Slashdot Mirror
Cops Are Raiding Homes of Innocent People Based Only On IP Addresses (fusion.net)
Kashmir Hill has a fascinating story today on what can go wrong when you solely rely on IP address in a crime investigation -- also highlighting how often police resort to IP addresses. In the story she follows a crime investigation that led police to raid a couple's house at 6am in the morning, because their IP address had been associated with the publication of child porn on notorious 4chan porn. The problem was, Hill writes: the couple -- David Robinson and Jan Bultmann -- weren't the ones who had uploaded the child porn. All they did was voluntarily use one of their old laptops as a Tor exit relay, a software used by activists, dissidents, privacy enthusiasts as well as criminals, so that people who want to stay anonymous when surfing the web could do so. Hill writes: Robinson and Bultmann had [...] specifically operated the riskiest node in the chain: the exit relay which provides the IP address ultimately associated with a user's activity. In this case, someone used Tor to make the porn post, and his or her traffic had been routed through the computer in Robinson and Bultmann's house. The couple wasn't pleased to have helped someone post child porn to the internet, but that's the thing about privacy-protective tools: They're going to be used for good and bad purposes, and to support one, you might have to support the other.Robinson added that he was a little let down because police didn't bother to look at the public list which details the IP addresses associated with Tor exit relays. Hill adds: The police asked Robinson to unlock one MacBook Air, and then seemed satisfied these weren't the criminals they were looking for and left. But months later, the case remains open with Robinson and Bultmann's names on police documents linking them to child pornography. "I haven't run an exit relay since. The police told me they'd be back if it happened again," Robinson said; he's still running a Tor node, just not the end point anymore. "I have to take the threat seriously because I don't want my wife or I to wake up with guns in our faces."Technologist Seth Schoen, and EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn in a white paper aimed at courts and cops. "For many reasons, connecting an individual to a crime linked to an IP address, without any additional investigation, is irresponsible and threatens the civil liberties of innocent people."
You can't trust what the public will do with such a capability as an anonymizing onion router, so therefore running a Tor exit note is a ticket to having big legal problems, never mind the guns in your face. I wouldn't do it if my life depended on it. I have a wife and kids...
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Makes sense, so long as you're also willing to charge every employee of every telecom company as being accessories to terrorism or child porn distribution.
Tracking it back to you is fine.
Asking you if you know anything about the crime in question is fine.
Raiding your home at 0600 is not fine.
Threatening an innocent party not to participate in their legal activities is not fine
This signature is false.
Sure, so the cops rock up at the front door: "sir, do you own a black chevy impala", "yes sir I do", "were you driving it last night", "no sir, I lent it to a friend of mine", "can you tell us their name and contact details", "do I have to?", "by law, yes you do" [questionable, of course], "OK then sir, here they are, are we done?", "yes sir, have a nice evening", "you too".
Why would any of this require an armed response is absolutely insane. The entire scenario fabricated above can be applied equally to internet access.
Is this finally a legitimate car analogy?
"Plus the fact you may be unwittingly be aiding illegal activity as a middle man node."
If your home network is compromised, or any of your home computers are compromised, then you are most likely being used as a relay for nefarious purposes.
It's actually easier to crack your neighbor's WiFi password, then use a disposable WiFi dongle with a random rotating MAC to connect to their network. Bonus points for compromising their PC and routing through that, but it's not strictly necessary. The true danger is not knowing when the game is up. To do this reliably and consistently you need to monitor the neighbor's coms and also put some trip wires in place to ensure you aren't caught out unawares. This is unwise to do locally for those reasons, but it's trivial to park up on a random street, find the weakest WiFi network, breach it, and either use it immediately, or leave a payload on local PCs so they can act as relays later on.
If you are reading this, go and change your passwords right now...that is, unless I'm already in your network and waiting for you to change your password so I can intercept the new value...social engineering for the win!!!!
Running a Tor node doesn't mean your intentionally concealing illegal activity. You're aware that political dissidents in other countries, and abuse victims, and others use Tor for perfectly legal purposes, right?
Sure they are. They provide cellular service to "burner phones" that can be bought with cash and without ID. I see no ethical difference between that and running a Tor node: both are providing a means for somebody to obscure their identity, which can be used for both good and evil.
A lot of countries are cracking down on burner phones. I don't know the regulations where I'm at now (Canada) but I know in Spain, I could not purchase a SIM card without showing my passport.
I once knew someone online who said she was into food porn.
It was sex...using food.
I didn't talk to her much after that. I'm not even 100% sure it was a "she".
thanks for helping me remember that.
Asshole.
What does any of that have to do with police abuse against people doing nothing illegal?
Police are responsible for **investigating** crimes. Sometimes this means surprising people so that evidence can not be destroyed. From the summary it seems that the the residents told the police they operate a TOR exit node, the police looked at a laptop and left. The resident is a bit naive thinking that being on a public list of TOR exit nodes should have made the search unnecessary. Being on that list does not indicate that the resident is not the uploader the police are looking for, just that they are unlikely to be that person but it still needs to be **investigated** to rule them out. That what a lot of **investigation** is, ruling innocent people out as suspects.
Poor analogy. Tor exit nodes don't store anything. It's a relay that people use in order to obscure the place they came from.
Here's a better analogy. Imagine if a wanted criminal ran inside an open-door city shop in order to dodge the police, and the police then charged the shop owners as an accessory to evading law enforcement.
Poor analogy. Here is a better analogy.
Imagine if a wanted criminal ran inside an open-door city shop in order to dodge the police, and the police questioned the shop owners to confirm that they were the shop owners and not the criminal.
Perhaps the solution is as simple as letting all police departments operate Tor exit nodes. Then they can investigate each other when child porn is posted.
Last year this happened to me! I had run misc. anonymous networks at home to understand the concepts better (I ran a TOR exit node for about 2 months/ Alongside I2P); and for my own development process(es).. FBI came along with the local police to take every piece of electronic device I owned.. along with all my code that I had been working on for years. I also lost my job (doing telework) of 5 + years because my work laptop was taken also..and the FBI had to contact my work (at a well known bank) for them to decrypt the laptop.. I was let go a few days afterwards without reason and my neighbors never talk to me now . This really fu*ked up my life for about a year, just getting back on track now. Its absolute bullshit ! Its been about a year now and have yet to get back any of my property (not that Id use it); but its really screwed up how they can manipulate the courts by tossing around the "child porn" verbiage when they really have no evidence otherwise. Where did that leave me?? FUC*ED..thats where...ha My lawyers advised against any attempt to retaliate against the FBI. Im really curious if anyone else out there is working on any sort of group legal action to be taken up with the FBI about this... we are citizens and should not be treated this way. Hell, no one should be presumed to be doing something illegal just because they are using anonymous networks .
Pay-as-you-go SIMs can be bought at pretty much any gas station, 7-11, Mac's, Koodo, Fido, or Virgin booth with cash, without showing ID. Some of them require you to fill in an online form to activate the SIM, but you can put any info in there you want, and "payment" is done using the code on the receipt instead of credit card.
Just went through this process to get a Koodo SIM for friends visiting from Australia. No ID required, no paper trail created.
No regulation on this up here (Canada) that I can see.
A nice improvement would be doing away with the "guns in your face" part. Even if this couple had been the perps that the cops were looking for, what part of of "posting child porn" necessitates an early morning armed raid? Do cops not know how to interact with the public at all anymore besides by kicking down doors and shooting their pets?
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
The ratio of good to bad Anonymous Coward posts is abysmal too, yet we still allow you to speak here.
Good-bye