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Judge: No Privacy Expectations For Data On P2P Networks
An anonymous reader writes "A federal judge in Vermont has denied a motion to suppress evidence filed by three defendants in a child porn case. The three had alleged their Fourth Amendment rights were violated when police used an automated P2P query-response tool to gather information from their computers. That information subsequently led to their arrest and indictments. The judge held (PDF) that the defendants had either inadvertently, or otherwise, made the information available for public download on a P2P network and therefore couldn't assert any privacy claims over the data."
nothing has ever been private on the internets.
So when AT&T made their iPhone subscriber list "available for public download" that implicitly gave people on the internet permission to access this private information? Oh wait, they sentenced Weev to jail time for that. I'm so confused.
And no, I'm not defending child porn users. Well, I guess I sort of am. But not... Darn it, you guys know what I mean.
Silly peasant, aristocracy have their own set of laws and courts.
If you run a service on the internet, you have no expectation of privacy of the data you serve. That sounds reasonable enough. But why then was weev imprisoned for downloading data from a publically facing web server?
If weev can be imprisoned for computer hacking by using a publicly facing server in ways not intended by the owner, why aren't the police here facing similar charges?
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The ruling is on, "made the information available for public download on a P2P network" there are plenty of private p2p services. If you make your information available to everyone then of course the police don't need to go through red tape to get that information. Non-story
/* TODO: Spawn child process, interest child in technology, have child write a new sig */
And no, I'm not defending child porn users. Well, I guess I sort of am. But not... Darn it, you guys know what I mean.
Kiddie porn pirates are not the problem, the problem are all the people involved in the production. If you believe the MAFIAA's rhetoric the pirates are the solution since they are destroying the jobs of all the hard-working people in the kiddie porn industry.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
my privates have been on the internet.
If you believe the MAFIAA's rhetoric the pirates are the solution since they are destroying the jobs of all the hard-working people in the kiddie porn industry.
I was gonna say the same but couldnt come up with a way of saying "think of the children and download kiddie porn" without it coming across the wrong way.
Yeah, I don't see what the issue is. They were sharing these files, or left them in folders their P2P software would automatically share.
The article shows the police went ot of their way to deliberately not download the files, presumably for 4th Amendment search reasons, though why even that would be a problem I don't know. They were deliberately and knowingly sharing those files.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
In this case they implied consent of making their information public by using that network, an AT&T customer did not imply consent of their information being made public.
AT&T implied consent of that information being made public by not implementing any sort of authentication. From TFA:
Could you not say exactly the same thing about AT&T's "private" data? Substitute "peer to peer" with "web server" where appropriate.
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I was gonna say the same but couldnt come up with a way of saying "think of the children and download kiddie porn" without it coming across the wrong way.
I think the take-away here is that the MPAA and RIAA are steadfast in their support of kiddie porn producers.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
False analogy. This case is not controlled by copyright law. This is a fourth amendment case. Those two bodies of law have almost nothing to do with each other substantively (yes, there may be fourth amendment implications to how police investigate copyrights, but that's separate from the substance of copyright law). The question here is whether the defendants had a reasonable expectation of privacy in the data, not what they subjectively hoped people would do with it. If you grow weed in an open field, with a sign that says, "Cops don't look!" it doesn't matter that you subjectively intended to exclude police from seeing what was in the field. Your expectation of privacy, if you had any, was not reasonable.
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
In other news, the Police also do not need a warrant to attend your public meeting. They don't need a warrant to read the book you published on the rack of the local bookstore. They don't need a warrant to browse around your open store in the local strip mall.
And they don't need a warrant to download data you offered up to any member of the public and browse through it to find incriminating evidence.
Another opinion is that these are two different kinds of services intended for two different kinds of uses.
What exactly is the meaninful difference between the two services? Functionally, they are identical.
That's a valid opinion, but possibly not a widely employed social convention.
You know what is a widely employed social convention? That unauthenticated web services are free to use by the public.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
RFTS, dude:
The judge held (PDF) that the defendants had either inadvertently, or otherwise, made the information available for public download on a P2P network and therefore couldn't assert any privacy claims over the data.
"inadvertently made public" == "did not intend to make public."
Intent has fuck-all to do with the ruling; per the judge, what these pervs did and what AT&T did are exactly the same thing.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Thanks to the power of precedent, not any more.
Child porn is very handy for setting a precedent, because judge and jury alike will usually so loathe the victim they'll do anything to see a strict sentence happen. If you've a defendant you can prove had child porn, you could probably charge them with regicide and conspiracy to blow up Pluto - and still have a chance of a conviction.