 9:30pm and 11:00pm for Jim, then Jim gets a letter.
As you can imagine there are all kinds of holes in this. There are a zillion and one ways that could be inaccurate inside the ISP alone. This doesn't even include all the failures on the part of the copyright holders. We had one that was so inaccurate they were sending us multiple complaints on a daily basis against IPs we hadn't had leased out to anyone for days surrounding the times of their complaints. We made repeated inquiries with the "Company" to try and clarify their problem. But in the end just blacklisted their email accounts. We had other incidents in which the complaint was that the user downloaded a dozen or so movies... but a quick check of their usage logs showed they were using less than a couple hundred meg a month.
It was clear that the copyright holders were using automated scripting software to flood us with complaints with no real checks and balance on their part and then expected the ISP to do the heavy lifting when it came to investigation.
Depending on what data is being captured by the ISP for management purposes, this COULD be true.
But, if they can track you well enough to meter you (Comcast, AT&T, etc), they can track you down to your IP too.
The problem is that Charter assigns one IP address to my router, and everything behind it is sharing that one IP.
So... Who generated that traffic you're interested in? Was it me? My wife? My kid? One of the few people I've given wireless access to? Somebody who cracked my wireless network?
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
What are the implications of an IPv6 world with universally identifiable endpoints and without NAT to hide behind? If it means what I think it might, I'm mystified that RIAA/MPAA and the DHS aren't pressing hard for IPV6 adoption.
gets worse if the ISP is monitoring ATM packets instead of IP traffic...
Why is the ISP monitoring my banking?
antipaucity
...which of the 4 people living here and on which of the 9 computers (7 physical, 2 virtual) behind my NAT firewall committed the act based on the evidence you have already? Which subnet of my internal network were they using (the virtual machines are subnetted away from the rest of the network)? Is it possible that someone outside my home cracked my wireless security, joined my network, and committed the act in question?
If you have 9 computers in your possession, the authorities really don't care which is infringing, they are still in your possession. Subnets don't really matter, nor does your NAT firewall, as all they have to do is show that the content in question was transmitted to whatever device you have that is connected to your ISP (usually a router). That is enough to give probable cause for a search warrant (at least in the US). From there, they can confiscate said computers and analyze them looking for signs of the data in question.
It may be possible that somebody outside your home cracked your security. You could try to use that as a defense, it wouldn't be up to the prosecutor to show that it didn't happen, anymore than they would need to show that somebody broke into your home or business and used your computer. That would be your burden to disprove the prosecutor's case. Besides, a good prosecutor would point out that if you have the smarts to create the network you have described, then you have the smarts to adequately protect it. Negligence usually is not a good defense at a trial.
Here is an analogy for you. If you loan your car to somebody and they commit a crime with it, the authorities are coming after you. If you have an alibi, that is great, otherwise, you'd better be ready and willing to turn over who borrowed your car. Even with an alibi, if you don't want to be an accomplace, you'd better be ready and willing to turn over who borrowed your car.
So, back to your 9 computers. If it wasn't you who did whatever, which of your family or users (depending on whether this is a home or work system) did? That is the information they will find out when they confiscate your equipment. Happens every day, all the time.
Throw in this that a lot of people have wireless routers, it would be impossible to tell, even if you track down the IP address to the physical address, that it was being used by you or your family. One could always say "I had an open wi-fi connection", and it would impossible to say who was behind that IP address.
What makes you think DNA is a good evidence?
1 in a million match is a statistical measurement based on the assumption that markers are evenly spread - as far as I know they haven't actually proven that we as humans are as diverse as the DNA proponents propose.
Ya in theory you could translate the IP back to the area and the MAC possibly on their switch of the router to the customer device if they kept that detailed of records of what modems they sent out to each location however you still would not get past the problem that if 5 people are using a internet connection, you can't pin down which one actually did the downloading by IP address alone which in a normal legal system is not enough to convict. If it was a murder trial and you have your suspect down to 5 people, you wont get a conviction so it shouldn't be any different for electronic crime.
Bryan
Will law enforcement treat this like the photo systems that capture speed/red light infractions eventually? The infraction is not associated to the user but rather the connected device. Having received a speed violation (sent to me, but my wife was the operator, given the location), I dislike the fault association with the owner, but it seems that someone would likely create it to stop people from using the "open wifi" defense.
Mij
Users of standard home IPs (via ISPs) are neither completely, or even significantly, anonymous nor identifiable. The line is grey and moves, possibly by the minute.
However, the article refers to two legal situations, and doesn't discriminate between then sufficiently. With regard to a lawsuit, the test is often stated as "a preponderance of evidence" while when the article referred to a police investigation, it's often described as "beyond a reasonable doubt". The two are not interchangeable.
The copyright lawsuits that the article refers to are probably attempting to show "enough" evidence to get a settlement or a judgement. Taking the evidence collection to the point the police would want would certainly be an asset to the case and would probably be in the "lead pipe cinch" category, taking into account the lesser evidentiary need.
Without that ... well, they will certainly try to get the judge to agree with them. It may be enough in some cases ... we have a few examples where a Judge or Jury in a civil suit did accept it ... but at the same time by itself it's also probably grounds for appeal as well.
With regard to even national-level geolocation, occasionally at work, due to remoteness, I connect via a sat feed. When I'm on that feed I'm in the arctic; when I see certain ads while browsing and those ads include a city or region as part of the targeted ad, they think I'm in New York state (which is where the ground sat link is with the ISP we happen to use).
But, there are probably cases where there is strong evidence, similar to a corporate IP address ... for a few dollars a month, I could have a static IP at my ordinary (home) ISP as well (although it's dynamic currently). So, it's neither here nor there ... it will vary depending on the unique circumstances of the case.
Essentially, that's also what the judge quoted in the article says ... he's hinting that he would be willing to accept the IP as part of the evidence provided there was corroborating evidence to back it up; otherwise not good enough by itself.
As someone using a public wifi I disagree
I'll conclusively say right now: the ISP is happy to cooperate. It's only When, not If. They get a cut of the resulting lawsuits.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Most Cases involving IP addresses do not need "Beyond a Shadow of a doubt", but rather "More likely than not" to assume guilt.
In which case a open wifi connection would not protect the owner of such IP Address from a civil suit.
In a criminal case the IP would be combined with other evidence, such as alibi, motive, and witnesses.. etc.
I hope this was a lame attempt at a joke, but if not, read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asynchronous_Transfer_Mode
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
Next!
Ok folks, if you are using TCP successfully, then you are being traced, PERIOD.
TCP is used by almost all commonly used protocols, so you are being tracked. SMTP, HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, SFTP, bittorrent, NNTP, IMAP, POP3, etc all use TCP. With UDP, you can spoof your source IP, but not if you hope to get any replies.
ISPs have 3 types of records to ensure your traffic comes and goes to your modem/router. They have your login (PPOE on DSL), MAC for the WAN-side of your router for cable and commercial ISPs, and your gateway IP address for all of us. Inside your network, the tracking is up to you. If you are at home, it could be by MAC or IP or not at all. If you run a non-secured WiFi LAN, then anyone nearby could be "borrowing" your network.
If you are a corporation, your IT department probably tracks IP/MAC address pairs. This is how your IT guys know your specific PC has a virus.
So everyone ... don't be stupid - you are being tracked.
There are ways to hide your traffic and final destination, but traffic analysis is providing insights to the data inside those encrypted packages. It is also possible to make a tiny mistake in your setup and leak information that can help someone knowledgeable back to your location and IP.
http://xkcd.com/713/
Note to ACs: I won't mod you up, even if you are being funny or insightful. So take a chance! It's not real life!
All ISP's keep logs. Knowing the IP immediately identifies the ISP. From there it's just a petition away to find the account/modem MAC that was using that IP at that time.
Proving exactly who was on the computer at that time would be impossible. But you could easily narrow it down to the household.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
What are the implications of an IPV6 world with universally identifiable endpoints and without NAT to hide behind? If it means what I think it might, I'm mystified that RIAA/MPAA and DHS aren't pushing hard for IPV6 adoption.
I'm under the impression this is already done. At least in Canada.
I've read that if a router has an open connection and someone out war driving connects to the unprotected router to look up child porn (CP). The owner is responsible because they negligently left the connection unprotected. In the city live in there are free connections all over the place. If you live in an apartment building guaranteed there is an open connection. I've only ever heard of one case where some one tried to use the, "But my router is unprotected. It could have been anyone." defense. The problem was the CP was found on their laptop. Then they tried to say some malware had been installed, which downloaded the CP so they weren't responsible. I didn't ever hear how the case turned out.
That being said, Someone COULD try to hack my router to do something illegal or they could park a house over and leach off the High schools free open wifi. I was talking to my neighbor one day when he told me he and at least the other six houses to the corner of our street just use the high schools connection. On a good day I can connect, but most of the time I'm just out of range so I'm stuck paying for the connection. If I had bought the house I was originally looking at, which is just on the other side of my neighbors house I could have gotten free internet. Everyday I see that one bar signal for the HS flashing on and off, I hear Nelson laughing at me because I could had it. Oh Well, I'm sure my neighbors will all get in shit for it some day.
The "you" here is the wrong focus.
Can you be traced to an IP address? The answer is and will always be, no.
Can an IP address be traced to a MAC address and/or general geolocation? Yes. Is that data accurate? Not necessarily, and there's pretty much no guarantee of accuracy. Do ISP's give a shit who is using their cable modem as long as it's paid for? No.
Just because "I found an IP address accessed at X time and Y cable modem" does not mean that you can truly verify anything beyond the cable modem without far more info (and a violation of plenty of laws without a warrant).
Actually, current DNA identification isn't all that good either. Most DNA identifications are "1 in 100,000", those that I have seen claiming higher reliability have proven to be hyperbole. This does not mean that higher reliability is not possible, just that current techniques that I have heard referenced are not very reliable identifiers.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Wouldn't surprise me if this is true but do you have a link that proves this?
From a legal standpoint, only one person signed the contract. That person is liable for anything done with the connection. And yes, as the legally assigned person have to 'prove' it wasn't they who committed the act that was traced back to their 'address'.
and for the old world analogy:
If your car is seen and photographed robbing a bank and everybody in the house had access to keys, who do you think they are going to look at first?
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Agreed, however this should not come as a surprise. Your ISP is in the business of connecting the tubes to your house, not fiercely fighting for your civil liberties. Fighting for your privacy is your responsibility and you should never expect it to be done for you. Also, I am not sure about your last statement - it would be tantamount to bribing a witness, but nevertheless the ISPs want to be on good terms with the media companies.
I'd think that for the purposes of a file sharing case, ISP logs would be sufficient if they can compel them to turn over the relevant bits. No doubt they keep traffic details of some kind from the session layer on down, which would rule out a 4th party spoofing scenario. I could be overlooking something there. Seems to me the problem with tracking traffic back to a user is if you're required to do it blind from an IP in a server log. But if you can take that hint and get the information from the ISP-on-out, that seems pretty concrete (aside from cases of a compromised machine or AP).
The IPv4 IP I am currently using is shared by 15 people. Sure, IP address tracing can tell that SOMEONE in this appartment building did something on the Internet. So what? That's supposed to be evidence against.. Who, exactly?
When I worked for Time Warner, I'd often process abuse tickets while our Abuse Coordinator was out. It was pretty simple. You'd get the subpoena with the exact time and date of the incident along with the IP address. You'd enter the IP address along with the time and date into the abuse tool and it'd return the account that IP address was associated with at that specific time. It wasn't hard to locate them at all. The IP association data was stored for 2 years or more.
Surely the validity of any evidence citing party x having IP address a.b.c.d at time t comes down the accuracy of the clock on the server that logged the IP address allocation.
How do you prove in court that clock on a logging server was correct.
I don't think you can.
True, but additional evidence could be used (if available) to indicate whether it was really you. For instance, if you are suspected of downloading an illegal torrent, your ISP might have logs of your computer sending an HTTP request for the .torrent file corresponding to a time shortly before the actual torrent traffic started. The HTTP request would contain your browser footprint. Even if your ISP doesn't remember, the website providing the torrent almost certainly does, so in a worst-case scenario, they could be required to provide that information to the court.
It's still not 100% irrefutable proof, but it does serve to narrow down the possibilities quite a bit, and with statistical analysis of browser footprints, it might be enough to convince a judge.
cantenna
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Especially on a cable modem.....
The entire cable segment functions as a hub, so all you need is a hacked modem on the same "Ring" as the IP you want to spoof.
Even though I have a dynamic IP, it's effectively static since it hasn't changed in 9 months, so if someone asked Comcast who my IP belonged to, Comcast could say with quite some certainty that it was me.
But, I wonder what would happen if I was running a public access point (aside from facing the wrath of Comcast since I'm sure it violates their ToS) - could I blame any illegal activity on my "customers"? How can I shield myself from liability from actions by my users?
And yes, as the legally assigned person have to 'prove' it wasn't they who committed the act that was traced back to their 'address'.
Forget innocent until/unless proven guilty! You're guilty unless you can prove otherwise!
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
Isn't it harder with dial-up and open wifis?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Hey, even to be geolocated or triaged or w/e would be worth a cigarette afterwards...
Later, during our pillowtalk: Oh, those parking tickets? They're paid for, by the way...
I worked IT for a cable company for many years. We were tracking users for nasty virus activity after a couple of Smurf attacks. It was fairly simple to track what accounts were using what IP's. This has been almost ten years ago.
You're not convicted of anything until you're in court hence you're not guilty of anything. However, they *are* going to bring you into court if your car was seen robbing a bank and you can't reasonably explain who else might have been driving it.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
I remember using a program years ago called neotrace that traced IP's. Surely they have something even better now no?
Most DNA tests are done to the 1:100,000 level because this is a) quick and b) cheap
DNA testing can be done reliably and accurately to 1:1 billion but this is very expensive and takes a long time ....
But if you are relying on DNA evidence alone then you have a very unsound case, if you test everyone you will find at least 6 matches even at 1:1billion ...
Same goes for IP tracking, you can do it quickly and cheaply and it is often inaccurate, or you can do it properly and it can be made very reliable but this is very expenside and time consuming and does not usually prove any more than the quick test ... the defense lawayer first question should laways be what other evidence do you have linking the person to the crime?
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
DNA is better at proving people not guilty than guilty. Sure, it is used by prosecution along with other evidence, but DNA alone can't prove someone guilty (not to say someone won't be convicted by an uneducated jury, but you won't hear a properly trained forensic scientist claim proof, they will claim only a correlation usually by saying it is indistinguishable). On the other hand, if you analyze the DNA and find that the markers don't line up at all, it assures that the sample the lab was given doesn't match the defendant thereby demonstrating that if the sample is a valid representation of the perpetrator then the defendant is not guilty. IANAL YMMV.
Get a web developer
It is quite reasonable to ask you first .... but it is still up to them to prove it was you ...
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
Will law enforcement treat this like the photo systems that capture speed/red light infractions eventually? The infraction is not associated to the user but rather the connected device. Having received a speed violation (sent to me, but my wife was the operator, given the location), I dislike the fault association with the owner, but it seems that someone would likely create it to stop people from using the "open wifi" defense.
The flip side is that getting a photo-radar ticket is substantially less expensive than getting pulled over. Since you (as the driver) aren't charged, you don't get demerits, for instance. (At least up here where I am - they define photo radar speeding as a "non-moving violation". Yes, the irony is stunning.)
I think the current IP tracing does make a few assumptions, not the least of which is that there is only one user who is ever on that address - no roommates, visitors, people hacking your wireless, and so on. It's the equivalent of charging someone with theft because they traced the crime to the bus you were riding on that day - with no additional evidence. Realistically, I'd think an IP trace would be good enough for a warrant or other discovery document, but that's it.
but it is still up to them to prove it was you ...
which happens in court. You don't have 'prove' anything to charge someone and hold a trial. There are some checks along the way but they don't require 'proof' of anything, just some semblance of reasonableness that you could be the guilty party.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
LOL. And the "abuse tool" works by magic and fairy dust, right? The "tool" was probably just a website front end to a database. If the database contained junk, you got junk, without knowing any better.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
>>if they can track you well enough to meter you (Comcast, AT&T, etc), they can track you down to your IP too.
I agree our computers were stolen, they used one computer in their home; I got their IP.
The State Attorney's office was able to Subpoena brighthouse but the State Attorney usually gives the ISP to 2 respond unless it is a life or death issue.
To try to expedite the Subpoena I called brighthouse myself and person who handles the request said they get 70 requests a day she was working on a backlog from the previous day. She said it could take 7-10 days for them to get the data the police needed.
Tracing down something to an IP address can be a solid pointer for a courtroom - remember, if it's a jury trial, and it goes that far, you have to convince the jury, not the judge - this means a good lawyer and no smoking guns will get you off. If a common person has an IP that leads law enforcement to their doorstep, then that person is screwed. A good lawyer can make all the difference, but having a fairly diverse network with potential vulnerabilities could go a long way.
I've seen worse things - PenTeleData (ptd.net) puts their subscriber information into their reverse DNS. I'm just glad I don't use them. Does their doing this constitute a breech of their promise to not provide customer identifying information? I think yes, regardless of how you defend against being tagged with your IP, it can still give out a lot more than you'd want to share.
This block, 24.229.69.0/24 is owned by ptd.net – and this ISP, located in Eastern PA, puts their customers names in the reverse lookup of their IP address. Tell me that these folks don't get more than their fair share of P2P lawsuits and targeted advertising.
24.229.69.2 : cpe-static-jpjayassoc-rtr.cmts.all.ptd.net
24.229.69.3 : cpe-wifi-subwaytilghman-145.2.1-ap.cmts.all.ptd.net
24.229.69.4 : cpe-static-aestheticsurgery-rtr.cmts.all.ptd.net
24.229.69.7 : cpe-static-thecontigrpmdm2-rtr-cmts.all.ptd.net
24.229.69.8 : cpe-static-apa612wlindenst-rtr.cmts.all2.ptd.net
24.229.69.12 : cpe-static-ramadainnkiosk-rtr.cmts.all.ptd.net
24.229.69.15 : cpe-static-cntyoflehighgovtcntr-rtr.cmts.all.ptd.net
24.229.69.51 : cpe-static-westendpharmacy-rtr.cmts.all2.ptd.net
24.229.69.52 : cpe-static-bnaibrithapartments-rtr.cmts.all2.ptd.net
24.229.69.55 : cpe-static-adultmedgeriatics-rtr.cmts.all2.ptd.net
24.229.69.56 : cpe-static-cysticfibrosis-rtr.cmts.tv2.ptd.net
24.229.69.57 : cpe-static-stanleywest-rtr.cmts.all2.ptd.net
24.229.69.58 : cpe-static-panylentzengineering-rtr.cmts.all2.ptd.net
24.229.69.59 : cpe-static-drhabig-rtr.cmts.all2.ptd.net
Absolutely, the way that IP and DNA evidence are used today, they are useful for two purposes. First, take a specific group of suspects and eliminate those that it could not be because of this evidence (more reliable for DNA,than for IP). Second, obtain a potential suspect or two who are worth more in depth investigation. Unfortunately, the press, TV shows and movies make it seem like both IP and DNA evidence identifies someone much more reliably than it actually does.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I am not sure if it is still like this, but with TWC used to work across the city with the same Cable Modem (MAC address?). For whatever reason I had moved my cable modem to a different part of the city and it worked just fine. Not that they couldn't look at the routing path, but that may be limited to knowing you are on this street/building, but I am sure almost every has their cable modem at the place on the bill.
However, an IP address can be enough to get a warrant to confiscate your equipment. From there more conclusive evidence can be found (or planted).
The owner is responsible because they negligently left the connection unprotected.
That is a misuse of the word 'negligent' if I've ever seen one.
It is negligent to do things that you should have knew people might get harmed by, like leaving a broken board on your front porch that people step through.
It is not negligent to leave things laying around that other people deliberately use to harm others. If an adult picks up a hammer I left on my porch, and attacks, someone, no, that is not negligence.
It's even less negligent, if that's possible, for someone to use them to commit a criminal action that does not, per se, harm someone. Like if I give an adult a beer, and they walk off with down the sidewalk in violation of 'public drunkenness'.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
The hitch is that many if not most ISPs have language in their service contracts effectively saying that are obligated to secure your connection and that you can be held responsible for any users of your connection and their activities. So "I had an open wifi router" isn't really a defense in this case.
1. Some 3-letter agency is granted a warrant and requests information about your IP address from your ISP (usually via snail mail)
2. Your ISP checks which MAC address(es) leased that IP address at any given time (most ISPs use a whitelist of MACs that are linked to your account directly)
3. The ISP then sends that information back to the agency that requested it (again via snail mail)
4. The 3-letter agency then compares the times that IP was leased to whatever logs they're using as evidence (you're fucked)
It's not that difficult, but it's not exactly instant either. The process usually takes up to 90 days.
The flip side is that getting a photo-radar ticket is substantially less expensive than getting pulled over. Since you (as the driver) aren't charged, you don't get demerits, for instance.
I believe the cost is kept artificially low to keep people from protesting it. Over the last 6 years, we've received two photo enforcement tickets (both my wife's fault) so we just paid them. Since nothing goes on my record (at least no points) and the cost is low (versus losing a day to fight it), I have no incentive to correct their flawed accusation (not that I'd expect any better from a judge having fought a few tickets I have earned in the past and the judge completely disregarding any information presented).
Realistically, I'd think an IP trace would be good enough for a warrant or other discovery document, but that's it.
I agree completely, but I fear that the ISP subscriber will end up with the burden of determining the person at fault. Maybe I should list the broadband service in my wife's name :).
Mij
Dude, you can't sign a private contract making you liable for other people's criminal activity. That simply is not possible under any sort of American law. You could sign one with the government, possibly, and that's sorta what it means be 'released into the care of...', although not to the extent of making a criminal out of anyone. But private actors can't just magically sign things making them liable for criminal actions by someone else.
Likewise, a contract between you and second party (your ISP) cannot make you civilly liable for the actions of the third party(an illegal downloader) against a fourth party(the copyright holder), allowing the fourth party to sue you. That doesn't make any sense either. They can't try to enforce some contract they aren't a party to. Either they could already sue you, or they couldn't.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
The fact that if you have more than one device in the house you're more than likely NAT'ing it. For example, in this house there are five devices that NAT off a single IP address from my ISP. Sure you can resolve down to the account holder (myself) but I want a warrant before I'll tell you WHAT devices downloaded the content. In essence I'll tell you to go and pound sand.
When I was a senior in high school I was "detained" by the police for the alleged hacking of a Website / FTP Server of a fellow classmate.
This particular loon was spouting off about how he had hacked the FBI, CIA, etc and he was an Uber 1337 haxor. Since we all used DynDNS when we played SC I could easily find his IP. Once connected to his FTP I determine he was running CuteFTP and found a published bug for his version and gained root access. From there I replaced his index.htm with my own created file to let him know he had been hacked.
Little did I know he called the cops and they came and picked me up. He provided them with FTP logs showing my IP address. They belittled me and said I was no Kevin Mitnick, etc (despite the fact that I never claimed I was). Finally my dad's lawyer comes in and asks how they know it was me. Other than my handle which this guy, who went by CheetahFlyer, had provided them they had no real way of knowing it was me. My Lawyer said they had to let me go unless they could prove the IP address in the logs where mine. They ended up letting me go but said when Bellsouth provided the IP address and it was linked to my DSL account they would issue a warrant.
To this day I have never been arrested for that crime.
Dude yourself. If you make available the tools by which crimes can be committed, you damn well can be held liable for their use in such crimes.
If you allow someone access to your computer and they do something illegal with it, *you* are the one they are going to talk too since it was your computer and connection. They don't know anything about anybody else, nor frankly, do they care. You can explain your alibi, but if you say nothing, trust me, you are ending up in court.
There are certainly mitigating issues in many cases, but the 'facts' only show that your IP address committed the crimes. They are going to sue *you* and nobody else. If threats are made over a phone, they know the person to whom that number is assigned and will investigate them appropriately.
Now, IP crimes are generally not criminal which is both good and bad. Good, for you, that it doesn't rise to the same level as 'criminal' charges, bad, for you, that they don't need to adhere to the same level of proof. Hence, they'll sue *you* and let you have to explain in court.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
And nothing you said has anything to do with signing a contract, which is what my post was about.
Signing a contract with a private actor cannot impose additional criminal liabilities, or impose additional civil liabilities for actions between two other parties. You might already have criminal or civil liabilities, but they are irrelevant to any contract.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
It's my job to trace IPs back to customer's accounts.
Big ISPs have nice record keeping and database systems setup to make it easy, but even the little guys can track you down with very little trouble.
It's not hard to trace an IP address back to a customer's internet account and (in many cases) a physical address.
Sure you can't tell exactly who was at the keyboard, but as far your ISP is concerned, who you allow to access your account is your problem. The account holder is responsible for what takes place over the service they signed up for.
When it comes to major legal issues, we are able to give police a very firm places to start looking (a physical address, a hostname, access logs etc) and from there they can check your hard drives, network, home router config, and decide how likely a suspect you are from that.
If you don't think your contract holds *you* responsible for any criminal activity during the use of the contracted services, you are wildly naive. Not 'liable', 'responsible'. The latter they can do. The former is the justice department's job (or whoever was harmed).
"You hereby agree to not violate any laws when using the system." is blatant boilerplate legalese in every contract ever written by even a half competent lawyer.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
The IP address can appear on these records in many ways that don't ever involve your hardware even being used. These include numerous hardware and software intractions.
For example, hardware wise, someone could temporarily disconnect your modem and plug in their own (at any point between your home and the dslam). Done at the right time, you would probably never notice it. They could also sneak into your house and plus in a small wifi router, in order to steal your internet connection.
Software, what if your ISP doesn't handle daylight savings properly. That gives the "bad guy" an hour of IP usage that could appear to be you. Then there are numerous IP spoofing methods available. And, breaking into the ISP and changing data there is not impossible.
Then, there is the possibility of someone just finding an open wifi port into your network.
They should first need to prove that your hands were on they keyboard before being able to charge you. If someone placed a cardboard copy of your license plate on a car used in a bank robbery, should you be charged with the crime? If not, then why should you be charged when someone does the same thing with your IP address?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Everyone knows the cyber police can backtrace ya.
On the contrary, they don't have to 'prove' anything to charge you. Hence why it is 'charge' and not 'convict'.
They do have to offer evidence that it is 'reasonable' that you did the crime. And the ISP saying the IP in question is yours is plenty 'reasonable' for a court of law.
So yes, you can and will be charged based on that information.
In court, all of the things you mention are perfectly good defense arguments. But they are that, defense arguments. You need to be charged before you can bring them up. Of course playing nice with the investigation up front might keep you only at 'person of interest' levels and avoid the charge all together. But that requires the acknowledging that they have information that points to you and providing an explanation to point them somewhere else.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
At least in Germany the owner is responsible for illegal actions taken via his open wi-fi connection as long as he cannot absolutely identify the real perpetrator.
If you make available the tools by which crimes can be committed, you damn well can be held liable for their use in such crimes.
No, you can't. Unless you had knowledge of the crime, or could have reasonably expected the crime to occur.
If you allow someone access to your computer and they do something illegal with it, *you* are the one they are going to talk too since it was your computer and connection.
"Talk to" isn't the same as "held liable."
By your reasoning, the ISPs are responsible for all file sharing, since they "made the tools available."
Many (all?) home wifi routers log the physical hardware address of the connecting wifi device. While that hw code can be faked, most freeloaders on an open home wifi network or hacked WEP key wifi aren't going to bother obscuring that code in their wifi chipset. A smart lawyer/prosecutor would subpoena your router to see if your claim that "someone else hacked my network and downloaded that naughty file" is supported by the log in your router. Even if you've deleted that log (my router let's me clear it I think) maybe it can be recovered? Of course, if the log has been cleared then not recovering an attacker's hw address does not mean there was no attacker, so maybe this isn't so bad?
Note I said 'can be' not 'will be'.
We can argue about semantics all you want. ISPs are 'common carriers' and are immune to such lawsuits as a general rule.
And yes 'talk too' is the first step. If you don't have a reasonable alibi or explanation, then yes you are going to be charged with said violation of the law.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
on my porch, and attacks, someone, no, that is not
Welcome back, Captain Kirk.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
negligent Adjective /negljnt/ listen
Synonyms:
* adjective: careless, neglectful, remiss, inadvertent, heedless, slack, inattentive, perfunctory, slovenly, nonchalant, slipshod
* Failing to take proper care in doing something
o directors have been negligent in the performance of their duties
I haven't read a definition that indicates they harm caused by a negligent action must be physical. If I leave the keys in my car and it's stolen my insurance company won't pay out because I was negligent. If I leave my router unprotected and someone uses it to break the law it was because I was negligent. I did not preform my duty to secure the connection.
ISPs are 'common carriers' and are immune to such lawsuits as a general rule.
This bit of misinformation keeps popping up now and then. ISPs (even those who are also telephone companies) are exempt from common carrier regulation (and all that goes with it) for the purposes of their data services. They got an exception to that, somehow, because they'd rather pay for the occasional lawsuit rather than have to labor under universal service and quality-of-service standards that are part of being a common carrier.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Which is what I find seriously scary about TOR and Freenet. Has anyone even tried the "plausible deniability" defense that Freenet brags about? because from what I've seen of CP laws (IANAL of course) the problem is it doesn't say you have to have specifically viewed it to be distributing it. If they trace CP coming from your machine I haven't seen ANY statute that says you can't be charged if you didn't view it, you simply have to have facilitated its distribution.
So has anyone tested this in court? How much did the poor soul that got to be the test case end up out in lawyer fees? Because as much as I support freedom of speech I also have a family and while I probably have enough spare bandwidth at the shop to run it spending the next three years in a cell waiting on a court date or trying to come up with a couple of hundred thousand to get a decent lawyer while sitting in said cell doesn't seem like a good way to spend my time, thanks anyway.
To me this is the problem with relying on IP addresses as the laws and reality don't match when it comes to the tech, and while we all support helping those in oppressive regimes all it takes is one asshat or troll pushing CP with the current witchhunt climate to give you a seriously bad day. Hell I wouldn't trust the average jury to even understand what an IP address is, much less onion routing or distributed computing. And the fact that Freenet uses some of your HDD for data you have NO control over just makes this stuff even scarier IMHO, as you can't even honestly claim there is no CP on your PC, as you honestly don't know.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
CCP Games helped me with a hacked account. Apparently i live in California not Australia. LOL
Pylons?
I had no idea what you meant until I saw this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkDD03yeLnU
Made me cringe!
A GUI interface using Visual Basic to track an IP Address
http://guivbip.codeplex.com/
The point is that they're not following through with their "innocent until/unless proven guilty" ideal. They're the ones who have to prove their claims against you. And it's probably far easier and more common to use someone's wireless connection.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
If I leave the keys in my car and it's stolen my insurance company won't pay out because I was negligent.
That is between you and your insurance company. They can set up whatever rules they want regarding payment as long as you agree to them.
You are not negligent in the eyes of the law...if someone steals your car and uses it to commit criminal or civil offenses you are not negligent, and, hence, not liable.
If I leave my router unprotected and someone uses it to break the law it was because I was negligent. I did not preform my duty to secure the connection.
You would be if there was any such duty, but there is not. No one is required to secure connections, or police the ways in which people using their connections, any more than a gas station is required to make sure that people don't use their gas to commit arson.
Just ask anti-spammers, who have been trying for more than a decade to sue people who provided connections to spammers.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
You might want to read up on the law a bit. Charged != guilty. But charged is how they start the process. They don't need to 'prove' anything to charge you. Just a reasonable idea that it *might* be you. At that point you retain counsel and rebut their charges in...wait for it....court.
Since these are mostly civil cases the standard they have to meet to file charges is lower. Unfortunately so is the standard to 'prove' you guilty.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
The point is that they're assuming he's guilty beforehand. Their assumption should be that he is innocent to begin with (not necessarily in their mind, but in the actual court case). Yes, in the actual court case, it is typically innocent until/unless proven guilty, but I am speaking of their mindset.
They don't need to 'prove' anything to charge you.
Yet another problem. It enables them to waste your time and money by making frivolous claims.
Since these are mostly civil cases the standard they have to meet to file charges is lower. Unfortunately so is the standard to 'prove' you guilty.
And that's exactly what I don't like. Neither of those make any sense. Just because it's money at stake instead of jail time, that does not mean that you should be able to get away with having less evidence.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
No one requires me to lock up my power tools either, but if a kid wonders over to my yard and cuts off a finger, I'm pretty sure I'd be sued and the key word in the case was because I was negligent.
Stop being a douche and go look the word up instead of arguing about something you don't understand. The only thing worse then a grammar and spelling natiz troll, is a wrong grammar and spelling natiz troll.
On second thought sorry, I just read you signature. This all makes sense now, you're obviously a tea bagger and the whole argument is because I said I was Canadian. I apologise for you ignorance.
Mod this up. Anyone arguing that IPs can't be traced to accounts in a majority of cases is a moron who hasn't done their homework. As YodasEvilTwin says, the argument is usually between whether the account holder for the IP can be held accountable. As IT pros, we probably want accountability, but as IT pros aware of the issues, it's insane to argue that we can safely blame someone for everything that happens from their IP.
How does this sound for action packed fun: "We need to get hold of his laptop and pull out the hard disk drive. We can then mount it as a slave and wait for 6 hours while it takes an image of the entire contents, then put it back in his laptops. From there, we can mount the image in a read only state and use a tool to brute force the encrypted partition key. It should take around 8 years."
Actually that would make a MUCH better story if they handled it right. Complexity and conflict is good in a story -- pretty much what makes or breaks it. To get around the 6 hour imaging etc., they have this wonderful thing called editing.
These shows aren't using fake procedures to be more fun, they're using them to fill in a VERY patchy plot. For example, when they "solve" a murder by zooming into the reflections on an eyeball in photoshop, they're just getting around the serious plot issue that the murder isn't really solvable with the events they're provided. It's like a story you might have written at 7, "They were off to the fair..." and then got bored, finishing with "...and then they all died."
In other words, it's laziness, nothing more.
The Declaration of Independence makes three claims in support of its right to separate the Colonial British Government from its claim and authority to govern the colonists residing in America in 1776. The 1776-DI claims each person has a lifetime of certain inalienable rights that supersede the rights of all governments. These are the LL&H rights (Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness). The "so-called" endowed rights.
The same 1776-DI document claims that whenever any government is formed, it is formed to secure the [LL&H] rights (to mankind). ...
Further it claims the just powers of governments are derived from the humanity it governs and that if the government becomes destructive to these [LL&H] ends, it is the Right of the people [the governed] to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government
The IV Amendment ( part of the Bill of Rights) in the U. S. Constitution imposes on constitutional government the duty to secure to people the right to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures...and imposes the duty to prove probable cause to a judge in order to overcome that duty.. Does this constitutional clause mean that no law can be passed by Congress which breaches this duty?
So the question is: does failure of governments to protect IP privacy (and exploitation) of each individual conflict with the LL&H rights? In other words, must government prove probable cause before it can find or match people by IP? Must government prevent both themselves and those it governs from the matching of the IP address to the names and personal information of those it governs? Was or was it not the understanding of the states who refused to ratify the U. S. Constitution that: unless the Constitutional Federalist agreed to include this 4th amendment "right to privacy" in the constitution so that it could not be legislatively removed" that they would not vote to ratify it?
Nonsense.
Even the best DNA testing methods cannot reliably tell identical twins apart. 1:1 billion was a theoretical maximum number dreamt up decades ago, in reality the ratio is much much lower. You also have to factor in the quality of the sample, as especially samples from crime scenes are rarely ideal.
IP addresses only identify an internet connection at best, assuming you could somehow be reasonably sure they there are not spoofed. Behind that connection there is probably a router/firewall and an unknown number of computers belonging to multiple people and probably with multiple users one each. The law in the UK has made it clear that in order to sue someone for copyright infringement you have to show that they were the infringer, not just the person who pays the bill for the net connection. For criminal cases the bar would be even higher.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The point is that they're assuming he's guilty beforehand.
How? because they found their IP being shared from an IP address they take the IP address owner to court? That's called finding evidence of a crime and taking appropriate action. How is anyone 'assuming' guilt?
Their assumption should be that he is innocent to begin with ... in the actual court case. Yes, in the actual court case, it is typically innocent until/unless proven guilty
Well which is it? You say they should be innocent in the court case while rebutting that by saying they are innocent in the court case?
Yet another problem. It enables them to waste your time and money by making frivolous claims.
That's why they need to meet a 'reasonable' standard prior to filing charges. And there are frivolous lawsuit penalties should they do that.
And that's exactly what I don't like. Neither of those make any sense. Just because it's money at stake instead of jail time, that does not mean that you should be able to get away with having less evidence.
Really? you don't agree with having civil courts and criminal courts? You don't agree that jail time should require a higher standard than just a parking ticket? just wow.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
I think many of those soon to be .xxx sites has absolutely wonderful tracking system. Everytime I visit one of those they use all sorts of bright colors and crazy animations to point me to the right female[emphasis] at my locale(yeah they know where I am).
Diclaimer: This experimentation is meant for educational purposes only. Any resemblance to real behaviour, traits of any living or dead is purely coincidental. Please read all instructions and warnings before replicating this experiment. Must be 18 years of age or older to proceed further. Experiment at your own risk.
If you think I'm a teabagger you probably need to learn something about American politics, as my signature is pretty anti-conservative.
No one requires me to lock up my power tools either, but if a kid wonders over to my yard and cuts off a finger, I'm pretty sure I'd be sued and the key word in the case was because I was negligent.
Yes, because you do have a duty to lock up, or at least unplug, your power tools.
I have no idea why you're having trouble with this concept. Hell, you even mentioned 'duty' before I did.
Stop being a douche and go look the word up instead of arguing about something you don't understand. The only thing worse then a grammar and spelling natiz troll, is a wrong grammar and spelling natiz troll.
Instead of me looking up a word that I know full-well the meaning of, perhaps you should find ANY COURT CASE EVER that said people had a duty to lock up their computers and networks.
People are negligent if they don't do something they have a duty to do, and someone gets harmed because of it. They are not negligent if they do not have such a duty, even if someone gets harmed. (They can still end up liable for certain types of harm, but not very often.)
No such duty has ever existed for providing people internet access. People have actually sued under such a theory, and been shot down in court. The courts have, every time, said that people who sell other people an internet connection do not have a duty to monitor it for illegal behavior, do not have a duty to monitor it for harm caused to others, and hence are not negligent for failing to do so.
It's very very simple.
This decision is basically in line with all other services, BTW. You give someone a ride somewhere, you have no duty to make sure passengers aren't carrying drugs. You let someone use your phone, you have no duty to make sure people aren't plotting murder over it. You let someone use your internet connection, you have no duty to make sure they aren't downloading CP over it. You are not negligent if you fail to do check those things, because you have no duty to do so.
You, of course, might be in violation of a law or two, but that is not due to negligence. Perhaps it is illegal to transport drugs, even unknowingly. 'Negligence' and 'illegal' aren't anywhere near synonyms. Shooting someone in the head on purpose isn't negligent, it's just murder.
Or it might just look like you're in violation of the law. If your IP downloads CP the police will be all over you because they mistakenly think you're in violation of the law. But if you don't know about it, you're actually not. (Although have fun proving that in court.)
But that has fuck-all to do with 'negligence', which is a specific legal term that means you failed to do a duty you had, and then either criminal activity or harm was caused by your failure, which means either the police can charge you or you can civilly sued. And the most important part of that is you did have a duty in the first place. If there was no duty, you cannot be negligent in that duty, period.
And this is all a stupid argument in the first place because no one has ever been sued for letting other people access CP over their network anyway, and it's hard to see who the wronged party, who is suing, would be. It would have to be the minor whose pictures it was, they are the only 'wronged' person...but how the hell would they even know?
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
How? because they found their IP being shared from an IP address they take the IP address owner to court? That's called finding evidence of a crime and taking appropriate action. How is anyone 'assuming' guilt?
Is the owner of the IP not assumed guilty?
Well which is it? You say they should be innocent in the court case while rebutting that by saying they are innocent in the court case?
I already told you. In the minds of many, the person is already guilty, and they are ready to take action based on that assumption whether or not they have proof that it is true. Not all the time, but it happens.
And there are frivolous lawsuit penalties should they do that.
Really? I've heard of instances where big corporations were able to continually sue (and lose against) small businesses until they could not devote anymore time or money into the court cases. How is that possible, then?
Really? you don't agree with having civil courts and criminal courts? You don't agree that jail time should require a higher standard than just a parking ticket? just wow.
No. Everything should require the same standard of proof to minimize mistakes. In other words, proof beyond a reasonable doubt (which is the amount of proof needed for criminal courts, I believe).
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
You're not good enough to work in corporate environs and you got fired hairyfeet.
'too' means 'as well/also'.
You will find that the Police are very good at not arresting people when they do not have enough evidence and are unlikely to find any ... ..they would be remiss however if they did not ask you as the obvious person, just as they always question the householder in a burglary, just in case it was an insurace scam ...
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
As one of my other posts on this thread said. You can cooperate and avoid the hassle since you have an alibi or other information that says your property wasn't being operated by you. However, the general tone of the posts has been, 'fuck the cops, they have to prove it was me so I'm not listening'. If you pull that attitude with cops, they are *very* good at finding you a new place to sleep that night. :) of course we're mostly talking civil cases here anyway, but you get the point.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people