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."

Comments

Bruce Schneier's essay on open wireless

[ODBOL]

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.

Re:guilty eh?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Sure there are cases that may warrant a full on raid (expected high power weapons, drugs, etc.) but busting down the doors for porn?

Blame the SWAT-ification of the police. Tons of federal money for SWAT but nowhere near enough actual criminals that require that sort of response. So you've got a bunch of expensive people sitting around doing nothing; in order to justify their continued existence management deploys them on ever more trivial work just to be able to say they are being used and deserve to be funded next year.

Re:Land of the free...

[mrchaotica]

Let me tell you a story about excessive force:

A few years ago in Atlanta, the police got a tip from an informant about drug dealers. They sent three undercover officers to serve a no-knock warrant. In other words, they sent three heavily-armed men who weren't dressed as police to kick in somebody's door without any warning. Guess what happened next.

That's right: the old lady who lived alone in the house (and who was not a drug dealer), scared out of her wits, fired a single shot at the armed thugs invading her home. She missed. The "officers" returning fire, on the other hand, used 39 bullets instead of one, and didn't miss five or six times.

Then, of course, they planted drugs on the old lady as she was dying, and it turned out that that the informant had lied (under pressure from police) in the first place.

For more information.

Re:guilty eh?

[bluefoxlucid]

Clearly, there are situations where going in hot is warranted. However the idea someone apparently dumb enough to download CP from his own living room will be some sort of uber-trigger-happy criminal is just stupid. Someone doing that, thinks they aren't going to be detected and won't be ready for them in which case a polite knock, followed by arrest and seizure of the computer equipment will work just fine.

The police should be doing an investigation first before an arrest, i.e. find out who lives there, get a criminal profile together. Is this some idiot beating off under his desk for 18 hours a day, or an armed crime lord with a meth lab and booby traps? I mean if he's a child pornographer engaged in human trafficking, it would make sense if he was engaged in drug trafficking too; it's not a necessary or common link, but it's sensible. We know meth labs produce lots of explosives, and meth makers like to set up trigger traps for police raids--the police are actually afraid to raid them.

So why don't you make sure you know what you're getting into first? See if the guy is a cunning, paranoid maniac that likely has an impenetrable fortress of death to protect himself; or an idiot that has no clue what he's doing. Act accordingly.