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Bizarre Porn Raid Underscores Wi-Fi Privacy Risks
alphadogg writes "Lying on his family room floor with assault weapons trained on him, shouts of 'pedophile!' and 'pornographer!' stinging like his fresh cuts and bruises, the Buffalo homeowner didn't need long to figure out the reason for the early morning wake-up call from a swarm of federal agents. That new wireless router. He'd gotten fed up trying to set a password. Someone must have used his Internet connection, he thought. Sure enough, that was the case. Law enforcement officials say the case is a cautionary tale. Their advice: Password-protect your wireless router."
information wants to be free! homeless people with their ipads want to browse the internet!!! why would anyone take advantage of a free service like this?
Secondary postage required.
Guilty until proven innocent.
... home of the brave.
That's why the government raids your house in the morning with no prior warning.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
So maybe... just maybe, this is a clue that it's not quite right to break down people's doors because of an ip address?
...to set up a password? I've never had much of a problem, and I'm a Luddite.
But, yes, this is an area inhabited by much hysteria, mostly generated from "Think Of The Children" LE Nazis and - yes - the News Media looking for the sensational story...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
If someone is sitting outside my house, where there is no mobile phone service, and they really desperately need to make a quick Skype call or check their e-mail, it is a neighbourly thing to do to let them use my wifi, just as if their car broke down, it would be a nice thing to offer them a glass of water and a quick phone call to their car breakdown company.
Child pornography trading was not a strict liability offence last time I checked. You have to show some intent, damnit. And until that happens, I'm going to say fuck you to fear and be a good neighbour.
So rather than two Federal Marshalls in ties having a discussion with the gentleman, the Feds come in Police State style, tossing American citizens around like ragdolls and trampling the Constitution and the natural rights of man.
What is wrong with this country?
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
Maybe they could stop considering certain arrangements of colored dots to be a crime?
"Law enforcement officials say the case is a cautionary tale."
The summary is a perfectly accurate representation of how the police/statist spokespeople are spinning this, and of course the mass media just regurgitates it verbatim. But that is totally the wrong point to take from this. It's a cautionary tale, all right -- of the horrifying real-life consequences of our brain-addled priorities towards pornography. And the result is they'll want to make it illegal to share our Internet and information access with fellow citizens. Pretty outrageous.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
...to set up a password?
If you run a business that offers WLAN Internet service to its guests, how do you reliably communicate the password to legitimate guests without also communicating it to those who deal in child pornography and unlicensed controlled substances?
... but it's the police who need to learn.
Maybe we don't need to send SWAT teams in to arrest people unless there is specific evidence that the person being arrested is armed and violent?
Maybe what passes for "probable cause" is a joke these days?
You are the reason people think all IT professionals are jerks.
Law enforcement officials say the case is a cautionary tale
Indeed, this should be a cautionary tale: obtain better evidence before you make an arrest. Surely there is some kind of penalty in our well-designed system for such sloppiness on the part of law-enforcement. Surely our freedoms have built-in protections. Surely we do not need to respond to attempts by law-enforcement to try to scare us into using encryption if we don't want to ...right?
Just because it's easy for you, Mr. "I Compiled^W Gent^H^H^H^H Installed Ubuntu Last Weekend", doesn't mean that you represent the mean computer intelligence of your peers.
Big surprise, son! Not everyone has the patience for tech regardless of its ease of use.
My advice would be "No one password protect your router"
Then all your concerns about the federal government snooping in on your internet traffic become moot.
Having everyone password protect their router gives the state more power over you.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
Why don't you have a seat over there? ... What were you thinking?
fak3r.com
I'm more bothered about the fact that a screenshot and an IP address is enough to warrant (no pun intended) an armed unit (from Immigration and Customs, for some reason) smashing the door down and throwing the guy down the stairs. When the evidence is that slim, I'd suggest maybe turning up in the daytime and knocking on the door with a warrant to search/confiscate the computers would be a more measured response.
"Gentoo: because watching stuff scroll by on the screen really fast makes me a Linux expert practically overnight -- which is how long it takes to install^W compile. Who needs to use their computer for computing when you could be using it to compile that entire world meta port for that single package upgrade?"
Just using a password isn't safe either. I 'cracked' my own home router that was running WEP encryption in about 5 minutes using a live-cd distribution for that purpose. I've made sure that everything is on WPA2 now, but very few home users are going to know the difference between encryption types.
It's not just wireless that presents problems like this. If your computer or router gets cracked and starts routing illicit traffic for third parties the exact same thing in the article can occur.
The raid could have tipped off the actual perp so he could destroy evidence.
I hope they assign smarter agents to violent crime and terrorism.
you will be cited for not locking your door, on your car, house or modem/router. The problem is all will be penalized in this stupid police state called America, the home of the 'free' where that means free to take the liberties of the huddled stupid masses. Dumb the population down via poor education and what do you get, a bunch of sheaple willing to be taxed to death and afraid to do anything about it. Get what you deserve here, sadly this country is hopeless until a very blood revolution and a system pride by education occurs.
Remember when SWAT teams were only used on violent offenders in situations that were expected to get excessively violent?
Unfortunately, I don't, I was only born in the 80s. I know SWAT teams as being used for everyday arrests and serving warrants, most often by busting down doors of family homes in the dark and shooting people's pets (like the DC area mayor who's dog was shot in the back as it ran away from police during a raid for a crime police had strong evidence he didn't commit but set him up for anyway). No police force needs APCs. Nor should the first line of investigation involve Afghanistan-style street warfare. And where's the police force policing these out of control police forces?
Wake up and realize the cops have militarized against normal citizens.
Celebrities and politicians, under the same charges, are given the opportunity to peacefully turn themselves in.
Normal civilian? Full on SWAT raid
Fuck cops, fuck their families, fuck their friends.. The position these days is only held by the most reprehensible human beings we have to offer.
We are PRESUMED INNOCENT UNTIL proven guilty. You stinking murdering pigs.
Well, other than the fact that he did nothing illegal but got raided and harassed by police and probably has his name associated with kiddy porn all for leaving his wifi open. What difference does it make if he left it open due to ignorance or if he was just being nice? That facts are that an IP address is not a person and the police need to stop treating it as such.
WPA2-PSK!!!
How often must this be said, WEP is NOT security - it's a giant virtual white flag to any wardriver saying "Hi There - I'm Open, Please Hack ME!"
It's not difficult to follow written instructions.
Everyone is responsible to secure their own internet connection. If he can't handle that, then he should be using Cat5e
We're jerks for being right? That's like calling a guy who blames the driver of a car who went past a Stop sign after seeing it, knowing what it meant but ignoring it and ending up in a collision a jerk.
Enable MAC filtering, and then you only need to worry about somebody spoofing one of your devices.
Yes, but not just about porn. This has been going on for decades, but porn is probably the earliest iteration of it, at least in the last century or so. Add to that alcohol, "drugs" (ie: those not patented by big-pharma)... and the latest and greatest bogey-man of all, terrorism. Nixon may have started the War On Drugs, but it was little more than an afterthought until Reagan doubled-down on that fool's errand. It was bad enough back then, but the American police-state just went into overdrive after 9/11. Brazil, here we come!
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
law enforcement needs to smarten the fuck up and enter the house covertly with a warrant and see for them selves.
FACT is someone in the area is a creep sicko and now cause of there fuck up he gets away.
Wow...if you take all weekend to compile a single package AND can't seem to use your computer while it is compiling...I think you have more problems to worry about than what distro you're using.
However, that being said...if you DO have really old hardware which would take some compiling time (but you can still use the thing while it is compiling)...those older machines do benefit the most from having things custom compiled for them.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Then let them knock on your door and ask you for the WEP key...
No. Who are you to tell me how to do it? If this is a free nation, I'll do it however I want. If I want to shine their shoes as they use my Internet connection, I'll do that too. It's none of your business how I choose to do it.
and give him a nice shoeshine kit.
Perhaps more importantly, if you are really concerned about misuse of your internet connection - if you put WEP on it, it shouldn't decrease the chances of misuse particularly much (anyone who intentionally goes to other houses in order to use the internet for nefarious purposes should have easy knowledge of WEP hacking), but it likely increases the chances of you being convicted.
The public who hear about this raid and probably the police should at this point know the difference between a password-protected router and an open access router. Unfortunately that may be the only thing they know.
How about a blow job?
ICE needs be abolished and turned back into its 2 constituent agencies. The combination has proven to be dangerous to the health of the Internet and the public.
If the awful pedophile (I would say "alleged", but we all know he dunit) had known the cops were coming, he could have flushed or otherwise destroyed evidence before they could get to him. Thus, they have to come in middle of the knight, knock the door down, and surprise him - for the safety of the evidence.
I'm having a hard time feeling sorry for you just because your kid got flattened by a dump truck. After all, there WAS a crosswalk down the block...
Perhaps the cops should gather more evidence than an IP address before they bust in, guns drawn?
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
Here's some advice for the police: stop (wrongly) assuming that you can map IP addresses to individuals.
My Nintendo DSi only supports WEP for certain games, what other solution is there?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Imagine if this person had a child in their home. The trauma of that type of raid would probably be much worse than the risk of serving the arrest without SWAT.
"Educate the mind but never at the expense of the soul."~Blessed Basil Moreau
The Feds could readily determine that the router was unsecured. That means that anybody within a certain radius of the computer could have downloaded the picture.
Probable cause means facts and circumstances that would cause a person of reasonable prudence to believe that the computer in the house that was searched was used to download criminal material or used to store criminal material.
The router is evidence of a crime. It is the device used to get the criminal material. The feds had a legit reason for the search and seizure of the router.
The problem that I have is that the ICE agents behaved like pigs--complete pigs--with respect to the man whose home they invaded. They had facts sufficient to know that they had no probable cause to believe that the man they threw on the ground had done anything wrong. They were under no threat, yet they assaulted him for no good reason.
Asking the slashdot community what wifi security protocol they employ for their home wireless network. I would be interested to see how many people are not on some variant of WPA2.
Did the brownshirts electrically shock him for being uncooperative with their unfounded home invasion ?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
If the story is correct and the authorities really did treat this guy as described then he likely has a good case for a lawsuit. It's not like they were raiding to stop some imminent danger. Probably the first thing they should have done was scan the neighborhood for open WiFi and they would have found this guys router sitting open. They might have even been able to see the perp latched on to the router.
"Cautionary tale..." means other police forces should pay attention and use caution. If I want to leave my router open for neighbors to use that's my business (I don't BTW).
some older and still useful gear that I have will not support wpa2. I am NOT going to throw out good working hardware (an old compaq handheld pc that acts like a wireless 'pad', from ages ago) just because the vendor did not give wpa2 support.
I treat those links as insecure but I'm NOT going to throw away good hardware! MS wants me to, but I don't follow that belief.
in fact, its often easier to just turn off authentication. running WEP is useless; might as well just run cleartext. and at least THAT works everywhere, on any age of hardware.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
A better lesson is... cops should not break down doors and point guns unless there is real life at steak. JPEGs don't count.
WPA2-PSK isn't security either unless you bother with selecting an uncommon (non-Top1000) SSID AND a non-dictionaried (common words/phrases/keys) password.
You'll find that 80+% of all AP's named linksys have an password that's retrieved in seconds using a downloadable internet dictionary.
MAC addresses are easy to spoof.
Mike O'Donnell http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~odonnell/
If securing wifi becomes mainstream and hackers start producing tools to crack common wifi entry points, it would be much harder to explain away an intrusion if your network is password protected than if it is not.
My only real concern would be with bandwidth consumption and there are a lot of teens in my neighborhood I could see streaming like fiends.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
What I miss in the whole story is the fact that the real perpetrator is now warned off and presumably gone. So it's not just the Glorious Show Of Force coming down on some poor guy, it's also Shining So Brightly that the real perp crawled in some sewer and just try to find him/her.
Here's an idea for our friends: the next time an unsecured wireless router/access point is involved, set up surveillance and detect which client(s) are responsible, collect evidence which will stand up in court, then triangulate and raid the correct premises at an opportune time.
I really do understand why the police raid with overwhelming force.
In cases where urgent action and violent opposition is expected it is often safer for everyone.
But in this case was that really required?
Where they realistically expecting him to come out guns blazing?
I know that a lot of people want to "rough up" certain types of offenders. But I'd really like to wait till we find them guilty first (then go knock him around a bit)
I would have bet they could have had pretty much the same result, minus the property damage, allegedly minor injuries, and wasted police resources, if they simply had a few detectives calmly knock on the door and enter like civilized people.
I have lived in my neighborhood for several years. Within my home detection range, I have access to nearly a dozen wireless hotspots. A few are open. A few use WEP. Two use WPA. A few use WPA2. In the course of my experimenting with wireless security and man in the middle attacks, I have gained access to all of them. The hardest one to crack forced me to set up a dedicated laptop for a week. Now, I'm just a computer guy with an interest in security. I tried just to see what could be done and to gain a better understanding. But the tools I used and the knowledge I have are available to virtually anyone. I'm far from some 'super-hacker'. My point is that if I were a pornographer, none of these would be secure enough to stop me. And yet the police are trying to spin this that somehow the homeowner who was wrongfully arrested was at fault for some security lack on his part. Ridiculous. It's obvious that the police didn't have enough information to justify the raid, and they are just covering that up. Can you imagine the police doing a major raid on your house, doing property damage, seizing your assets, etc. then being told "Hey, you have the same initials as the guy we're really after. We really didn't know enough to figure out if it was you or not, but we figured what the heck, we'd raid you anyway."
I'd disagree there.
While WEP isn't all that useful security against your typical hacker/war driver, it will keep out your neighbor who just brought home a new laptop from bestbuy or the guy walking by with his iPhone.
It also sends a message that this connection is not open for the public.
It's similar to having a door on your store that everyone knows can just be opened by slipping a credit card in the lock to open it. Sure you can lock the dead bolt, but just this will keep out people while you shut down the cash register.
you've just given me an idea...
1) setup a monstrous omni wi-fi antenna
2) set SSID to linksys
3) set security to none for a certain period, to WEP for a certain period and WPA2-PSK for the same period.
4) log the number of attempts with each security setting and plot graphs. rinse and repeat step 3 over x period of time.
So I add two hours to the time I need to hack it?
"Secured wifi" is not secure, keep it open and use ssl for your traffic, might even be nice for your neighbours...
What was bizarre? Was it the raid, as in the agents were all dressed as clowns or something, or the porn, as in "hairy preggo in latex blows Ronnie Reagan?"
Downloading child pornography doesn't seem to be a violent crime to me. Why did they need to send a SWAT style raid rather than knocking on the door with a warrant? Did the guy have a history of violent crime?
Aggresive raids get people killed - both the people being raided (e.g. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/26/AR2006012602136.html) and the police doing the raid (e.g. http://amarillo.com/stories/112201/tex_firedfor.shtml - note that was a raid of someone who owned a lot of guns, but the police did manage to fire 369 shots killing one of their own while the guy being raided did not touch a gun let alone fire a single shot).
For suspects of non-violent crimes (and downloading/viewing child pornography is not more violent than downloading/viewing videos of an assault - that the production of the pornography involves violence is irrelevant) and even for convicted non-violent criminals "kicck the door down and point guns at everyone" raids are only going to increase the risk of death and injury.
on a dummy spare router.
Bruce Schneier wrote an insightful essay explaining why he does not protect his wireless node. There are pointers to other essays agreeing and disagreeing with him. I personally agree with Schneier. I consider myself the steward of my Internet connection, more than owner.
Mike O'Donnell http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~odonnell/
Pedophiles aren't known for their amazing ninja powers, are they? Isn't the general pedo more of a sad and pathetic loser in relatively bad shape with a broken self image? What about a family pedo?
What I'm saying is: wouldn't it have been more sensible to ring the doorbell and say "Mr. Doe, come with us. You are under arrest on suspicion of downloading child pornography". What do they expect? some kind of pedo clan, all armed to the teeth and ready to round-house kick Swat team heads off their bodies?
America.... the Taliban don't hate you because of your freedoms, they hate you because you won't teach them these advanced techniques of messing with the general public! Shock and Awe, surprise and fear.... Nobody expects the ICE/SWAT. Surprise is our main weapon, surprise and fear. Our two main weapons are.... (you get the idea..)
My wifi has no password. Which is completely intentional - why would I not want to share with my neighbors?
Well I guess idiot police raiding my house and pointing guns at me for no reason might be a reason, seems a pretty unlikely event though given the sheer the number open wifi access points and this one case.
Recently I looked on my phone trying to get it to connect to my Wifi and noticed that of all the signals it was picking up (about 9) mine was the only one NOT using WEP. Its surprising that people are so incredibly clueless about the technology they use. It's not like it would take that much effort to learn a little about your router before you plug it in.
How dare you? You're obviously onna them communist-fascist liberals who wants to confiscate all of our guns! Glenn Beck warned me about people like yoo! Yew can have mah gun when yew kin pry it from mah cold dead fangers! ;)
I'm having a hard time feeling sorry for someone who knew for a fact it was insecure and didn't seek help or look for another solution.
Unfortunately I have to somewhat agree despite hating the concept and wishing there was more open wi-fi out there...
Think of it this way---Imagine if you had a telephone mounted to the outside wall of your house... at the same time there is a child out there who has been kidnapped, they have a suspicion of who is associated with this, so they have a wiretap authority for that person... Someone walks up to your house and uses your outside phone to make a call to that person, during the call they talk about the child... So now your phone line is clearly associated with this activity...
But wait, you didn't make the call... it was someone who used your outside phone line! You don't have any control over that right?
Right it's true, you don't... but before that can be established the police have to take some action to protect someone. Putting a side the appropriateness (or lack thereof) of the response of the police departments, you have to agree that they need to take some action... and depending on the evidence and severity of what's going on, that action might be very severe.
Well, having an open wi-fi router is like instantly installing a phone jack--connected to your line--in every house, tree, car, etc within 300' or so of your house. Would you want that?
Ignorance of technology is not an excuse for allowing it to be abused.
New wi-fi routers are CHEAP, in fact, probably cost less than one month of what many people pay for TV/internet. New wi-fi routers are also quite easy to setup, and many include very easy to follow charts w/ lots of pictures for going through a "quick setup".
WPA2-PSK AES random passwords are pretty much uncrackable with conventional means - wardriver is going to move on to the next house with an open belkin54g.
Pedobear's advice: if you're into child porn, *don't* password-protect your wireless router, so you can claim innocence.
Not trying to actually give pedophilia advice here, just pointing out that while the burden of proof rests on the state, an unprotected wireless router proves nothing either way.
If I get sued by the MPAA for copyright infringment (violating their public performance clause), are you going to blame me because I left my living room blinds open?
It speaks more of the manufacturers of this equipment, I think more than the users. The users who don't want to be techies but want a secure connection trust the router manufacturer that it has a secure implementation. What many don't realize is the wool that's been pulled over their eyes, or maybe it's all the cheapo routers that still float around at garage sales and on ebay with outdated firmware...
Gentoo: Because I started out on LinuxFromScratch (three times in a month, woot!), and I understand the value of a package manager but enjoy being able to tweak packages at will.
...the guy who /actually/ downloaded it, is laughing his ass off right about now.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Also happened a while back here in Florida http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20110131/ARTICLE/101311038
Amusingly enough, this one happened to an attorney. ^_^ A local boat captain in the harbor with a signal booster jacked this guy's unsecured router. The best part was where he said "I knew I should have secured it, but I figured I was too far up above the street for driveby access and everyone in my building is old" (paraphrased, and he uses old to imply inept). Was a very entertaining read when I saw an attorney raided by FBI...I bet this guy will forever in the future remember that IP != Identity.
This is it exactly. IP's addresses aren't people especially with IPv4 addresses. I don't know about the average slashdotter, but on my single IP address are 4 people, with 9 different computers.
If one person fails to update one computer with a zero day patch, and that machine gets comprised and can then download whatever they want, and leave behind incriminating evidence getting someone else in trouble for your dirty deeds.
NAT's are good at such things. Heck I am now tempted to leave an unsecured computer on my network and let it get infected with crap. Just so if the ops ever raid me for "music/video/porn" I can point to the honeypot and machine and claim ignorance.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
> Lying on his family room floor with assault weapons trained on him...
> Law enforcement officials say the case is a cautionary tale. Their advice: Password-protect your wireless router.
I have some advice for law enforcement. Don't treat someone suspected of a non-violent crime as an excuse to play with all the new weapons you just got budget for. Things go wrong. People end up dead. Read http://reason.com/archives/2007/07/02/our-militarized-police-departm or http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6476 or Google for "Paramilitary raids", "militarized police".
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
If this person had secured his connection and someone had broken the encryption to download illegal pornography, how likely would it have been that the law enforcement would have believed him?
I know TFA mentioned it took three days and a "forensic" analysis of his electronics before they finally really believed him, but I wonder if it wouldn't have taken longer if the signal had been encrypted. Since these law enforcement personnel couldn't be bothered to do some basic research before over-reacting, how likely would they have been to believe Barry's claims if the router had been encrypted?
Barry: "No, really, I didn't do it!"
Law Enforcement: "Don't lie to us! That's impossible! Your wireless connection is encrypted!!"
Veritas patesco per quaestio questio. Truth is revealed through questions.
A cautionary tale for the judge the authorized the warrant maybe. Of course, it's always the victims fault right? Judges are infallible.
Their advice: Password-protect your wireless router.
In my most sincere heart of hearts, let me be one of the few to say: "Fuck that noise!"
I don't know about you out there, but I'm a big fan of this whole "society" thing, and if random JoeBlow walks up to my house and asks for a drink of water, I'll gladly give him some. I've got plenty and the cost to me is negligible. I do this because I might want a drink from someone at some point. Same for my router and connection. The effort and cost to me is negligible, and if it's abused, it's simple to throttle, restrict, or simply cut them off.
I like people, and I want to be a good neighbor. So fuck your tyrannical fear-mongering police-state.
I think the actual title to this story should be "Bizarre Porn Raid Underscores Utter Lack of Investigative Work".
Ummm... Or just WPA with AES and a really good password? More devices can do WPA than WPA2, WPA is also less CPU intensive.
Seriously. I mean, yes, a police officer should carry a gun when investigating a potential criminal at their home and trying to arrest them, but, sheesh. Break down the door and point a gun at the guy in the house? Why the HELL were forced entry and *drawn*weapons* even necessary in this circumstance?
Oh, look, someone's surfing the web for unambiguously illegal pornography on the internets? All right, men, let's load up the SWAT van and go in there shooting! And if it's an innocent bystander, hell, that's okay. We won't bother with due diligence or caution, we'll just go in there and hope that a deadly tragedy doesn't unfold as we're waving our weapons around. And whether it does or doesn't unfold tragically, we'll blame the homeowner for not securing their wireless router, so it won't be our fault.
Ye gods, what idiot ran this operation? What if they had mistakenly thought the guy was holding a gun, and shot him in his own home? Or what if the homeowner had heard something, thought he was being robbed, and got killed trying to defend his home? Leaving aside the technical foolishness of assuming that what's being accessed through a wireless router must be from the person living in the house, why would this kind of force be necessary even if they were confident it was the person in question? Ring the fricking doorbell and shove the warrant in front of the face of whoever answers. If they resist arrest or access, THEN maybe consider using force to arrest them. You don't need a SWAT team to arrest a suspected child pornographer, especially if you could be wrong about the identification in the first place.
Sounds to me like this guy pissed off the wrong geek, who set out to make his life hell. Easy enough to do if you want the owner of the network to get 'caught'.
But they used WEP, so here I am...
Recently I looked on my phone trying to get it to connect to my Wifi and noticed that of all the signals it was picking up (about 9) mine was the only one NOT using WEP. Its surprising that people are so incredibly clueless about the technology they use. It's not like it would take that much effort to learn a little about your router before you plug it in.
When I was trying to set up wireless internet between my router and my DS/Wii console, some parts only worked with WEP for one reason or another. This left my choices as either no internet on console (which I use to watch the BBC iPlayer), use WEP, or use unsecured with MAC filtering. Neither are particularly secure, but think what someone who doesn't have a technological background would do when their console complains about wireless security, they'll probably just turn it off entirely to make the problem go away.
"Bizarre Porn..."
even when they hit the wrong address you have to go to court to get them to pay for damages to your property.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
... to be a form of government militia used against civilians.
might as well call in the airforce to napalm suburbia.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
The whole point of child porn laws is to prevent children from being sexually exploited. I'm 100% behind that. But all those pictures and videos that the police take down were taken a long time ago. You don't protect any children by keeping that stuff off the internet. If anything, by taking down the old stuff, you encourage perverts to make new stuff - to hurt more children.
A more enlightened country would release all the child porn they have ever seized to registered perverts. So if you're willing to register as a pedophile, you can get access to the government's entire stash (maybe not all at once, but gradually). Registration would require a fee and mandatory counseling, and all materials would be watermarked specifically for you so that you wouldn't share them. But if you abided by all this, could do your pedophilia legally. I have a feeling that this would satiate the porn needs of most pedophiles.
The police could then focus on the real source of harm: The people who take sexual advantage of children. The whole point of the scheme would be to destroy the demand for more child victims. If law enforcement worked with the pedophiles a little, I'm sure that the people who are victimizing children now would also be easier to catch. There might be special rewards for snitches whose tips lead to arrest.
I think that with the sheer grossness of the crime of pedophilia, we lose track of what would be the most effective way of dealing with it. Kicking down doors and throwing innocent people down their own stairways is not it.
- breaking into the house
- weapon trained
- bruises, cuts
Dammit he is not a terrorist suspect !
Why not watch wait and catch ?
- Home owner leaves house for his job
- intercept him
- shakle/arrest him - with a squad team in the background
- cease the computers
-> no voilence and wounds necessary if the suspect corporates
So in an attempt to push forward a government sponsored internet ID protocol govt officials drive around searching for open WiFi ports to surf child porn on. They then forward that information to the local police/swat/gestapo in order to launch these attacks on innocent citizens in order to scare the populace into mass adoption of said government sponsored identity programs.
p.s. bring the cameras cause no matter what happens it is full win, manage to hit an armed defended citizen who knocks out a couple of swat team members that didn't properly identify themselves help to push more intrusive guns laws while they're at it.
The fact when it gets out he will always be labeled as a child molseter and so on because people always want to hate, they always want to accuse and always want to stand together on a bandwagon of unjustified hate against someone else even if they have no cause to do so.
Someone accused a man near me once of having child porn, the person doing the accusing even fessed up later that he was doing so in order to get revenge on this guy for a fight they had and lied about the whole thing. That guy had to move away eventually because people still called to harass him, damaged his house, his car, he lost his job all because someone called him a pedophile.
What kills me though is I remember when laying on the flood with assualt rifles pointed at you only happened when you were waving a gun around or holding someone hostage. Now when your suspected of having porn they kick in your door, knock you down and put guns in your face while calling you names. Real nice country we have here.
setting a key isnt gonna do anything relly. you can brake wep in minuts. same style hear all my nabors are open or using wep and withen 30 minuts i had all the keys, im the only one using wpa2 and even thats been cracked a few times and i had to change the keys. yes you can crack wpa2 it just take a wile like a week, point hear is the polic come rading your house getting everyons attetion wile the real guy is destorying the evdance.
How does Starbucks and other venues that provide free Wifi shield themselves from liability?
This incident alone makes me want to offer up free Wifi from my own home access point (yes, I know I may be violating my ISP's ToS, but I don't see that as a huge threat, especially with some rate-limiting to make it unattractive for large-scale downloads and port-25 blocking to make it unattractive for sending spam).
Does putting up that ubiquitous clickthrough screen that makes people promise not do anything bad give any legal protection?
What if I log MAC addresses from the DHCP server?
I'm not too worried about what the feds could find on my computer if they seized it - I'd even give them the decryption key to the hard drives if they ask nicely. If they break down my door and seize my equipment, my hope is that I can gain support from the EFF or ACLU (both of whom I've supported for many years) to lawyer up.
I *like* to help people. Providing password-less wireless access is a nice way to help others. I don't do it at the moment, but only because of time pressures; I hope to do this in the future. It'd be best if there was a common convention that "no password means anyone can use" because there's no other way to make that obvious. In the meantime, I suggest using "public" somewhere in the network name, so that people will know that you're intentionally providing a service to others. Bruce Schneier has similar comments.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
The way detached houses are built in the U.S., pretty much everyone who has a phone line coming in, has it exposed outside. Even though there's no physical phone installed, it'd take someone maybe 15 seconds to hook one up. Including a battery backed wireless phone base.
Now, even though network demarc points are usually inside, there's often customer premise wiring routed outside the house, especially if fax or DSL lines were added after the house was built. This means that, more often than not, even if you're using a cable modem or an VoIP-to-analog adapter, there will be a dialtone accessible from the outside even if it's not the telco providing it anymore.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
I would never have guessed have a liking for feet could land someone in such trouble.
It must be tough being a pediatrist or pedicurist in the US !
Suppose that Buffalo man bought this new router and did password protect it. However, some hacker (or neighbor) still broke into his WiFi and used it to download child porn. Wouldn't that make the situation much worse for the Buffalo man?
I think password protecting help reduce the chance that someone uses my router to do bad things, but if it does happen, then password protecting makes it a much harder case for me to claim that someone else did it.
"I don't know about you out there, but I'm a big fan of this whole "society" thing, and if random JoeBlow walks up to my house and asks for a drink of water"
And what happens when many neighbors keep coming up to your door for water? What if several pull up and ask you to fill up their barrel with water? What if the wants lots of your water to drown their wife for kids? Water their 40 acres of crops? Fill a swimming pool? What's your limit of giving?
It might be a tiny cost now, but with that big a drain on your water supply won't the water utility question this and charge you more? Metered water is a fact in most cities these days. Are you willing to pay way more for your benevolent community contribution? You are asking to be taken advantage of. It's the same thing with wi-fi signals, people will take advantage of you and then you will get your Internet usage bill. Once that occurs you will change your tune.
When I moved into my flat, it took a week or so to get broadband sorted out.
In that time, I used the open wifi belonging to my neighbours (I never found out which neighbour).
Now I keep my wifi open so that my neighbours can use it if they need it.
When did becoming a good neighbour become a criminal activity?
On a different note, since when did you need assault weapons to arrest a man who may have been downloading illegal porn?
VLC Remote for iPhone and Android
For being right 0.01% of the time and being damn inconvenient 100% of the time and condescending 150% of the time. What you're doing is more along the lines of blaming a person who didn't use bug spray on a summer day for getting Lyme Disease.
If I can just reach out with my words and touch a butthole, just one, it will all be worth it.
There's substantial research to support the parent comment's point.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
He's guilty. lamest story ever, its impossible for somebody to use your internet connection without you knowing it, much less without out your permission.
Law enforcement officials say the case is a cautionary tale. Their advice: Password-protect your wireless router.
All because THEY (the lazy law enforcement officials) have have long ago forgotten how, or even why, to do what used to be done ... actually INVESTIGATE the crime. So what is their advice for cases where the router is buggy, or for trojans running on Windows that let others relay network access?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
This should also serve as a cautionary tale to anyone operating a Tor exit node.
From TFA:
The government's Computer Emergency Readiness Team recommends home users make their networks invisible to others by disabling the identifier broadcasting function that allows wireless access points to announce their presence.
That never worked.
Information Retreival does not make mistakes!
Well, just think if this guy's router had been used to download music and movies from bittorrent! The RIAA wouldn't have allowed that whole "It must have been someone else using my router" excuse and the guy would be on the hook for millions.
"I assure you, Mrs. Buttle, the Ministry is very scrupulous about following up and eradicating any error. If you have any complaints which you'd like to make, I'd be more than happy to send you the appropriate forms."
We'd be praising the forensics team for their hard work. As it is, the forensics team DID clear him of it. And, they did not say he was guilty. It doesn't even say they imprisoned him or his family. It just said they took his computers. That seems like a reasonable action based on evidence they had. Once they cleared him, they actually found the person who really did it and arrested them.
Seems like they did a pretty reasonable job to me. And no, I'm not some liberal socialist.
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
it is obvious the police did not do an adequate job to determine the home owner needed to be arrested and traumatized the man and his family.
I was visiting my parents this week end. Respectively 70 and 66 of age. If you ask them, it's plug and play, no need to "go to that configuration thing"
Unlike 3 other visits in the past years I decided NOT to set a password this time on their router, with the usual set up the computers accordingly.
Each time they have a problem the ISP tells them to reset the router to factory default. Same thing happens when the cable guy (same as ISP) comes in the house for any upgrade. My sister will do the same as she thinks the password is why she have trouble to connect when visiting.
Are you fucking shitting me mod? Troll? Somebody get that mod's IP address.
Ocean is land, covered with water.
Bruce Schneier has, as a security wonk, recommended the "open" router; If someone cracks your key (or pass-phrase) the cops will assume (yes, ASS-U-ME) that you provided it and approve of how access was used.
An open WiFi router should, in any rational analysis, disclaim responsibility for other's use of the router so you are NOT the "gate-keeper".
The hell of this is that laws can be made to make open routers "illegal" but, absent "real" security...
The only way to guarantee security is to turn off router-level wifi and force wired connections for all client systems w/i your house-hold.
I'd like to see a non-technical cop set up router security and have a competition for cracking his pass-phrase and/or key.
-soup (GNUrd, Speaker to Machines) "Laugh at yourself- Why should everyone else have all the fun?" -Romanchek's 6th Ru
We would like to believe that law enforcement types are bright enough to collect a great deal of hard evidence before raiding, arresting, detaining or even interviewing a suspect. That raid was absurd.
And it gets worse. In Florida complaints of abuse to a senior citizen are handled by Children and Family Services. These meat heads only investigate 10% of the reports made. This state agency is responsible for deaths of children and harm to the disabled and a total lack of responsibility to seniors. Funding and low job qualifications are probably at the root of it all. We need to eliminate that agency and start from ground zero with all new people and a quality budget. Constant budget restraints murder people. Thank the right wing for dead children and abused seniors.
Probability of a set of disk hidden under the floor?
Momento Mori
Tons of federal money for SWAT...
Tons of federal money for JACK-SWAT...
A lot of commensurate about why the police kicked in the door with guns out. This is called a no knock warrant. It is used when the police or DA thinks the person is dangerous (threat) or they may destroy evidence if given time. The name calling was just an added extra baised on the charges on the warrant. Personal note A) secured next to my bed is a slip-on NIJ IIIa chest plate with my FNH Five-seveN and 2 extra magazines. (there are a lot of home invasions in my area -+6-10 a year) Note B) I fear a no knock warrant more then a home invasion as I will start shooting if my door is kicked in, and when the police are involved I will lose (I have no reason to think I will ever be served with a warrant of any kind, but neither did the guy in the story)
They come in the dark, only in the darkest.
Get sturdier doors for your house, so you have time to tell the SWAT team they have the wrong house.
We have become a divided society. There are the powerful, who make the rules to suit themselves (corporate executives, politicians, and those who work for them), and the rest of us, who are kept powerless and increasingly treated like cattle. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is part of a federal agency, so if you pay federal taxes, you are helping to pay these goons. Find ways to reduce your taxable income, and stop feeding them. Otherwise it's just going to get worse.
I got a nice email from HBO claiming that I was downloading their intellectual property. I try to keep my stuff pretty well locked down - and did not recall having downloaded the alleged property - so when I checked my firewall and router settings, bingo. Everything had reset after a significantly long power outage and it was wide open. HBO never followed up - yet - with any further action, but I leave this as a cautionary tale to you.
Am I the only one who thinks this is the one case where they SHOULD have bugged the guy's computer? If they had, they could have seen that he was not the perpetrator, and then they could have found the real guy by working WITH him instead of against him. Once they had vindicated the homeowner, they could have gotten his permission to watch his internet traffic in order to catch the pedophile.
A technology story from MSNBC. The worst news organization supported by the worst technology organization.
Prosecutors love when you don't have any.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I fear less from a well trained swat team then a patrol officer with a gun. The swat team knows they can kill you in a second so will restrain itself. The single police officer might fear for his life and shoot sooner.
For all the cry baby's. This is how real life works. This is the real system. It ain't pretty, it don't always work and it sucks even if it works to be caught in its gears but it is the best we got.
The alternative? Saudi Arabia perhaps were a prince can do anything and not be arrested until the police has evidence except that gathering evidence itself is not allowed? How many of those wanting less of a police state have bought a ticket so Somalia?
Pray you never get caught in the system in any way and your life will be queit and peaceful and you will happily vote for the guy voting for tax cuts (but never delivering them for you) and not be worried about the effects on the system.
I have never been a cop, but I have been a soldier. Granted in a country of peace and we had standing orders not to lock and load. But raids on arms stores do happen. We had an alert one night on guard duty. Not allowed to load the weapon for safety. We all did because NONE of us wanted to die that night. And what I said above is true, when you know you can defend yourself in a split second you wait longer. Nothing happened of course, just a false alarm. But I don't blame any cop not taking a chance.
And what we forget in this story that a lot of the liberatarians seem to forget is that they had the right IP, the guy was NOT shot and he was cleared. The system worked. Not perfectly? Since when has this been a perfect world? Grow up and realize this is the real world, not some 12yr olds fantasy world created by kids who want to see the world burn.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
How good is wireless security using WPA2 PSK + MAC filtering? How hard would it be for someone to crack that combo?
A password doesn't equate to security.
It would be a lot harder to prove someone else used your setup when it's 'secured' with a password, but it can happen. Besides passwords being a piss-poor way to secure *anything* these days, many people choose stuff like their kids names, or birthdays or other crappy dictionary words.
What's worse, is a lot of people and places are still using WEP, which is useless in terms of accountability, but it would be enough for a court to say "You say you secured your setup but someone cracked it anyway? Yeah, right"
Nobody I know (corporates included) use a password like(lei3%dk&l[_#=3 anyway because it's "too hard" for users to remember.
Passwords are pointless for proving, or disproving, accountability.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
Clearly our domestic security forces - post-9/11 there is little point in distinguishing between local/state/federal and civil/paramilitary - are severely over-funded. Apparently they have so many unallocated resources that they can afford to send seven heavily armed agents to assault a citizen accused of being a witch. While witchcraft is certainly undesirable - and God obviously demands that the State use violent police power to suppress any data that might offend (i.e. titillate) "conservative" closet-pedophile prudes - this is an unconscionable waste of taxpayer money.
How much did this operation cost? Every single penny of that was wasted, and and most of it was borrowed from the Chinese. Someone in the ICE brass needs to lose his job - as well as his cushy federal benefits & pensions - over this squandering of public resources.
Trust me, you seen nothing yet. The grand parent is actually fairly sensible in contrast. Still needs a bullet in his head, but in comparison, he is only slightly frothing at the mouth. Pedo's will use any rationalization for their actions.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
What about if they hadn't investigated and he had been a pedo and he had then raped a kid?
Don't expect the privacy freaks to ever acknowledge these cases. The police is evil right up to the point they demand a swat raid on their neighbours dog for barking.
When you get right down to the core, this is little kiddies who want to see the world burn rage against the man. It is 16 year old boys hating their dad for being a wage slave AND not giving them enough allowance.
It is the other side of slashdot. Away from the conservatives (most engineers are, we are good with numbers and less good with emotions) and into hormone land. The demographic that has an x-box and who think they are engineers because they fix computers at wal-mart.
You will note many claims of IP's not being tied to a single person. Except that it was, they had the right guy, the owner of the router. So, they identified the right IP, yet a large number of posts claims IP's can't be traced to the right person... reason doesn't work on these people. But don't worry, their kind grows up to be the worsed kind of conservative. So they balance each other out.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
When you lower the standards on which you even qualify to become a police officer this is ultimately happens. IMO this shouldn't even got to the point of there being a raid. And worse yet a judge signed the warrant hes at fault too. All that said i see the government making it a law, all WiFi must be password protected, if not you will be fined if your open WiFi is used in a crime or committing a criminal act. There you want to leave it open then pay when the bad guys use it.
Jack of all trades,master of none
Why do they need assault weapons to confiscate equipment and arrest pornographers? Has there ever been a raid where pedophiles or pornographers took up arms against the police? The degree of resistance and risk expected from an arrest should dictate the severity of the force used, not the severity of the crime.
The theory around sending the SWAT probably has something to do with the raid being an "exigent circumstance". That is, that the suspect had the potential to destroy evidence of the crime quickly and completely if presented an opportunity. Before the prevalence of hardware / software drive encryption, it could take a few hours to sanitize an 80 Gig drive. So, even if a criminal knew that the police were coming, he couldn't effectively getting rid of the evidence before law enforcement could get it (short of physically destroying the drive or putting it under a huge magnet).
With an encrypted drive or partition, throwing away the encryption key renders all data fairly unrecoverable. Deleting or resetting an encryption key can take a few seconds. Therefore, for crimes perceived as severe (in this case, 10 million images being quite a haul), the SWAT was probably given orders to detain the suspect before he could destroy any evidence.
Further, on the scale of people who could potentially resist arrest, I would imagine that child pornographers are pretty high up there. They don't exactly have a bright future ahead in the American prison system, if you know what I mean. The SWAT doesn't know who's going to have a gun. Assuming that someone is unarmed, or sane, was probably a risk that they weren't willing to take.
I'm not saying that it's right, I'm just trying to explain their rationale.
Reminds me of my parent's Wi-Fi. My father couldn't understand why sometimes he could connect to the network and other times not. When I had a look I found that it was named "wireless"!!! So I renamed it to our family name, and now connecting always works. And as I suspected, there still is a network called "wireless". So two neighbours had set up their wireless routers without renaming their networks from the factory default.
Also, my parent's password is pretty obvious. Now what would happen if they both used "abcd" for their passwords, and the neighbours did something naughty?
What irks me other than the obvious is this line: "Agents arrested John Luchetti on March 17. He has pleaded not guilty to distribution of child pornography."
What if he goes to trial and is found not guilty? He still has the stigma attached to him. If you google his name you've got more than plenty of links on the poor sap and some on this story. They're basically treating him as if this case is already closed and frankly, that's just fucked up.
Investigators could have taken an extra step before going inside the house and used a laptop or other device outside the home to see whether there was an unsecured signal. That alone wouldn't have exonerated the homeowner, but it would have raised the possibility that someone else was responsible for the downloads.
Yes, they could. And that is going to be cited in the lawsuit the first time a homeowner picks up his gun and defends himself against an armed invasion. Somebody is going to get killed this way.
Why can't they just knock on the door? You can't flush a computer down the toilet. What's the rush?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
"Law enforcement officials say the case is a cautionary tale."
In our state and the next one over the cops have barged in and killed, tasered, beaten and maimed seven different people in unrelated cases over the past couple of years. These are sparsely populated states with very low crime. I hate to think of what it is like in urban areas with the SWAT cops running around all over the place playing with their toys. In every single case the Governors, Attorney Generals and judges have let the cops off free. The police are out of control. Sure, there are some good cops but the others are poison.
With evidence that slim you'd confiscate computers?
he probably would have been shot on sight.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
The Sarasota, Fla. man, for example, who got a similar visit from the FBI last year after someone on a boat docked in a marina outside his building used a potato chip can as an antenna to boost his wireless signal and download an astounding 10 million images of child porn
Alright, let's assume a JPG is about 25KB. 10 million 25 KB JPGs is something like 230 terabytes worth of data. What the hell?
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
It's whatever these jack-booted bastards feel like doing to you this week. And you can talk until you're blue in the face to people about how bad this is for all of us, how it's a slippery slope, but they'll just look at you and say stuff like 'but if the police went after them, they must have been doing something wrong'.
The only thing that ever convinces people that there's a problem is if they or someone close to them gets a taste of that boot, by which point it's too late, because now as far as everyone else is concerned they must have deserved whatever they got.
Here's a test. Ask 10 people if they think it's better for our justice system to accidentally lock up an innocent person now and again or if it's better to never lock up an innocent person but occasionally let a criminal go free. People I thought I knew really well were happy to lock up the neighbors they didn't know if it would also get some imaginary criminal threat off the streets. NIMBY is alive and well.
Depending on router, devices, OS levels, you may only find that WEP is the only common denominator. And the people using it will blatently disregard the dangers. Because its so convenient.
Wireless is a hole in the world.
well I know I'm posting this as ac hopefully the mods will find it if no one else covered this point.
this seems like poor investigation. When they had determined the ip of a node participating in a crime being investigated wouldn't have made sense to get the judge to issue a warrant to snoop on the wireless connection on site and the internet going in and out. How hard would it have been to then figure out what computer if any on location and the location of it (triangulation anyone?). I mean the network was wide open. They blew a chance to catch the actual perp while trampling the freedom and safety of an innocent bystander. Now this obviously gets harder to do the more encryption is involved. But seriously can't they at least check first.( the network was wide open!) Now if the person they are really after was next door they probably lost the chance to catch them and in the process gather real evidence that could be used against them. Scary part is now having an open wifi can be used as a pretext to kick down your door and point automatic weapons against you (maybe even without real cause). There is clearly something going wrong. But then again why would any police force with all that gear, little oversight and no repercussions for their actions let actual investigation get in the way of abusing authority injuring and threatening innocent civilians destroying property all the while killing pets and anyone who seems to stand up for themselves against an oncoming unjustified assault on them ( I mean that is the real fun in being the police right? not catching bad guys for sure)
In SoCal the guy would be dead already.
Guy opens the door for the cops
Cop: Is that gun in your shorts? GUN!!
Other cops: Drop It! bam! Put the weapon down! Bang!
Guy: Wha...
blam! blam! blam! blam!blam! blam! blam! blam! blam! blam! blam! blam! blam! blam! blam! blam!
Cop: Oh, it looked like he was armed. Oh well...
I haven't gotten the hang of tagging slashdot stories yet, so how do I tag this one "Out of control law enforcement, excessive use of SWAT teams, and careless prosecution with questionable warrants"? Are assault rifles really necessary when attempting to aprehend a suspect kiddie porn hoarder when they know he is home? Sure, if he's guilty, lock him up, but how often do they get it wrong? Playing around unnecessarily with guns that put innocent bystanders as much at risk as the [often not dangerous] suspects is a bad idea. Here's a good idea: do better detective work and investigate as much as possible before busting down doors. Surely this raid garnered some publicity, and was probably enough of a scene to scare the bejesus out of the guilty neighbor. Again, string up the guilty party, that's fine. But please be damn careful who else you traumatize along the way. What if the wrongly-acused had moved to toss his cell phone aside as he hit the floor and Deputy Dimwit got an itchy trigger finger? Dead for not being able to set up a router properly? That punishment may fit the crime for slashdotters, but isn't apropriate for non-nerds.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
"Everyone should not password their router. No one should password protect their router..not. Nobody..everyone should protect their passwords...with their routers.. Al-self me to intro-low my body..."
i have a password no one will guess
password
its geinuse. no one wou-hang on. someones shouting about the police. i'll be right back.
....much better to lie there on your face with a dozen guns in your back and a dozen high school dropouts screaming "pedophile" at you. THAT'S the key to effective law enforcement.
Dude sold a deputy a sawed-off shotgun. As far as I remember, there was no automatic weaponry involved on the part of the Weavers.
There's no way of knowing how many lives have been ruined by arrests for rape, molestation, child porn, and other such crimes being publicized, then the person being released without charge. Retractions don't get nearly as much attention as arrest reports and news articles, meaning a person's name could forever be tied to a crime they did not commit and were not even charged with.
Another problem is when the media covers the disappearance of the latest missing blonde girl, and then gleefully trots out the name and mug shots of whoever gets arrested first. That person might be completely innocent, but the damage is done.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
...you have hit upon the core issue. Police work would be a lot easier if not for free public wi-fi...
Experts say wireless routers come with encryption software, but setting it up means a trip to the manual.
Wow stated as some strange piece of hidden knowledge which only 'Experts' know about.
Reality is in fact, Virtual
My neighbor got raided for running a Tor Relay. He got his door kicked in by ICE agents, they searched all of his computers/hard drives and of course, they didn't find anything. He was obviously pretty upset - but he still runs his relay and I started running one as well (ICE can go f*ck themselves).
But, the fact that they can do this with just IP addresses is a little scary. You would think that the cops would use something more than just shared hashes and IPs. What if someone created a modified p2p client that shared fake child porn(well the hashes, anyway) and spread it with a worm? Would the cops kick in every single door?
Blah... It is easy to set up WiFi security on your router, what sucks however is getting it set up on your DirecTV, Wii, PS3, the five smart phones in the family and what about when the kids bring their friend's XBox over and your coworker or worse yet father in law comes over with their laptop. Setting wireless security is really a giant pain in the butt when you are not the only person who is going to use it and your laptop is not the only device.
An elderly relative of mine who apparently had his wifi wide open was raided by ICE agents who didn't find anything. After terrorizing them for 4 hours and trashing their home, the agent actually conceded that it was probably one of their neighbors. ICE has a shoot now, ask questions later policy that is despicable. Since, their warrants are all sealed and the innocents almost never talk, these thugs will probably continue to get away with this behavior.
Their advice: Password-protect your wireless router.
My advice: Password-protect your constitution.
No one claimed that IP address = person, AFAICT. What was claimed was quite accurate: The IP address can be used to track down the subscriber. Maybe he didn't use the router, but he's the guy who paid for the connection the IP address was assigned to.
Clever signature text goes here.
The government, in general, and law enforcement, in particular, seem to have the opinion that they can do no wrong. Here, again, we see the same.
i) because they can
ii) because they enjoy it
iii) because it allows them to exercise power over someone less powerful
iv) because they aren't liable for costs if the call is wrong
I have a large antenna on my garage that shares wifi w/ my whole block. I encourage all of you to do the same.
And that's if you don't have a dynamic IP. Simply put, an IP is not a good identifier.
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
police state indeed. ICE raided my home under very similar circumstances. Only difference is that instead of unsecured wireless, the Feds linked 3 jpegs on a kiddie porn site to my ip address, which was running a Tor exit. stupid me for thinking the pigs would at least investigate a bit before kicking down my door. At 7am, while i was at work, 15 ICE agents raided my house with battle gear and automatic weapons, while my three children and wife slept inside. My non techie wife had a tough time with my explanation of what Tor is, mostly i think she was just thinking "cops, guns, child porn" over and over. They still have my stuff, maybe ill get it back. I have a lawyer working pro bono on educating the ICE agent who pushed the warrant. In the meantime, i am pissed, my family is scared, and i have finally realized that the authorities are NOT here to help.
I live in a poor neighborhood and like to share, but I also understand the risks of an open AP. It only takes a few hours to set up pfsense on an old PC, get squid and squidguard (or Dansguardian) running. Add havp and/or snort and you have a killer combo: firewall, proxy, IDS, limited antivirus, and the ability to block most "bad" traffic. I'm an amateur and I got it working in a day. Plus, if it ever hits the fan, there are plenty of logs to help your case.
This is why it would be nice if the government forced the ISP monopolies to open their
lines to 3rd party ISPs which do the filtering for the customer. Most end-users have neither
the skills nor the time to secure and filter their own Internet connection. If however, they
could sign up with an ISP- . a Christian ISP-, which had full time staff dedicated to security
and to filtering out this junk, then the end-user would be in a much safer position. It's
about choice.
Of course, it will never happen because the monopolies own the government. And
as another poster said, the police keep their jobs by hunting down small fry and
avoiding the producers (hollywood, etc.), distributors, and facilitators (google, bing, etc.)
Try turning off the "safe" search option on those search engines and see the kind
of filth that is out there. Or take a trip to your local bookstore.
I don't understand what the point of securing a wifi-access point is with regard to protection from police serving a warrant? Lets say that your wireless access point IS password protected with mac address filtering and someone bypassed this to use your router, you think the police are going to actually do their job and investigate or stop at the first thing they see? No, if you had a secure router, you better believe YOU are going to be the one they try and rape with the criminal justice system.
The whole child porn crime thing is getting absurd. As much as I dislike child porn, the laws for POSSESSION need to be relaxed. Right now, it is akin to being a witch in the 1800's, being a nazi in the 1940's, or a communist in the 1960's. Mere accusation alone is enough to destroy your life. As those in charge don't perform their due diligence in assessing the facts until after they take action which by then your life is ruined.
The intent is to stop the exploitation of children. But the result is the way in which child pornography is pursued, the exploitation of these children seem to be a secondary thing when the pursuit of people in possession is the purpose in which LEOS and DA's rally against because of the sensational headlines they carry. Not to mention the notches they get to cut in their belts.
Our child porn laws are getting so absurd that 16 year old girls who text naked pictures of themselves to their boyfriends are getting charged with crimes and being labeled as sex offenders for their rest of their life. Grandmothers who take pictures of their infant/toddler children in the bath are getting prison sentences.
All so some DA or police chief/captain/lieutenant can look good and cut a notch on his belt.
There is no justice. It is just another commodity available only to those with the wealth and influence.
No I wont I'm not the Internets security gatekeeper.
You might want to get those balls out of your eyes because you have a dick on your forehead.
I'm not disagreeing with the need to stop raiding homes with force and violence but the general passe attitude used to discuss this is mildly disturbing. The police aren't overzealous children who need scolding, they're adults who need proper training. The popular zeitgeist is to shrug at white males who still act like children and to use child-centric terms to describe them. The issue here is that these are adults who choose to routinely use an excessive amount of force to apprehend because nobody is there to squelch these sort of behaviors. Nobody needs to call them children or imply that a firearm is a toy, it is a lethal weapon and these men should be held accountable for their actions. It is a matter of taking your profession seriously.
On the topic of distribution of child pornography, who here seriously doesn't list it amongst the rank and vile? When we're downgrading it to merely "watching violence" then we're at a crossroads of morality. Production and consumption are identical, they exploit the child further, just one took the risk in having the physical element the other is merely exploiting the already exploited further.
Third, I would like to point out even though my wireless network is locked I see several others, I can't log into any of them and with some effort I surely could. The idea though is that it is relatively secure and in most cases unless they can use your machine to proxy will not be able to download the dirty items to your machine and then to theirs, in other words, while it is a painful process one would be vindicated in the end. Then again I have faith in the system still.
Beyond reasonable doubt comes bundled free with a subscription to Comcast Business Class.
the password is basically "!thisnetworkhasnotbeencracked". Figured if anyone bothers to take the effort and crack a WPA2 (AES) network, they'll appreciate a boolean-variable joke ;)
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
On just about every street corner in high crime areas, you can find drug dealers, yet the war on drugs has shifted to the war on users, same thing here, it seems just insane to know that someone that is un-trained in law enforcement can find a drug dealer on just about every street corner but what do they focus on in regard to attempting to combat crime, innocent, people, those that pose zero risk.
Of course the what was it porn thing, is terrible thing, (allegedly) but all in all is this not insanity.
We had a war on drugs that turned into a war on the people, why? Because most people don't carry guns and its safe to have stings to get those non violent people off the streets, but they do nothing to get the crack dealers off the streets?
Now that is just insane, if they would concentrate on the drug dealers that we all know are everywhere and leave non violent crimes alone at least those that do not result in physical crime, (because no one condones that type of sickness and perversion) but also statically speaking, only a small percentage of porn cases are actual physical offenders, what a mess we have in this nation.
The ISP still knows which subscriber had the IP address assigned. In fact this guy's IP probably was dynamic, but all the authorities would need is a rubber-stamped subpoena to get his address from the ISP.
while the article may not have said IP=identity, it's a fair assumption that the police acted on that basis, unless you're suggesting that they thought "hmmm this IP was used to download kiddy porn, so it could have been anyone living or passing by within a hundred or so metres of this IPs location, so we'll go bust into this guys house with a fully armed SWAT team and ram a shotgun in his face.
they should have actually asked a twelve year old nerd about IP addresses and what they mean, before they started thinking about which semi-automatics they were going to wear on the raid.
Yeah, well, how sad. While sagging United States physician~doctors are hiding mini-cams in their examination rooms porning out pics of their female patients caught buck naked raw on clinician's film. The Feds have plenty to do in today's great and wonderful sea-to-shining-sea crapfest America, where at least we know we're FREE. Start raiding the damn doctors offices and clinics where they regularly tell women patients -and their trusting little American daughters to STRIP FOR THEM LITTLE GIRL IT'S OKAY => HE'S A DOCTOR.
I would have commented earlier, but I was busy gifting wireless routers to people I don't like. :)
Their advice: Password-protect your wireless router." These morons even dare to give advices after this !
Debate about warrants and IP != identity aside, SWAT is NOT for really bad guys. It is for bad guys with lots of really bad weapons; or more succinctly, appropriate force for the threat to safety of officers and near-by citizens.
This is similar to how a plod on the beat wouldn't shoot a shoplifting suspect (well, at least outside of L.A.) or a bouncer on the door of a club who wouldn't bash trouble-makers (well, without facing charges). So an alleged deviant -- even with a judge who doesn't understand sufficient identification of the suspect -- frankly isn't sitting on any decent hardware, and considering the amount of time he (allegedly) spends sitting down in front of a computer, probably isn't even a good runner.
Get it done. Get it done now or I'll have your job. No excuses.
No your honor, I simply told him to do his job, not to violate anyone's rights....
A boss is responsible for the actions of his subordinates. What is needed is for politicians to actually start doing jail time themselves. And second to identify and punish the backers of politicians that pressure them into breaking the law...