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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."
Guilty until proven innocent.
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.
Gov't: Hey we are planning a raid on your house next week what time would work for you for us to swing by?
You: I'm kinda busy this week. I have some computers I need to toss out. How bout you swing by next Thursday
Govt: Ok see you then
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.
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.
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
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.........
.... and use assault weapons to arrest someone you have no reason to believe is armed and dangerous.
The police has become a domestic military force.
Well, you know, wanna-be kiddie diddlers are known to be dangerous, wantonly violent individuals.
You cannot give him the opportunity to inject his special blend of gamma ray enhanced pedo-roids...you wouldn't like him when he's horny...for children.
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.
Perhaps the cops should gather more evidence than an IP address before they bust in, guns drawn?
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
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.
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!
It sure would be embarrassing to have a SWAT team just drop by with all these cable cluttering up the floor. I really need to do some dusting, and take care of the dishes in the den.
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 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.
.... and use assault weapons to arrest someone you have no reason to believe is armed and dangerous.
That boils down to the same reason ANYONE is armed though: it's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. I don't think it's a wise move for our police to leave home their weapons because someone might find it scary.
On the other hand, if the story is correct about the "cuts and bruises", then they certainly did go above and beyond the necessary force needed to arrest a suspect (assuming he wasn't resisting). The physical force used is a completely separate matter from what gear they bring along though.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
That's true. Even traffic cops are starting to dress like soldiers, with their fatigues and bloused trousers over combat boots.
Proverbs 21:19
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.
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..)
They couldn't just sent two plain clothes officers to knock on the door and ask him to come outside? Worked great when they arrested my father for back child support....
I suppose it would have been safer for them to smash down the door, rope though the windows and point rifles at him.
No, they use assault rifles because they like to pretend their soldiers at war, but are really cowards.
Proverbs 21:19
Thank you for proving other posters here right. It's not even guilty until proven innocent anymore; it's guilty forever because it's going to be on the internet forever, on some server or another. This guy's name will forever be attached to the stigma of possessing child pornography, even if he didn't actually have any.
And yet these pussies won't go after the REAL threats. Trying going after MS 13 you cowards!
Life is not for the lazy.
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.
you're a moron. they use assault rifles because they don't know what the person has on them. they dont walk around pointing them at people after everyone is secure.
So its a safe assumption to assume that a child pornographer is armed and dangerous? you're a moron. they use assault rifles because they don't know what the person has on them. they dont walk around pointing them at people after everyone is secure.
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.
Anyone with any sense agrees that a raid with a warning wouldn't be useful. The point is that there should not have been a raid in the first place. Send a couple officers out with a warrant and have them bring the guy in. Life is not an action movie, and wearing a badge does not change that.
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.
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?
Ah, child support: where the woman gets to regard the foetus as her property until parturition, at which point it becomes the man's responsibility.
Yep, the law's about as wrong on that as it is to prohibit the noting down of particular sequences of 0s and 1s. Easier than actually stopping child abuse as all you have to do is subpoena the ISP for the "identity" (oh, wait..) behind a particular IP address and then turn up at the address they supply.
Although IIRC the sequence when talking to cops in the US is ...so any cop telling you to "please step out of the house" is doing it wrong, as it either means "I'm about to arrest you" or "I'm about to ask you to do something you won't do anyway".
(i) never let them into your property without a warrant;
(ii) tell them calmly that you have nothing to say;
(iii) ask whether you're free to go;
(iv) close the door / walk away...
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?
I just like how the submitter slipped by a story with a title that shows up as Bizarre Porn on my tabs in FireFox. I certainly hope a cow-orker doesn't catch their eye on that!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
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
That boils down to the same reason ANYONE is armed though: it's better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. I don't think it's a wise move for our police to leave home their weapons because someone might find it scary.
Nobody has suggested the police should have gone in unarmed. They would have had their pistol at their side as they would at any other moment they were on-duty. It's the assault weapons that were a problem here. They are appropriate when raiding gangs or drug houses, but even then they are rarely used. Making intimidation the rule of thumb is part of what is making things worse for police departments and the citizens of the USA.
From hell's heart I fstab at /dev/hdc
Disclaimer: I feel a lot more detective work should have been done before raiding his place.I also feel the phrase "child porn" has become synonymous with "witch hunt".
Some people have guns and will use them. Taking them by surprise reduces the chances of someone getting shot. Secondly, anyone dealing with child porn and half a brain should have a copy of Darik's Boot And Nuke (or something similar) standing by ready to go on a moment's notice.
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.
Because we all know that guys that have sex crimes against them have Claymores set up all over the place and sleeps with a live grenade in his hand.
Get real you idiot. Every cop and the one who was in charge needs to be forced to pay this guy restitution. But it does not work that way in the United states. Cops are not liable for their actions. They have no oversight and no consequences to their actions.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Indeed, I am sick of this sort of behavior from the police. For instance, near my home they shot a 12 year old girl with a beanbag gun because she was being "unruly" and swinging at officers. They justified this by saying that the police need to maintain their own safety. This is about the biggest load I've ever heard. You're a cop -- your job is not safe. The reason you took this job is to protect others, not yourself. If you wanted a nice safe life you'd go into a safer business, like cleaning swimming pools. Instead we have armored thugs shooting little girls with beanbags because they're scared they might get punched in the eye. Buncha fucking pansies, whiners, and scaredy cats. Do your fucking jobs, assholes.
A cautionary tale for the judge the authorized the warrant maybe. Of course, it's always the victims fault right? Judges are infallible.
Futhermore, he can successfully defend himself in court, so for the safety of the case they should shoot them where he stands, this is the only way to protect the freedom. Oh, wait
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.
"Just a moment, officer. I'm busy wiping my disk ... er, I mean ass."
Have gnu, will travel.
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".
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'.
It would be a wise move for your police to leave their weapons at home *because unarmed police leads to less use of violence in general*.
But it's like the death penalty leading to more murders (also fairly well documented): People trust their prejudices ("gut feeling") instead of trying to look up what the data says.
Doubting the existence of evolution is like doubting the existence of China: It just shows that you're uninformed.
Doesn't seem unreasonable for a rapid invasion of someone's house (though it's rather offensive in a state that restricts civilian gun rights to such a degree). The real problem is how permissive the courts have gotten in allowing no-knock assaults to preserve the meager evidence of trivial crimes.
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.
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
Um, where does it say they battered him?
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
They need the computers though. And they're worried about things such as the hard drives being encrypted and as soon as the power is turned off, or maybe a panic button to destroy the evidence so they won't be able to search through them.
So how is bringing the guy downtown will help? He'll just say, "No, officers, I didn't do it," and they'll have to release him. Meanwhile, if he did do it, any evidence that happened to be on his computers would be destroyed as soon as he got home, or before that if he had some kind of dead man's switch, or hit a panic button right before he answered the door.
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.
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.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
While the fetus is inside her body, yeah, that's pretty much how it goes. If the father doesn't like that, then he should glove up or snip his shit or keep his cock out of the baby chamber. And I think you'll find that who ever makes less and has the kid for most of the time gets the money. Sometimes it's the man, sometimes it's the woman. How would you prefer this division of rights and responsibilities to work?
I could understand if you're railing against punitive alimony or spousal support. Or if you're point was somehow that fathers tend to get screwed on parenting time. But child support? If you don't like it, how else should it be done?
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I think the process is a little more complicated than "Child porn? Well it couldn't have been me!" "You heard the man, let him walk!". If there is probable cause they can seize the computers. Encryption or a "panic button" would only slow things down while they send the drives off to data forensics.
Govt: Oh and make sure your grandmother makes some of those delicious cookies for us to enjoy while we are there, k thx.
-- Brought to you by Carl's JR
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.
You think encryption or a panic button to delete all the files by scrubbing the disk is only going to "slow things down"? Where did you get the idea that it's feasible to break modern day encryption, or read data that has been scrubbed off a harddrive?
"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
While the fetus is inside her body, yeah, that's pretty much how it goes.
So the woman chooses whether to make the baby, and also chooses whether the father must support the baby? That's not equitable. If you put a sword in my back yard with my full knowledge and consent, it's not your fault if I choose to fall on it. Yeah, it's my body and it's my yard, but if I get to govern my body and my property then I must be responsible for the decisions I make regarding it.
And I think you'll find that who ever makes less and has the kid for most of the time gets the money.
You've already addressed the problem that it's usually the woman who gets the kid and the man who pays the money...
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.
takes all of a minut to brake down wep. bascily locking the door but leaving the key with a sighn key hear pointing at it. all home enc can be broken these days however wpa2 take a long time to do it like a dedcated machine for a week thats more the effect of barrcading the door and if they ram it long enough they will get in.
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)
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.
relly. you must not have wifi or at least are smart enough to use wpa2. if not ill show how quickly i can hack in your roughter and you will never knoe or even if you did evently catch on i would be long gone not only that ill use some extended range eq and you will have no idea where its coming from even if you did catch on. and many users can barly find the on buttion let alone configure there securty. so dont say its inpossable thers a huge underground on controling the less computer savy machines yep botnets.
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.
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.
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...
If they would actually do their homework, not only would they not end up raiding the houses of the wrong people, but they'd also be expected to do some proper surveillance beforehand so that they'd know whether or not to expect resistance and what sort of resistance to expect.
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.
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)
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.
Braver though
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
The right to bear arms is (or at least was) the second amendment, I suppose you can consider it the first now since what used to be the first amendment is now considered null and void.
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
Mac filtering == joke. Macs are easily faked.
WPA2 PSK == all dependent on how secure your preshared key is. Here is what I do: Every six months, I fire up KeePass, have it make for me a 63 character random passphrase (using additional entropy collected from the keyboard/mouse). I save this as a text file to a USB flash drive, copy and paste it into the router and all clients. This is as secure as it gets for preshared keys. The only way you will do better is having your own RADIUS server and WPA2-Enterprise.
Ok you got me on that one; after reading into it further I see my assumptions are outdated.
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
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.
I'm less concerned about them breaking down his door, than I am that they felt the need to use a SWAT team to arrest someone accused of accessing child porn...
What possibly justification is there for this? Was there reason to suspect he might pull a gun and start shooting at the arresting officers?
MABASPLOOM!
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.
true, but they can give a person a min or two before busting in to give a person a chance to serender..if not then they can throw in some tear gas or whatever they pick and storm the place.
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.
....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.
I once had someone swear to me they had an unbeatable password:
p@ssw0rd
They were using it on encrypted hard drives storing patient medical data. Yeah, i'll never use that company, ever.
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
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.
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.
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.
Hey, hey, hey. Whoooah. Slow down there, nelly!
MS 13 know they are criminals and so they are lawyered up. This means if they conduct a raid like this on MS 13, then they might go free. They need to be cautious and make sure they respect MS 13's liberty and due process! With us, luckily they don't need to worry about that.
Also, MS 13 have weapons and might use them. They don't want to go after someone who might fight back. They could break a nail, get injured, or killed.
Nope, Police resources are better spent going after us, so they can be seen to be doing something, without actually doing something.
This is my footer. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
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.
I posted that AC. Sorry.
Someone who genuinely is distributing kiddie porn could reasonably expect to be raided at any time. If he really had been guilty of downloading "thousands of images at 11:30 last night", he might have wondered how they found out, but he'd have had warning by his awarness of his own illegal activities. On the other hand, the guy who is not doing anything illegal, does not have that sword of Damocles hanging over his head. The cops bust down this guy's door without even telling him they had a warrant, let alone showing it to him. He could reasonably have assumed it was a burglary or a criminal home invasion. In fact, it very nearly was a criminal home invasion - even though the homeowner is not pressing charges.
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
child porn in the first place. Are people who download kiddie porn known to be heavily armed?
Well just one of them....
Thank you, I'll be hear all week, try the veal!
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
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!
However, if pistols were appropriate for the situation, rifles certainly were.
Rifles are long-range weapons. Pistols are close-range weapons. Someone who appears to know half a thing about weapons should know not to make such a ridiculous statement.
I get paid child support, and I am the father. Was kind of funny to see my ex get chewed out for not paying child support for a year when I took her to court.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
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.
His assumptions are only barely outdated when it comes to encryption. A scrub panic take TIME, just to do even one pass.
If the computer is seized and it's encrypted already, what the hell are they going to do? Force the suspect to give the password (which he is legally compelled to do in the USA). If it is encrypted and starting to scrub, you unplug, send the drives off, and use the password to decode the encrypted remains.
Or are pedophiles using FTL Drives and Quantum Encryption these days?
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His assumptions are only barely outdated when it comes to encryption.
People have been encrypting files for a long time..
A scrub panic take TIME, just to do even one pass.
You only need one pass to scrub. If the police are bringing him downtown, that's a least a few hours. It'd be enough
Force the suspect to give the password (which he is legally compelled to do in the USA).
I don't know where you are getting your information... legally compelled to give a password in the USA?? I've heard of only one case where someone was compelled to reveal their password, and it had something to do with them already waiving their 5th amendment right. It certainly isn't easy to legally get someone to reveal their password.
Or are pedophiles using FTL Drives and Quantum Encryption these days?
I have no idea what pedos are using, but they certainly don't need Quantum Encryption to block an investigation. Just install truecrypt and call it a day.
Anyway, the point is to get the perp off guard. Surprise them, and maybe they don't have all their ducks in a row, ie. the computer is still on in a state where the illegal material can be accessed without a password, etc. This probably works a lot of times, which is why the police do it.
You only need one pass to scrub. If the police are bringing him downtown, that's a least a few hours. It'd be enough
Instead of busting in....Cops pay nice visit with warrant. Guy maybe gets one moment to press "destroy" button. Pass barely starts, only the first few hundred sectors are destroyed before the power is pulled. Easy to pull data from this drive (encrypted or not).
I have no idea what pedos are using, but they certainly don't need Quantum Encryption to block an investigation. Just install truecrypt and call it a day.
Truecrypt is only good if the suspect can't be compelled to reveal his password. Not revealing your password can be further evidence of obstruction and/or guilt. Laws are already on the books to compel suspects to provide their password. Furthermore, ACTA should further cement the "rights" of states to your encrypted data (not that I agree with it but it is the current lay of the land). I also suspect circumvention techniques are at least a decade ahead of where the government admits it is able to crack IF they even had to.
This probably works a lot of times, which is why the police do it.
That doesn't make it right. It makes it a slippery slope to fascism. An infringement on the innocent, and the innocent until PROVEN guilty.
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Instead of busting in....Cops pay nice visit with warrant. Guy maybe gets one moment to press "destroy" button. Pass barely starts, only the first few hundred sectors are destroyed before the power is pulled. Easy to pull data from this drive (encrypted or not).
It's very difficult to impossible to pull data from an encrypted hard drive.
Truecrypt is only good if the suspect can't be compelled to reveal his password. Not revealing your password can be further evidence of obstruction and/or guilt. Laws are already on the books to compel suspects to provide their password. Furthermore, ACTA should further cement the "rights" of states to your encrypted data (not that I agree with it but it is the current lay of the land).
Invoking the fifth cannot be seen as an admission of guilt. And what does the ACTA have to do with what cops do today?
I also suspect circumvention techniques are at least a decade ahead of where the government admits it is able to crack IF they even had to.
Yea, sure.. let's say the government is able to crack modern encryption schemes out there but doesn't want this known. How could they ever enter into evidence decrypted data without admitting they had this ability?
That doesn't make it right. It makes it a slippery slope to fascism. An infringement on the innocent, and the innocent until PROVEN guilty.
There was a warrant signed by a judge. You can argue that the judge shouldn't have signed it, and I might agree with you. But, they would be likely to lose access to the evidence if they gave any prior warning. Should they have not thrown the guy down the stairs.. yes, undoubtedly. But with all the technical measures that could render the evidence inaccessible, a raid was justified.
First of all with barely one pass started it is not at all impossible. First off chances are the OS layer will be destroyed first (wiping disks is most efficient and reliable in order).
In the time between surprise knock, entry and arrest, the harddrive will barely have the first GB wiped on first pass. The chances also that a pedophile has a substantial stash of evidence that cannot be destroyed in a massive way in an instant. All of this not to mention, one pass is insufficient to prevent retrieval. One must assume that unless more than one pass is complete, data (encrypted or not) is retrievable for a modest price ( 500$) For evidence, all you need to do is restore a portion anyway. Also, it couldn't be the ONLY evidence you have if you're prepared to go in no-knock.
It has been ruled that being forced to divulge a password is not subject to the fifth amendment and rightly so. You have the right to not self-incriminate. The data will incriminate you- not your password. It's the same reason you can't refuse to not reveal the contents of a safety deposit box if it is evidence in the crime. To not reveal the password is contempt of court. Evidence does not possess unalienable rights. That's why we call people witnesses and not evidence.
Regarding the government, the reason they don't do it for the common criminal is because it is prohibitively expensive. I also only suppose they are a decade ahead merely by means of technology and number crunching capabilities. You also don't even begin to address the susceptibility of encryption to brute force attacks. Pedophiles aren't exactly known for their smarts (hello! BLUR tool!)
A raid like that is NEVER justified for a non-violent criminal. You can't even argue that they ARE violent because they are pedophiles or rapists but the fact of the matter is a pedo without a gun is no threat to the cops. The only threat here is too the innocent and bystanders.
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