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

guilty eh?

[rainmouse]

Guilty until proven innocent.

Re:guilty eh?

[bobdawonderweasel]

Indeed. This case has far more to do with the actions of police state than a criminal investigation. When will these morons in law enforcement learn: IP Address != Identity.

Re:guilty eh?

[DanTheStone]

I saw this story first on Yahoo! News and, surprisingly, the comments seemed to understand this. The highly-rated comments all said this is insane, that it's not the guy's fault for not securing his wireless network, it's the police being crazy. I was somewhat proud of my fellow countrymen for seeing through the attempted spin.

The horrible thing, to me, is that they're trying to use it to push securing your home internet. Breaking home wireless encryption isn't that hard, and it would have made it far more difficult for him to prove his own innocence. It's a bit of a double-edged sword.

Re:guilty eh?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can sue. Are you likely to get anything? Of course not, because our government isn't held accountable for anything.

Re:guilty eh?

[kenshin33]

IP != identity but it's a start. The person becomes a suspect and the investigation continues ...

Re:guilty eh?

[MickyTheIdiot]

When I was younger I worked as a tech in a major metro newspaper.

Reporters seem to have a overblown sense of self worth. They can't be bothered to go down the hall and talk to lowly "technical" people to find out if what they are saying even makes sense. This seems to happen with reporters at every level. They go on air regularly and make asses of themselves because they are sure they know everything.

You can complain to the paper, but it will just go to a jackass editor that even has a MORE overblown sense of self-worth.

Re:guilty eh?

[bhagwad]

But arrested in what manner? Was he a threat? Why were guns trained on him? Was he resisting? What was the need to call him names and abuse him?

Wtf.

Re:guilty eh?

[nschubach]

An arrest warrant... but does it involve raiding the house with "assault rilfes"? (Whatever those are!)

I was always under the assumption that a uniformed officer knocks on your door and hands you a slip of paper to escort you "downtown." Sure there are cases that may warrant a full on raid (expected high power weapons, drugs, etc.) but busting down the doors for porn?

Re:guilty eh?

[betterunixthanunix]

Why the intimidation?

For the same reason that the SS would shout "Jew" when they were arrested German Jews during the 1930s and 40s. The police are not just convinced that this guy is guilty; they are convinced that he is guilty of being a sick pedophile, which of course is worse than being a murderer. What was the point of bringing in a paramilitary force to arrest him, when he is suspected of a nonviolent crime, if not to send a message about how we should view people who like child pornography?

Re:guilty eh?

[Sique]

You don't even see his point!

If my wireless is open to everyone, and someone used my wireless to commit any non-sanctioned action, I can easily say: It hasn't to be me, someone else might have used it.

If my wireless is closed, and someone breaks my WEP key to use my wireless to commit any non-sanctioned action, it's much more difficult for me to prove myself innocent, because I'm the only one who could have known the right WEP phrase to use it.

So as long as I have a flat rate and don't need to care about the amount of traffic, it's better for me to not lock my wireless.

Re:guilty eh?

[betterunixthanunix]

Was it enough to justify sending a paramilitary unit into his home in the early morning? This guy was suspected of trafficking in child pornography, not smuggling machine guns. I doubt that the police would have even needed to use a handgun to arrest this guy if he had been guilty.

The problem here is not that he received a visit from the police, but rather the manner in which that visit had been carried out.

Re:guilty eh?

[Paul Jakma]

What is wrong with that description exactly? It says IP == "unique identification number, of the router", which is quite precise, particularly for a layman's description, and not at all inaccurate. There's plenty to criticise in OTT policing in raids of houses (WTF do they need assault rifles to arrest a suspect paedophile; why do they fail to consider the chance the person who did the downloading may not be in the house?( - but you've gone awry in picking on that quote.

Re:guilty eh?

[LWATCDR]

That story was confirmation for you? Some guy posting on slashdot?
Here is documented proof that it has been that way for a long time.
http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-space/article/2009-07/new-york-times-nasa-youre-right-rockets-do-work-space

The background story is that New York time wrote an editorial in 1920 lambasting a Professor named Robert Goddard for writing an scientific paper where he had the nerve to suggest that humans could someday use one of the liquid fueled rockets he was working on to send a machine to the moon. Well at least he didn't suggest that a person could go. I mean that would have been just insane. Robert Goddard had what little support he had dry up and was publicly humiliated so he worked in secret out in New Mexico. One does wonder what he might have done if the Times had supported is bold idea?
Did the Time bother to write a retraction when V2s where falling on London? No.
Did they write a retraction before Robert Goddard's death? No.
Did they even bother to write a retraction when Sputnik was launched? No.
They waited until man walked on the Moon.
Reporters are indoctrinated that they are the protectors of our freedom and that it is there job to explain things to us. Too bad they are not taught to just gather and report facts so that we can figure out what they mean for ourselves.

Re:guilty eh?

[Mr. Slippery]

"assault rilfes"? (Whatever those are!)

An assault rifle is a rifle capable of selective operation in either an automatic or semi-automatic firing mode and using a lighter cartridge -- the AK47 or the M16 being the familiar examples; standard issue for infantry forces and for stormtrooper cops. Not to be confused with "assault weapon", a political/legal term meaning "extra-scary gun".

I was always under the assumption that a uniformed officer knocks on your door and hands you a slip of paper to escort you "downtown."

Not anymore. Blitzkrieg raids have become SOP for anything more severe than unpaid parking tickets, and will probably remain that way until more citizens start greeting these home invasions with kinetic resistance.

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:guilty eh?

[snsh]

I'm sure the cops shouted 'pornographer!' and 'pedophile!' at the suspect out of self defense. After you call someone a pedophile, they cannot possibly hurt you, according to the Pedophile Code of Honor.

Re:guilty eh?

[tibit]

48 in 2009? I wouldn't complain. It's in the same ballpark as mining deaths in the same year (34). I think that in most police manuals there's a section about use of force, and sending a SWAT-like group after a guy who is not known to be dangerous is preposterous.

Re:guilty eh?

[NFN_NLN]

Non violent?

Ask the kids who have been raped to produce the stuff.

Sorry to break your mental fantasy of kids being raped against their will... you were probably enjoying it.

Here is where most of the "child pornography" is coming from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexting

Teens taking pictures/videos of themselves and sending it to boy/girl friends online where is gets intercepted.

http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/Teens-and-Sexting.aspx

"A new survey from the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project found that 4% of cell-owning teens ages 12-17 say they have sent sexually suggestive nude or nearly nude images or videos of themselves to someone else via text messaging, a practice also known as “sexting”; 15% say they have received such images of someone they know via text message."

Re:guilty eh?

[Johnny Mnemonic]

with kinetic resistance

You're a moron, and your cute euphemism doesn't hide that. More "kinetic resistance" is only going to justify and encourage this kind of response from the police, and not dissuade it.

Call me a bleeding liberal if you will, but the police are more afraid of lawsuits than they are of armed individual resistance. The latter they have training and material to deal with. The former they don't, and civil penalties deprive them of resources to continue criminal acts with.

Re:guilty eh?

[jafiwam]

Sure, they want to go home. However, my choices as a law abiding citizen (like the guy in the story here) are to assume it's cops and lie on the floor, or assume it's bad guys and open fire.

Making that choice anything other than tragic is in the hands of the police, not the ordinary citizen. People in their homes have an entirely different class of rights and expectations that makes your traffic stop example not apply.

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. Top that with the large number of outright address mistakes the dumb pigs make, it's ridiculous to think that people and pigs will not continue to get unnecessarily killed when there are mistakes made during investigations that result in this type of entry.

I just hope the pigs don't make that mistake at MY house. I keep a loaded AR-15 near my bed that is fully capable of both shooting through all my walls, but also personal body armor of the police on the other side of those walls*. The idea a law abiding citizen is both harmless and will always know not to shoot is absolutely false. With the behavior of the police in this situation, they damn well SHOULD be worried about going home because appear to have integrated fucking up into just about every investigation. Which in turn greatly increases their chances of getting killed by fault of their own investigation techniques when they cause someone to rightfully defend themselves.

* It also shoots through schools.

Re:guilty eh?

[bware]

I'd like to go home at the end of my day too, and unlike a cop, I'm not getting paid to take risks in trade for getting to carry a gun, and didn't take an oath to protect and serve. Cops are, and did.

If you'd rather kill a citizen by mistake to avoid all risks, maybe you shouldn't be a cop.

48 in a year? From shootings? Or does that number include car wrecks, etc? I suspect that working at a convenience store, on a farm, as a garbageman, miner, or cabbie is more dangerous than being a cop. But they don't get to shoot other people or call them pedophiles.

Re:guilty eh?

[Slashdot Parent]

Do you know how many cops are killed every year? 48 was in 2009 over 3/4 of them at traffic stops.(speeding suspected drunk driving, etc)

There are 800,000 law enforcement officers in the US, so we're talking about 0.006% here. Assuming the officer has a 10 mi. commute, he has a greater chance of getting killed on the way into the office or "home to their spouse's[sic] at the end of their shift" (0.007%).

Yawn.

Re:guilty eh?

[wordsnyc]

WTF do they need assault rifles to arrest a suspect paedophile; why do they fail to consider the chance the person who did the downloading may not be in the house?

They need the whole SWAT routine because they know there's no real threat. Believe me, if they thought the guy inside was armed, they'd set up a perimeter and start lobbing tear gas in there. It's all theater. Good for the local TV and it's like dog treats to the cops themselves -- they get to play Rambo in a safe sandbox.

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.

Re:guilty eh?

[aztektum]

There is an active effort by police departments to not hire intelligent officers (average IQ or lower).

True story. A friend of mine with a bachelors in poli-sci and working on an accounting degree after being laid off during the economic meltdown, decided to apply at the local PD. Smart, stable guy, paints, plays 2-3 instruments, well read and travelled. He looks like a cop though, 6'3", works out a lot.

He aced the physical tests, background check, drug screen, spent 6 months dealing with their paperwork and application process. The recruiting officers liked him and felt he'd make a good officer. At the mental health screening he is rejected. I forget the rubber stamp reason, but he was told by retired officers (one-time coworkers of ours at a startup, now beer drinkin' pals) his rejection was effectively due to him being too smart and not a brainwashed stormtrooper.

A few weeks after his rejection a new officer was fired for making harassing phone calls and stalking women he'd interviewed after they'd submitted complaints for unrelated criminal activity. This guys background was way murkier than my friends, discipline reports from his time in the military and such started coming up. Stuff the local PD had glossed over during his interview process because he was a soldier.

This definitely sank my respect for local PD to even lower levels.

Re:guilty eh?

[canadian_right]

Anyone who keeps a loaded assault weapon in their home outside of a weapons safe, with the ammo locked in a separate safe is an dangerous idiot.

Anyone who things opening fire on people who identify themselves as the police is great way to "defend" their home is a dangerous idiot. Opening fire with a weapon that will easily penetrate the walls of your neighbors home is doubly stupid.

Anyone who thinks they need a firearm to "defend their home" living in a modern western country is a dangerous idiot.

Search Warrant?

[wsxyz]

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?

Re:Search Warrant?

[Anonymous Coward]

What? Dude, no. Cops are NEVER in the wrong. If a mistake was made, it's obviously on the part of the WiFi router owner.

Really, I'm surprised that the cops haven't charged him with wasting police resources-- those SWAT raids aren't cheap...

Re:Search Warrant?

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if he was guilty, there wasn't a good reason to attack him with a military unit of the police because his proclivities are abhorrent. Why couldn't regular cops handle the warrant? He wasn't accused of buying machine guns after all.

Re:Search Warrant?

[rbollinger]

First Point: ICE raided the house not the police.

Second Point: ICE needs to have a federally issued warrant in order to raid a house.

Honestly it is the Judges that need the wake-up call. Too many just don't understand the intricacies of technology and internet crime. A Judge would have been shown how ICE had tracked the IP back to a specific person, and he should have known that that IP address doesn't necessarily identify that person as the perpetrator, and denied the warrant. Furthermore, he should realize that by authorizing a raid like that he reduced the chance of actually catching the real criminal. If the neighbor wasn't such a bone-head, he would have realized what was going on, and fled after he saw the raid on his neighbor's apartment. Instead he probably though he had successfully pinned the blame on someone else.

Re:Search Warrant?

[h4rr4r]

I have heard that defense before, but it sounded more like "Befehl ist Befehl". I don't think it worked that time either.

But I want to share

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:But I want to share

[spikenerd]

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.

Re:But I want to share

[AntiNazi]

If you are using WEP, they won't need to ask for the key. WEP probably makes your situation worse. "Sir, you have a secure wifi network, how could anyone be responsible except for you?"

So rather than

[Stargoat]

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?

Re:So rather than

[characterZer0]

What is wrong with this country?

The voters, even if they remember the incident come November, will still vote for the same politicians they have been voting for their whole lives.

Re:So rather than

[EvanED]

You can't blame the voters for the two-party system; such a system naturally falls out of our election method: non-proportional, one-vote, winner-takes-all. If you want more than two viable parties, that's where you should be looking.

Wrong Damn Point

[dcollins]

"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.

Guest Wi-Fi

[tepples]

...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?

Re:Guest Wi-Fi

[Overzeetop]

I'm curious: If I sing a note, can you sing a perfect fifth in just tuning to it, and create an overtone? I didn't think so. It's actually very, very easy to do, and I can teach nearly anybody who can sing along in church or with the radio in about half an hour. It's all about perspective. I'm not even a professional musician - in fact, not even close.

This is a cautionary tale...

[Anonymous Coward]

... 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?

cautionary tale indeed

[spikenerd]

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?

Re:cautionary tale indeed

[dcollins]

"Surely there is some kind of penalty in our well-designed system for such sloppiness on the part of law-enforcement."

Almost exactly the opposite. Thee days, there's quite a bit of aggravation aimed at (a) partial immunity for law enforcement, and (b) complete immunity for prosecutors. (Of which the latter often blankets and protects the former.)

Re:Duh

[heptapod]

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.

Re:Land of the free...

[Anonymous Coward]

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

How ridiculous.

[ErikZ]

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.

Hi, I'm Chris Hansen from Dateline NBC

[fak3r]

Why don't you have a seat over there? ... What were you thinking?

Re:Duh

[MoonBuggy]

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.

Remember...

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Land of the free...

[arth1]

.... 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.

Very Lucky The Man is Not Suing

[MarkvW]

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.

MAC addresses are easy to spoof

[ODBOL]

MAC addresses are easy to spoof.

Might as well be open

[SoTerrified]

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."

So why the armed raid?

[nedlohs]

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.

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:Land of the free...

[DigiShaman]

And yet these pussies won't go after the REAL threats. Trying going after MS 13 you cowards!

Re:Land of the free...

[biek]

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.

Re:Is it that hard...

[The Archon V2.0]

Well, there was that time I changed ISPs. Couldn't be home for the changeover but the nontechnical roomie was. I left him with two instructions:
1) They DO NOT TOUCH my stuff. Not even to hook it to the ISP's router.
2) If they can't give me a router without wireless, they disable the wireless. Neither of us uses it.

The installation guy wanted to install their "home security suite" (a rebadged McAfee or something) on my PC. He got rebuffed, so instruction #1 went off without a hitch.

The roomie specifically requested the wireless be disabled. The ISP guy said he disabled it. When I got home, turned on my laptop's wireless and checked. And found a wide-open access point that wasn't there that morning. Its name? MY PHONE NUMBER.

And the router was passworded. I couldn't turn it off short of yanking it out. I had to go online (via my laptop because like hell I was plugging my LAN into an open access point), find a list of default passwords the ISP uses, and try them until I hit the right one. I changed the network name to gibberish and then disabled it.

I was later informed that they'd have been more than happy to tell me the password if I just phoned them. The next morning, when the phone lines were open, because I got home too late.

Oh, and wait an hour on hold.

And hope the call center monkey I got didn't think he wasn't allowed to give that info. And knew where to find it.

Sure, it's EASY to change a wireless setting!

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.